Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I am sure you’ve heard of Gary V.
Gary V has a phrase that he uses and it goes something like:
Yep. Marketers RUIN everything.
Gotta give the shout out to Gary V.
Its important to put into context what Gary V means by this, and this will help put things into context before we dive into the real meat of this post.
Marketers ruin everything, simply is a way Gary wants to get across how people take the “4-hour idea” and take marketing and smash them together.
To make up for a lousy product or a product that is not GREAT, USEFUL, and QUALITY, these 4-hour people market, market, market and market not understand that their product SUCKS.
This then saturates the market place and the value of the commodity decreases, as so many marketers are on the scene and watering down the market.
So now that we have the general break-down of how “marketers ruin everything” out the way lets break into how they ruin the app market.
How Marketers Ruin The App Market
In the app market, “Marketers” in our industry or niche are most often referred to as “Reskinners”.
But who are these reskinners?
They’re typically people with no skills in game or app development that buy source code, buy graphics or find free(crappy) ones on the net, and then replace the old graphics with the new…To ‘produce’ a ‘new’ app.
During the very beginnings of any industry or niche, you usually start off with the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper is the skill, asset, or thing that is stopping markers(or just your average person) from getting into that particular market niche.
It was like THIS during the early stages of the app market.
If you were a developer, you could build a great game or app and you would immediately have a good shot at success because their was room for cream to rise to the top. (Granted, You would still need to do a bit of promotion).
If you built a game that sucked or was not high quality, your game would have a chance to rise, and maybe it would rise, but ultimately it would sink. So everything still depended on QUALITY, as it always will.
These were the early days. Its like the saying…
“If you work hard, do the “right” thing, ANYONE can make it in America”.
And there is lots of truth to that.
So what happened to the app market?
What created this..change we see today. The difficulty for indie developers to rise…To ultimately have a legitimate fair shot at success?
What started us down this path?
…..Flappy Bird.
In late 2013, the Gatekeeper of the app market was removed. In May 2013 Flappy Bird was initially released, but it did not make its accent to glory until months later.
What started it all? How did the game rise so quickly out of no where?
No one really knows.
Some say there was some fishy business going on…Such as bots, computers etc. that were downloading the game to make it rank…There are a few conspiracist who think something fishy went on.
Who knows.
Or it could just been a matter of luck and the game being social integrated when it had its time to shine.
Right place+Right Time+Preparedness = Opportunity
This may have very well been the case for Flappy Bird.
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Nonetheless, people began to ponder and think:
How can such a simple game like this, be so popular?…….IS THIS ALL IT TAKES TO MAKE MONEY WITH APPS?
And Lets be honest, who can blame them for thinking this way? Flappy Bird can literally be built in a matter of hours for the average developer.
It was a dream come true.
Minimal work. Maximum output.
Eventually articles like this one, began to surface.
And so began the age of Flappy Marketers.
It became so bad that Apple and Google both put a stop to it and rejected/removed any apps that used the word Flappy or was similar to the original game.
Users were getting annoyed. The market was become saturated. It sucked for everyone. The only people winning were the developers who were selling the Flappy Bird source code.
This was the beginning of it all.
After this more and more source code began to become available on the internet via sites like Chupamobile, Codecanyon, and many others.
More and more the word got out.
More people started to become “Reskinners”.
The most important thing I want to point out is that most “Reskinners” do not produce QUALITY.
For the lack for quality, they look at marketing and think the reason they aren’t making money is because of their marketing.
So they market, harder, and harder…Reskin more non-quality games…Market harder…Find more clones to reskin that mimic the top games..Market more.
But multiply this times 200,000 on the global scale and this explains the market.
This wreaks of SATURATION.
Am I saying “Reskinners” are bad? Nope.
But I am stating the facts here.
Reskinners ruined the app market from what it use to be. But nothing ever stays the same. That’s life.
Is Their Still Hope?
Absolutely. In fact I know several developers who are STILL successful after this.
But its not as easy as it once was. Building a great product is a REQUIREMENT and its NOT enough to make money in this market.
Getting it in front of people is how you make money but also the hardest and most complicated thing to do.
These days you must actually THINK like a marketer...Social Media Accounts With AWESOME Content…Blog Coverage…Youtube Coverage…The whole nine.
Building a great product is only the first step.
The good news is, once you’ve achieved some type of success in the market, its typically easier to duplicate that because you now, or should now, have an audience who follows one of your social media accounts that you publish content to.
And these people are now connected to you. Connections.
So this means you already have a market for your new games and apps. This will really help to bring in those initial downloads to get the ball rolling.
So there’s still hope and there is still LOTS of money to be made in this market….LOTS.
Its room for everyone. It just requires more work, time, patience, and resilience.
The strong and brave survive in this market. The weak usually quite after their first failure.
The truth is and one of the main takeaways is that:
you will probably fail on your first try at publishing games. There is no overnight success with this stuff. Its put in the work. Or don’t and don’t get results…Simple as that. If you put in the work, often times the results may not come right away but eventually they stroll along.
As I stated, its always easier to duplicate success rather than creating it out of thin air. Its like when you already have money, its easier to make more.
But making your first $1 in business or getting your first sale can seem like the battle of a century.
*If you enjoyed reading this please recommend it. It would mean so much and really motivate me to keep writing on this platform. Also comment below if you disagree or agree with me. I know everyone won’t agree with me :-)**
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