On Bundles and Heists

Another year, another Mac Heist, another round of developers and users talking about how this is bad for developers and users alike. For the first year of Mac Heist I was in this group, which was much larger than it is today. I thought it devalued the software and let those running it run away with a hell of a lot of money while the developers got left with the support burden.

For the first year this did seem to be the reality, with developers getting fixed 4 or low 5 digit sums for their participation (apparently the amount each dev got was doubled after they saw how successful it was. This is what caused most of the outcry as it seemed those who were doing the marketing were exploiting those who did the "real work".

The second Mac Heist didn't receive quite as much controversy. People felt that developers knew what they were getting themselves in for this time. The deal was also a revenue share one rather than a fixed amount. The third and current Mac Heist is operating the same way and is receiving even less controversy.

The change is that developers are finding out more about how the bundles are run and maybe have participated in one of the other smaller bundles. The users are seeing better and better bundles each year with huge sums going to charity. And most of all we're finding out that it isn't a case of the developers doing the "real work" and the Mac Heist team just setting up a website. The amount of polish that goes into the website and the challenges rivals even the best Mac apps. Every year it becomes more apparent that Mac Heist isn't an easy thing to organise.

But...

But none of that will make some of the issues go away. Does this devalue Mac software? Does it hurt developers? The first question I can't answer beyond saying that only time will tell, but I think it won't. The second one I can answer with a resounding no.

For those who don't know, I participated in a smaller bundle earlier this month called the Mac Bundle Box. It worked on a similar concept with 14 apps selling for $49 with 5% going to charity and each developer getting a percentage amount of the profits. It didn't sell anywhere near as many copies as MacHeist does, but it was still a hell of a lot of sales. How many sales? Well I made about twice as much as I currently do a month from regular sales, yet my support load has hardly increased.

Another important impact is the publicity. Your sales outside the bundle can increase as people find out more about your applications. Of course this is more likely to happen if your app costs less than the bundle price, but it is an important thing to considered. It also builds up your user base meaning many more people spreading word of mouth reviews.

Money, money, money

As an example of how much developers are making let's look at the figures Mac Heist provides on their site. At the time of writing there has been $123,000 raised for charity, meaning $492,000 in revenue. There are 12 apps, plus a bonus app, plus the Mac Heist team all getting money from this. Let's assume a straight 14 way split, that would be 7% (actually a bit more but let's round down to take into account expenses somewhat). That would mean each party has so far got $25,830, enough to live off for a year if you keep your costs low.

And this is only so far on the first day. There are another 13 days to go on top of the rest of today. Sales will slow down but they'll still be making a 5 digit sum each day. Let's conservatively assume that they average $10,000 a day, that would be $140,000 each for 2 weeks.

Obviously the maths isn't perfect, the expenses may be more, the parties won't get equal amounts (I'd wager that the cheaper apps get a smaller percentage than the bigger apps), but we're still talking a LOT of money. One Mac Heist could set a developer up for several years or let them invest in support staff or other developers. Basically it is more than a good deal for developers, so don't worry about them unless the ones participating start complaining.

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