One of my favorite sources of interesting reading material these days is Hacker News (follow them at @newsycombinator), and this week they pointed me to a piece from Derek Sivers that applies to many of the emerging digital and mobile markets for media:
He kept saying, “If only one percent of the people reading this magazine buy my CD… that’ll be 10,000 copies! And that’s only one percent!”
…
Over the next few weeks he received four orders. Total CDs sold: 4
….
I think of this every time I hear business plans that say, “With over 30 million iPhones sold, our app is sure to…”
On the one hand, putting a one-click bookstore in 30 million pockets means someone is bound to buy your app. On the other hand, if it costs you $25K to develop the app (a typical and realistic investment for a greenfield app), you’re probably not going to have enough income to build any more apps for awhile.