Tumblr's Other Founder Finds That Being Internet Famous Doesn't Guarantee Your App Will Be A Hit

It turns out that being "Internet famous" doesn't guarantee that your app will be a huge success.

Marco Arment, cofounder of Tumblr and a well-known developer, has a post on his site looking at how his latest app is doing.

The results are not mind-blowing.

Marco estimates that he's put about two weeks' of work into Bugshot, his new iPhone app for adding arrows and blur to screenshots (for pointing out bugs in apps, among other uses).

In return, he's earned a total of $3,531.89. Most of the app's sales occurred within the first several days of release, when it was given a healthy amount of attention thanks to Arment's reputation and relationships in the Apple blog community. Here's a chart from Marco's post showing his sales over time:

The app's sales seriously dropped off after about a week. In fact, Marco says that over the last 5 days, he's averaging only $47 in sales per day, and later tweeted that he thinks the downward trend will continue:

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) July 31, 2013

This just goes to show that even with a highly-trafficked (for a one-man operation) blog, a successful podcast, a history of making great apps, and a following that includes nearly 60,000 Twitter users, one can't assume that Internet fame will automatically translate into app sales.