I am curious if there are any numbers comparing revenue from direct sales vs MAS sales.
I sell a Mac App exclusively via the MAS and have occasionally considered adding a direct sales option to our website, but the extra overhead of adding a secondary licensing scheme to the app, a web store front, processing payments, and dealing with sales support doesn't seem like it would be worth it.
Revenue numbers would be very interesting indeed. I can imagine (small) developers receive more purchases from the Mac App Store compared to their own website, since apps are very easy to find in the MAS.
I'm not willing to give out concrete numbers but, from my experience, that's absolutely the case. Our Mac App Store reveunes far eclipse our own store's revenues. I certainly wouldn't say maintaining and supporting our own store hasn't been worth it – we're able to offer deals and discounts to bulk and educational purchasers that we couldn't on the MAS, thus making us more appealing to those markets – but I'd give up selling on our own store before I ever considered giving up selling on the MAS.
For us, it's more in the 4:1 range, but I suspect you still might be right that many apps see a MAS:private sales ratio of 5+:1.
Because we're able to offer bulk and/or educational purchase discounts through our own store, we see a fair number of licenses move through that vector. Other apps might not appeal to bulk and educational markets as much.
I sell a Mac App exclusively via the MAS and have occasionally considered adding a direct sales option to our website, but the extra overhead of adding a secondary licensing scheme to the app, a web store front, processing payments, and dealing with sales support doesn't seem like it would be worth it.