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Started with apps in the early ios and Android days. Made quickly about 300k a year with them. I quit my job as a developer and focused on apps only. They still

Started with apps in the early ios and Android days. Made quickly about 300k a year with them. I quit my job as a developer and focused on apps only. They still make roughly 0.5 million a year these days. I bought several real estate in the years after and they give me about 15k monthly in rental income. I did spend 2 years doing almost nothing except traveling and spending lots of time with my kids. Then I co founded a more serious company where I act as the CTO. We got quite some people working for us so I back in normal work life. Work 4 days a week from 10 to 6. I actually enjoy it more than before. Being somehow free of constant thinking about money is a really nice thing though.

codesternews 7y ago
Thanks for sharing. Which category your apps have? Do you think the current situation of appstores(google and apple) apps can earn money? Any advice for app developer who want to make and sell apps?
- holoduke 7y ago
  I am mainly in sports apps. I think it is still possible to have succes. It requires a lot of patience. Don't focus on the revenue part. And don't try to build a new hype. Very slim chance you build the next angry birds. Instead try to build a product that is based on an already successful specific category/ product. Very important is that you understand your customer and genuinely try to make a product that is better than the competition. You should love your own product. The good thing is that bigger companies tend to destroy their own product with too many ads, notifications, non relevant features etc. Furthermore I believe it's important that your product contents can be automated without too much manual work. After all you are the only person with only so much time. I know a guy who created a fitness diet app. He cooked and photographed more than a thousand meals. He wrote many articles. In the end he gave up. It took him 80 hours per week to maintain and update all the content. His app was making maybe 100 a month. I know another guy who created a successful formula 1 live app. He is using paid data feeds and scrapes a lot of additional data. Everything automated. Spends like 10 hours a week maintaining things. Makes about 100k a month. Similar story for a guy who created a popular weather app. In essence the only thing what they do is aggregation of data and present it in a relatively simple app. Also don't spend too much time on analytics, seo and other optimizations. It may take 2 years before you get traction anyway. First the product then after (if it's worth) the optimization. One concrete product where I think you can still have success is a baby monitor with 2 phones. Couple of good apps only. All premium priced. Not too difficult technically. I don't have time for it, so go for it :)
  - mellson 7y ago
    great advise, thanks for sharing!

codesternews 7y ago

Thanks for sharing. Which category your apps have? Do you think the current situation of appstores(google and apple) apps can earn money? Any advice for app developer who want to make and sell apps?

holoduke 7y ago
I am mainly in sports apps. I think it is still possible to have succes. It requires a lot of patience. Don't focus on the revenue part. And don't try to build a new hype. Very slim chance you build the next angry birds. Instead try to build a product that is based on an already successful specific category/ product. Very important is that you understand your customer and genuinely try to make a product that is better than the competition. You should love your own product. The good thing is that bigger companies tend to destroy their own product with too many ads, notifications, non relevant features etc. Furthermore I believe it's important that your product contents can be automated without too much manual work. After all you are the only person with only so much time. I know a guy who created a fitness diet app. He cooked and photographed more than a thousand meals. He wrote many articles. In the end he gave up. It took him 80 hours per week to maintain and update all the content. His app was making maybe 100 a month. I know another guy who created a successful formula 1 live app. He is using paid data feeds and scrapes a lot of additional data. Everything automated. Spends like 10 hours a week maintaining things. Makes about 100k a month. Similar story for a guy who created a popular weather app. In essence the only thing what they do is aggregation of data and present it in a relatively simple app. Also don't spend too much time on analytics, seo and other optimizations. It may take 2 years before you get traction anyway. First the product then after (if it's worth) the optimization. One concrete product where I think you can still have success is a baby monitor with 2 phones. Couple of good apps only. All premium priced. Not too difficult technically. I don't have time for it, so go for it :)
- mellson 7y ago
  great advise, thanks for sharing!