6 ms·

How I've Made $200k in the iOS Education Market

291 points by PierreA 15y ago

robjohnson 15y ago
It's interesting to see some concrete data about the size of the educational market for iOS - and I only see this growing in the future.
cageface 15y ago
Great info. Thanks for taking the time to post all this information in detail and to provide some background. It's very helpful to those of us trying to make a living in this market to see what works and what doesn't work.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
PierreA 15y ago
Thanks Guys ! As I've said in the post, it's a pleasure for me to share after all I read on hackers news and others places. if you have questions don't hesitate to ask.
- chubs 15y ago
  Brilliant info! I'm gradually getting to where you're at, I really hope i can do as well as you :) Thanks especially for the marketing/promotions information. That's my biggest struggle to be honest, so any information in that area is gold for me. My current strategy is to have an app-promotion website, with a big green link to the app store, and using adwords to bring people to that site. Below you can see a site for one of my 'coming soon' apps, do you think i'm on the right track? http://www.impromptuapp.com/ http://www.impromptuapp.com/
  - PierreA 15y ago
    I really don't know. The issue is for people to find your site - so it is SEO. In addition, I've never found very good data about how people find apps (I've seen some generic data but of course I'm looking for data about parents looking for apps for their kids). Do people look for apps on google ? You should also look at your keywords on the app store (of course)
- xiaoma 15y ago
  I noticed that you're aiming a couple of your projects at kids. What are your thoughts about EDU platforms like SmarTots? Other than expanding the reach of your app are there any sorts of features such as click analytics, reporting for parents or achievements that are appealing to you? http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offers-mobile-apps-platform-for-kids/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offe... (Disclosure- I'm an early employee there and focus on dev support, so it's not merely an academic question!)
  - PierreA 15y ago
    it's something I have to look seriously but unfortunately my time is limited. I wanted to do this myself but a framework could be interesting. I imagine also there are some opportunities for cross-marketing.
  - mwidarto 15y ago
    xiaoma, I was really interested in smart tots sdk and really want to implemented in my app but I was really having difficulty in trying to find out what the sdk does. I created an account, downloaded the sdk, looked around and I couldn't figure out what it does or how some of the stuff will show up in my app. Because of that I didn't follow thru.
    - xiaoma 15y ago
      Right now the documentation is definitely lagging the features a bit. This is what we offer end customers (i.e. parents): reporting on how much their kids play which apps, breakdown by subject, feedback on how their children are doing (if implemented by the developer), organization of educational apps by subject and age level, and finally recommendations for subsequent app purchases. What developers get is the following: parents who buy more apps than the average customer, a sales channel via parents looking for their next SmarTots app, usage data of their app broken down by demographic, and a free evaluation of their app by a qualified educator. We're also offering a few more things on a beta-basis: a system for developers add achievements for children to earn and "anti-achievements" that we call areas for improvement. Parents have been very positive about this kind of reporting. We've also the option of sharing the achievements on FB, which can serve as another marketing channel for app-makers. Also in the pike is the tracking of user data. This will be useful for app-makers in much the same way as analytics are useful for website creators. If you can test what actions users are making, you'll have more data to help you refine and improve the app. One thing I can offer is help getting the app integrated if you want to give it a try. Either way, thank you for the feedback!
- decx 15y ago
  Your app looks great, but your QA may need to be stepped up a notch. Overall, although your app seems great (purchased it recently), there is at least one serious and extremely obvious bug. The spelling quiz feature relies on a voice synthesizer. The British accent (haven't tested the others) version fails totally on the first word (easiest) spelling list, and the short words produced are unintelligible. It would seemingly be easy to have tested this, and I'm surprised this wasn't picked up. I'm not picking on you, and I'm glad I purchased your app for my child. However, this bug made me wary of buying your other app.
  - PierreA 15y ago
    Yes in word wizard the UK voice is not great as the US one. I rely on an expensive library for voice synthesis (acapela) and I can't do a lot things to fix it. However there are others UK voices available I have to check- so thanks for the feedback. I Mainly target US market and thats why the QA is better for the US but I will take care of UK in next versions
    - decx 15y ago
      Glad to hear that. It should be noted that the UK voice will also probably be chosen by parents in other Commonwealth countries besides the UK because of the way the letter "Z" is pronounced "Zed", not "Zee".
      - PierreA 15y ago
        decx, if you want to check others voice (you can do it online) you can mail me at pierre@lescapadou.com. Thanks I really love to make it better for UK people. This is small market compared to the US but as you can see in my post, small market (like France) can be profitable as well. By the way, I've also have a lot of request to use a UK voice for Montessori Crosswords and that's something I want to do as well (in this app it is a recorded voice)
guynamedloren 15y ago
Thanks Pierre! Although it looks like you experienced very early success, I'm sure there was a period of time where you questioned your decision to become an indie developer (or you were at least unsure what to expect). When was the moment when you realized that you really could make a sustainable living from developing these apps? Also, what do you find most challenging in being an indie developer? Is it difficult to stay focused or motivated at times?
- stef25 15y ago
  I'd imagine 100's of sales / day, and all that money keeps your motivation levels sufficiently high.
  - PierreA 15y ago
    yes once you reach a threshold it's more easy to get motivated :-) But this is the start that is the most difficult, of course
    - charlesdm 15y ago
      How long after release did it take you to reach those 100-200-500 sales per day? I've had some moderate success with an Android app, but nowhere near 200k. :)
      - PierreA 15y ago
        Let's say that for me it was profitable last January and I began to work on iOS in March 2010. Of course it really depends on what you need. You can check the figures in the post to see details.
- PierreA 15y ago
  Yes of course there is some risks but you cannot succeed if you don't try. I just put some targets according to the money I've got in the bank. It was OK because we (family) have had enough money for more than one year without income. When my first app was mentioned in the NYT, I realized that there was a market and it was possible to do a sustainable living. I also realized that promotions was the key once you've got a good product - OK everybody know that but when you are an indie with a software engineer background it's not easy to do it because you are reluctant to do it. biggest challenge : designing innovative apps and doing the promotions (then artwork) my family was a great help to stay motivated. My most important issue was money and being able to feed my family, but My wife told me that it was better if we didn't have a lot of income and I was happy with my jobs and stayed at home with her and the kids. She was so right. Doing something that you enjoy (and of course where there is some money) is the key to stay motivated (for me and I think for a lot of people).
n9com 15y ago
Great post, thanks for sharing and congrats on the success!
glaurent 15y ago
Wow, very cool to see a post from you top-ranking here :-) Hope to see you at the next Open Coffee Sophia :-).
freshfey 15y ago
I love the fact that you worked with your wife and kids when developing and perfecting the apps. Congratulations on your success! :)
- PierreA 15y ago
  actualy, it was great way to be motivated ! I always look for ways to do things with my kids that they love and I love, and I also thought it was a great way to show them what is "working"
terrypot 15y ago
Thank you for sharing your success... It is an insparation for a lot of us.
SODaniel 15y ago
Very impressive, fantastic breakdown and a great post. Congratulations on your success and best wishes in the future!
Axsuul 15y ago
Awesome Pierre! Thanks for sharing with us and giving back to the community!
epaga 15y ago
Thanks Pierre, great stuff! The common thread I keep seeing in app developer success stories is the app being featured in NYT or on the App Store. What do you think most contributed to you being discovered and featured like you were? What can "normal" devs like me do to increase our apps' chances of getting noticed?
- PierreA 15y ago
  Journalist in big blog or newspaper cannot be reached directly (I think they should receive hundred of mails everyday!). So you need to have a nice app and make some noise and perhaps they will hear about it. I was very lucky for my first app (check the previous post on my blog), but for the second it was easier because people knew about my apps already (it was through Children's Technology Review that I've got an article for Word Wizard) For the App Store, it is still a mystery but of course you need a great app and with great artwork (I noticed that all the featured app have georgous artwork).
shimfish 15y ago
As a kids iOS dev, I'd also like to thank Lorraine of "Moms With Apps" for her support. "My PlayHome" & "Pocket PlayHome" are just starting to be profitable but at the start Lorraine really helped get things going and is still actively helping me get the app out there. Lorraine also gave me some advice which I think is really the "secret" of your success: Make a really good app. Tangentially, I've found Twitter to be remarkably useless for marketing. For the most part on Twitter, nobody is listening. Everyone has thousands of followers but nobody is actually reading. Thanks to bit.ly's public analytics, I can see it's not just me either. The biggest event for me on Twitter was when @glinner (Father Ted, IT Crowd, hugely influential tweeter) tweeted a recommendation: https://twitter.com/#!/Glinner/status/103123278650028032 https://twitter.com/#!/Glinner/status/103123278650028032 ...and that resulted in about 40 extra sales. 40.
- dolbz 15y ago
  Wow that is interesting regarding Twitter. It might be more useful longer term for customer engagement though? Do you think it is specific to your market to suffer from this or is it a wider problem?
  - shimfish 15y ago
    A lot of the problem is that many people seem to treat Twitter like a game where the aim is to get the most followers. People agree to follow back if you'll follow them. Therefore you get the ridiculous situation where people have 5000 followers and are following 5000 and obviously nobody really gives a damn about what anyone is saying. Now when I'm deciding if it's worth pushing the app to someone on Twitter, I check if they have a rational following to followers ratio. Even when following a normal amount of people on Twitter, the sheer amount of traffic means that your link will probably get lost in the feed.
  - Duff 15y ago
    I think Twitter has two key aspects. The first is this general flow of information en masse. If you're at a party or other social event, it's like the general tone of the room. Have you ever been to a shotgun wedding? Or a corporate event where a huge success is being announced? You can walk in the room and get a sense that something good or unpopular is going on, just from the atmosphere. That's the mass twitter stream. The second is the specific, targeted communities. My colleague down the hall is huge fan of horse racing. He curates a list of handicappers, jockeys, horse trainers and owners. If an important handicapper posts something, he's literally reading it in seconds. If my friend is following a specific horse race, he pays close attention to what race fans and trainers are saying about the horses. If you're failing to get traction from Twitter, I would argue that you're getting lost in the stream -- you're one voice among many. You need to identify and figure out how to get in front of people who matter. That means that you need to be doing something real and useful -- not periodically tweeting some pitch. Other social networks are similar. On Linkedin, for example, some people, especially recruiters, collect thousands of people like baseball cards, then mass-spam useless PR or other nonsense. That defeats the whole purpose of "social media"... social media is powerful because I trust and listen to people with whom I have a connection. If a friend or someone whom I respect says "Hey Duff -- you need to check this out, you'll love it", I'm there.
geeniemart 15y ago
Never tried creating any applications for iOS, It is a very good idea working some similar idea, hope it works for me this time.
Jasber 15y ago
Does anyone know if Education or Music is a bigger App Store category? I have an app that could fit into both, but went with Music. I'm curious if Education would be a better fit.
- epaga 15y ago
  According to this article, Music would be a better choice since there are fewer Music apps being submitted. http://www.somegeekintn.com/blog/2011/10/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/ http://www.somegeekintn.com/blog/2011/10/lies-damned-lies-an...
- Jyaif 15y ago
  You can select 2 categories anyway.
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  The education section is typically dominated by apps for designed for the owner's children. Parents go in there looking for stuff to occupy their kids in a healthy way. Does your app fit that description? Apps that keep kids quite in the car are very valuable to parents, and they will pay for them. If your app is something that teenagers would want, then it should go in Music.
netlemurde 15y ago
Cool! It would be even more interesting if we would know how much money you've spent to achieve this.
- PierreA 15y ago
  I just worked hard (and time is money!) + some money for hardware and some Press Release and ads (about $2500 I think). I've done everything myself so far. I will add this to the post, thanks the comment
  - fictorial 15y ago
    Your time is not free is it?
    - PierreA 15y ago
      what do you mean exactly ? I just wanted to say that it was an investment because I did not work as a contractor or employee while creating apps. But in a sense, I could estimate the cost because for the first 8 months I was not profitable and have to use some money I've have in the bank.
    - stevenwei 15y ago
      I don't really understand comments like this. No, his time is not free, but his 'salary' is the 200k he made while doing this. You wouldn't say to someone who is making 200k with a cushy corporate salary and ask "but what's your time worth?" - it's redundant.
      - rorrr 15y ago
        $200K if you count all the benefits, insurance, and tax reductions, $150K base on W2 is equivalent to bare $200K. Many developers make $150K.
        stevenwei 15y ago
        Indeed. So what? He's able to do this while running his own business and working for himself. I think most developers would rather take $200k running their own business over $150k working for a corporation. This is HN after all - we know many people here are taking much less than $200k in order to build their own businesses. Not to mention with a corporate salary, that $150k stops once you stop working. With recurring revenue from selling products, it doesn't.
obaid 15y ago
Very interesting article. We launched (are in the process of updating the website) a kids educational app as well -- Alphabet Fruits which can be found at http://www.apps4tots.com http://www.apps4tots.com We will definitely be tweaking our pitch and app after reading your insight.
stevenwei 15y ago
Thanks for sharing your figures, it's always great to see indie developers succeed. I'm constantly surprised by how many hidden opportunities there still are in the iOS market - you just have to be creative and produce really polished stuff.
afrael 15y ago
Thanks for sharing Pierre! These are the posts that encourage one to continue on, I strongly believe that, as an Indie Developer, you need to laser focus on a niche and do the best you can on it, sometimes it's best to have a small and concise goal instead of a really broad one. It's all about baby-steps. I hope to finish my app soon, also in education, a category that has a lot a potential. As a parent you go to great lengths to enhance your child's education.
petsounds 15y ago
way to go, pierre! if anyone is interested in the analytics he used, here's a shameless plug: http://www.appfigures.com http://www.appfigures.com
- chubs 15y ago
  Hi, Just wondering, with appfigures, do i need to include a library in my app so that it'll send data to their servers? If not, it sounds pretty neat, and i'm definitely interested.
moreorless 15y ago
I bought Word Wizard a few months ago for my 2 year old and he absolutely loves it.
fourmii 15y ago
Thanks Pierre for sharing your story. It proves that solo entrepreneurs can indeed succeed, as can bootstrapping! The insights on how you broke down your time were very valuable! You definitely serve as an inspiration to anyone look to that same.
curt 15y ago
Damn I really should have stuck with the education iOS market. Was in the top ten for quite a while when the app store first launched and was making good money, just could only ever manage to keep an app up in the rankings for a few months. Focused on the physical product side instead of the mobile app side... Wow that was a mistake...

291 points by PierreA 15y ago

It's interesting to see some concrete data about the size of the educational market for iOS - and I only see this growing in the future.

cageface 15y ago

Great info. Thanks for taking the time to post all this information in detail and to provide some background. It's very helpful to those of us trying to make a living in this market to see what works and what doesn't work.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

PierreA 15y ago

Thanks Guys ! As I've said in the post, it's a pleasure for me to share after all I read on hackers news and others places. if you have questions don't hesitate to ask.

chubs 15y ago
Brilliant info! I'm gradually getting to where you're at, I really hope i can do as well as you :) Thanks especially for the marketing/promotions information. That's my biggest struggle to be honest, so any information in that area is gold for me. My current strategy is to have an app-promotion website, with a big green link to the app store, and using adwords to bring people to that site. Below you can see a site for one of my 'coming soon' apps, do you think i'm on the right track? http://www.impromptuapp.com/ http://www.impromptuapp.com/
- PierreA 15y ago
  I really don't know. The issue is for people to find your site - so it is SEO. In addition, I've never found very good data about how people find apps (I've seen some generic data but of course I'm looking for data about parents looking for apps for their kids). Do people look for apps on google ? You should also look at your keywords on the app store (of course)
xiaoma 15y ago
I noticed that you're aiming a couple of your projects at kids. What are your thoughts about EDU platforms like SmarTots? Other than expanding the reach of your app are there any sorts of features such as click analytics, reporting for parents or achievements that are appealing to you? http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offers-mobile-apps-platform-for-kids/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offe... (Disclosure- I'm an early employee there and focus on dev support, so it's not merely an academic question!)
- PierreA 15y ago
  it's something I have to look seriously but unfortunately my time is limited. I wanted to do this myself but a framework could be interesting. I imagine also there are some opportunities for cross-marketing.
- mwidarto 15y ago
  xiaoma, I was really interested in smart tots sdk and really want to implemented in my app but I was really having difficulty in trying to find out what the sdk does. I created an account, downloaded the sdk, looked around and I couldn't figure out what it does or how some of the stuff will show up in my app. Because of that I didn't follow thru.
  - xiaoma 15y ago
    Right now the documentation is definitely lagging the features a bit. This is what we offer end customers (i.e. parents): reporting on how much their kids play which apps, breakdown by subject, feedback on how their children are doing (if implemented by the developer), organization of educational apps by subject and age level, and finally recommendations for subsequent app purchases. What developers get is the following: parents who buy more apps than the average customer, a sales channel via parents looking for their next SmarTots app, usage data of their app broken down by demographic, and a free evaluation of their app by a qualified educator. We're also offering a few more things on a beta-basis: a system for developers add achievements for children to earn and "anti-achievements" that we call areas for improvement. Parents have been very positive about this kind of reporting. We've also the option of sharing the achievements on FB, which can serve as another marketing channel for app-makers. Also in the pike is the tracking of user data. This will be useful for app-makers in much the same way as analytics are useful for website creators. If you can test what actions users are making, you'll have more data to help you refine and improve the app. One thing I can offer is help getting the app integrated if you want to give it a try. Either way, thank you for the feedback!
decx 15y ago
Your app looks great, but your QA may need to be stepped up a notch. Overall, although your app seems great (purchased it recently), there is at least one serious and extremely obvious bug. The spelling quiz feature relies on a voice synthesizer. The British accent (haven't tested the others) version fails totally on the first word (easiest) spelling list, and the short words produced are unintelligible. It would seemingly be easy to have tested this, and I'm surprised this wasn't picked up. I'm not picking on you, and I'm glad I purchased your app for my child. However, this bug made me wary of buying your other app.
- PierreA 15y ago
  Yes in word wizard the UK voice is not great as the US one. I rely on an expensive library for voice synthesis (acapela) and I can't do a lot things to fix it. However there are others UK voices available I have to check- so thanks for the feedback. I Mainly target US market and thats why the QA is better for the US but I will take care of UK in next versions
  - decx 15y ago
    Glad to hear that. It should be noted that the UK voice will also probably be chosen by parents in other Commonwealth countries besides the UK because of the way the letter "Z" is pronounced "Zed", not "Zee".
    - PierreA 15y ago
      decx, if you want to check others voice (you can do it online) you can mail me at pierre@lescapadou.com. Thanks I really love to make it better for UK people. This is small market compared to the US but as you can see in my post, small market (like France) can be profitable as well. By the way, I've also have a lot of request to use a UK voice for Montessori Crosswords and that's something I want to do as well (in this app it is a recorded voice)

guynamedloren 15y ago

Thanks Pierre! Although it looks like you experienced very early success, I'm sure there was a period of time where you questioned your decision to become an indie developer (or you were at least unsure what to expect). When was the moment when you realized that you really could make a sustainable living from developing these apps? Also, what do you find most challenging in being an indie developer? Is it difficult to stay focused or motivated at times?

stef25 15y ago
I'd imagine 100's of sales / day, and all that money keeps your motivation levels sufficiently high.
- PierreA 15y ago
  yes once you reach a threshold it's more easy to get motivated :-) But this is the start that is the most difficult, of course
  - charlesdm 15y ago
    How long after release did it take you to reach those 100-200-500 sales per day? I've had some moderate success with an Android app, but nowhere near 200k. :)
    - PierreA 15y ago
      Let's say that for me it was profitable last January and I began to work on iOS in March 2010. Of course it really depends on what you need. You can check the figures in the post to see details.
PierreA 15y ago
Yes of course there is some risks but you cannot succeed if you don't try. I just put some targets according to the money I've got in the bank. It was OK because we (family) have had enough money for more than one year without income. When my first app was mentioned in the NYT, I realized that there was a market and it was possible to do a sustainable living. I also realized that promotions was the key once you've got a good product - OK everybody know that but when you are an indie with a software engineer background it's not easy to do it because you are reluctant to do it. biggest challenge : designing innovative apps and doing the promotions (then artwork) my family was a great help to stay motivated. My most important issue was money and being able to feed my family, but My wife told me that it was better if we didn't have a lot of income and I was happy with my jobs and stayed at home with her and the kids. She was so right. Doing something that you enjoy (and of course where there is some money) is the key to stay motivated (for me and I think for a lot of people).

n9com 15y ago

Great post, thanks for sharing and congrats on the success!

glaurent 15y ago

Wow, very cool to see a post from you top-ranking here :-) Hope to see you at the next Open Coffee Sophia :-).

freshfey 15y ago

I love the fact that you worked with your wife and kids when developing and perfecting the apps. Congratulations on your success! :)

PierreA 15y ago
actualy, it was great way to be motivated ! I always look for ways to do things with my kids that they love and I love, and I also thought it was a great way to show them what is "working"

terrypot 15y ago

Thank you for sharing your success... It is an insparation for a lot of us.

SODaniel 15y ago

Very impressive, fantastic breakdown and a great post. Congratulations on your success and best wishes in the future!

Axsuul 15y ago

Awesome Pierre! Thanks for sharing with us and giving back to the community!

epaga 15y ago

Thanks Pierre, great stuff! The common thread I keep seeing in app developer success stories is the app being featured in NYT or on the App Store. What do you think most contributed to you being discovered and featured like you were? What can "normal" devs like me do to increase our apps' chances of getting noticed?

PierreA 15y ago
Journalist in big blog or newspaper cannot be reached directly (I think they should receive hundred of mails everyday!). So you need to have a nice app and make some noise and perhaps they will hear about it. I was very lucky for my first app (check the previous post on my blog), but for the second it was easier because people knew about my apps already (it was through Children's Technology Review that I've got an article for Word Wizard) For the App Store, it is still a mystery but of course you need a great app and with great artwork (I noticed that all the featured app have georgous artwork).

shimfish 15y ago

As a kids iOS dev, I'd also like to thank Lorraine of "Moms With Apps" for her support. "My PlayHome" & "Pocket PlayHome" are just starting to be profitable but at the start Lorraine really helped get things going and is still actively helping me get the app out there. Lorraine also gave me some advice which I think is really the "secret" of your success: Make a really good app. Tangentially, I've found Twitter to be remarkably useless for marketing. For the most part on Twitter, nobody is listening. Everyone has thousands of followers but nobody is actually reading. Thanks to bit.ly's public analytics, I can see it's not just me either. The biggest event for me on Twitter was when @glinner (Father Ted, IT Crowd, hugely influential tweeter) tweeted a recommendation: https://twitter.com/#!/Glinner/status/103123278650028032 https://twitter.com/#!/Glinner/status/103123278650028032 ...and that resulted in about 40 extra sales. 40.

dolbz 15y ago
Wow that is interesting regarding Twitter. It might be more useful longer term for customer engagement though? Do you think it is specific to your market to suffer from this or is it a wider problem?
- shimfish 15y ago
  A lot of the problem is that many people seem to treat Twitter like a game where the aim is to get the most followers. People agree to follow back if you'll follow them. Therefore you get the ridiculous situation where people have 5000 followers and are following 5000 and obviously nobody really gives a damn about what anyone is saying. Now when I'm deciding if it's worth pushing the app to someone on Twitter, I check if they have a rational following to followers ratio. Even when following a normal amount of people on Twitter, the sheer amount of traffic means that your link will probably get lost in the feed.
- Duff 15y ago
  I think Twitter has two key aspects. The first is this general flow of information en masse. If you're at a party or other social event, it's like the general tone of the room. Have you ever been to a shotgun wedding? Or a corporate event where a huge success is being announced? You can walk in the room and get a sense that something good or unpopular is going on, just from the atmosphere. That's the mass twitter stream. The second is the specific, targeted communities. My colleague down the hall is huge fan of horse racing. He curates a list of handicappers, jockeys, horse trainers and owners. If an important handicapper posts something, he's literally reading it in seconds. If my friend is following a specific horse race, he pays close attention to what race fans and trainers are saying about the horses. If you're failing to get traction from Twitter, I would argue that you're getting lost in the stream -- you're one voice among many. You need to identify and figure out how to get in front of people who matter. That means that you need to be doing something real and useful -- not periodically tweeting some pitch. Other social networks are similar. On Linkedin, for example, some people, especially recruiters, collect thousands of people like baseball cards, then mass-spam useless PR or other nonsense. That defeats the whole purpose of "social media"... social media is powerful because I trust and listen to people with whom I have a connection. If a friend or someone whom I respect says "Hey Duff -- you need to check this out, you'll love it", I'm there.

geeniemart 15y ago

Never tried creating any applications for iOS, It is a very good idea working some similar idea, hope it works for me this time.

Jasber 15y ago

Does anyone know if Education or Music is a bigger App Store category? I have an app that could fit into both, but went with Music. I'm curious if Education would be a better fit.

epaga 15y ago
According to this article, Music would be a better choice since there are fewer Music apps being submitted. http://www.somegeekintn.com/blog/2011/10/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/ http://www.somegeekintn.com/blog/2011/10/lies-damned-lies-an...
Jyaif 15y ago
You can select 2 categories anyway.
jcampbell1 15y ago
The education section is typically dominated by apps for designed for the owner's children. Parents go in there looking for stuff to occupy their kids in a healthy way. Does your app fit that description? Apps that keep kids quite in the car are very valuable to parents, and they will pay for them. If your app is something that teenagers would want, then it should go in Music.

netlemurde 15y ago

Cool! It would be even more interesting if we would know how much money you've spent to achieve this.

PierreA 15y ago
I just worked hard (and time is money!) + some money for hardware and some Press Release and ads (about $2500 I think). I've done everything myself so far. I will add this to the post, thanks the comment
- fictorial 15y ago
  Your time is not free is it?
  - PierreA 15y ago
    what do you mean exactly ? I just wanted to say that it was an investment because I did not work as a contractor or employee while creating apps. But in a sense, I could estimate the cost because for the first 8 months I was not profitable and have to use some money I've have in the bank.
  - stevenwei 15y ago
    I don't really understand comments like this. No, his time is not free, but his 'salary' is the 200k he made while doing this. You wouldn't say to someone who is making 200k with a cushy corporate salary and ask "but what's your time worth?" - it's redundant.
    - rorrr 15y ago
      $200K if you count all the benefits, insurance, and tax reductions, $150K base on W2 is equivalent to bare $200K. Many developers make $150K.
      - stevenwei 15y ago
        Indeed. So what? He's able to do this while running his own business and working for himself. I think most developers would rather take $200k running their own business over $150k working for a corporation. This is HN after all - we know many people here are taking much less than $200k in order to build their own businesses. Not to mention with a corporate salary, that $150k stops once you stop working. With recurring revenue from selling products, it doesn't.

obaid 15y ago

Very interesting article. We launched (are in the process of updating the website) a kids educational app as well -- Alphabet Fruits which can be found at http://www.apps4tots.com http://www.apps4tots.com We will definitely be tweaking our pitch and app after reading your insight.

stevenwei 15y ago

Thanks for sharing your figures, it's always great to see indie developers succeed. I'm constantly surprised by how many hidden opportunities there still are in the iOS market - you just have to be creative and produce really polished stuff.

afrael 15y ago

Thanks for sharing Pierre! These are the posts that encourage one to continue on, I strongly believe that, as an Indie Developer, you need to laser focus on a niche and do the best you can on it, sometimes it's best to have a small and concise goal instead of a really broad one. It's all about baby-steps. I hope to finish my app soon, also in education, a category that has a lot a potential. As a parent you go to great lengths to enhance your child's education.

petsounds 15y ago

way to go, pierre! if anyone is interested in the analytics he used, here's a shameless plug: http://www.appfigures.com http://www.appfigures.com

chubs 15y ago
Hi, Just wondering, with appfigures, do i need to include a library in my app so that it'll send data to their servers? If not, it sounds pretty neat, and i'm definitely interested.

moreorless 15y ago

I bought Word Wizard a few months ago for my 2 year old and he absolutely loves it.

fourmii 15y ago

Thanks Pierre for sharing your story. It proves that solo entrepreneurs can indeed succeed, as can bootstrapping! The insights on how you broke down your time were very valuable! You definitely serve as an inspiration to anyone look to that same.

curt 15y ago

Damn I really should have stuck with the education iOS market. Was in the top ten for quite a while when the app store first launched and was making good money, just could only ever manage to keep an app up in the rankings for a few months. Focused on the physical product side instead of the mobile app side... Wow that was a mistake...