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Costs of running a macOS app studio business

677 points by alin23 3y ago

trollied 3y ago
The net revenue he gets is actually reasonable.
- jurgenkesker 3y ago
  Yes, here in The Netherlands I keep 60% of such income, compared to his 90% after tax.
  - isoprophlex 3y ago
    Yeah. Start a BV (privately owned company) here and the tax calculation is similar, if not worse, in complexity and you get to hand over ~40% of your money... in a country with vastly higher CoL
    - Jhsto 3y ago
      It should be noted that for Europeans other alternatives exist, as you can freely shop any EU country to incorporate a business. Many of my tech friends have set a company in Estonia for tax planning once they have hit a certain revenue (and 0% corporate income tax).
      - newaccount74 3y ago
        You will still need to pay taxes once you take any money out of that company; whether it's payroll tax or capital gains tax. And there's also health insurance and pensions insurance.
- jeduan 3y ago
  Yeah. Was surprised to see him complain about a 15% business / income tax.
  - m_a_g 3y ago
    As a person from a country similar to Romania, I can empathize with him. When you lose trust in the state and how they spend your money, even a 1% tax is too much.
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      I think the countries where you actually get your money's worth when it comes to taxes is very small, and even then, it's not clear whether it's due to good policy or merely luck and riding off previous successes that are being eroded by short-sightedness, stupidity/incompetence or corruption (also known as "lobbying" in the West).
  - alin23 3y ago
    The problem for me is not having to pay that tax. The problem is that we as Romanian citizens never see anything good done with them. And that's why I feel the need to complain. We're out of communism for more than 30 years but the mentality of officials has barely changed. People are dying in dirty hospitals of infections that they didn't have before getting there (see Colectiv 2015). Analphabetism is higher than in previous years. You will choke and get lung pain if you want to take a walk on the street in most villages because of the coal being burned by poor people. Education and healthcare are in dire need of money, and we're always on a tight budget and raising taxes.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
      Btw, Ceausescu was executed on this very day, December 25, thirty-four years ago. I was in the 3rd grade and our very distressed primary school teacher told us that some bad people in Romania have overthrown the Communist Party rule! That was the first political information session I ever was put into, and, luckily, there weren't much more of them later due to the dissolution of the USSR.
    - debugnik 3y ago
      > see Colectiv 2015 > At least 13 of the victims that died in hospitals were killed by bacteria, probably because the disinfectant used was diluted by the manufacturer to save money. (From Wikipedia.) That's so sad to read, considering they had actually survived the fire.
- vinni2 3y ago
  I’ve never worked as a consultant but is it reasonable to assume you always have work (8*21 hours) which pays $120 per hour?
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    No, but estimating being booked 75%+ isn't unreasonable.
  - xenospn 3y ago
    I do consulting work sometimes - I cap it at 10hr/month and charge $250/hr. That’s a good way of ensuring random jobs don’t take over your life. And yes; there’s always more work.
  - alin23 3y ago
    Not really, that was a wild extrapolation on my part. But I did have at least 2 other companies waiting for me to be available on other projects, so in my specific case it would have been possible to continue working like that for the full year.
- codingcodingboy 3y ago
  Romania is basically a tax haven in Europe and he complains.
  - avtolik 3y ago
    Poor eastern-European countries cannot compete easily for investments. Bad infrastructure, brain drain, small working population, judicial system, etc. Taxes is one of few things that they can use to attract investors.
strongpigeon 3y ago
To add context, it seems like the CoL of Romania is ~45% cheaper than the US [1]. Which seems like would make for a very comfortable lifestyle with that income. [1] https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states/romania https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states...
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Yeah but people’s budgets are not made fully of restaurants and groceries. The bulk is made of housing, cars, phones, goods, clothes, which cost the same as western europe for the most part. In some cases I find food in the UK cheaper. Petrol is also comparable. While far from London the real estate market in a large city is comparable to say Manchester or similar. I doubt people writing apps live in areas where a house costs as much as a house in Detroit’s rundown areas. So op’s expenses are likely higher than that stat.
  - xenospn 3y ago
    Rent in Romania is similar to Western Europe? I thought the income levels were very very different.
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      Renting isnt as much a thing Romania. It’s a bit rare, like ownership in the UK. Rent and prices for decent quality are similar. I know because I made investments there. Folks here are quoting some rather below par prices, that local usually stay away from _if they seek decent housing_. There are rundown areas, such as that where Tate lives - next to a cemetery - but a few streets further away and prices double. You dont see the upper extremes as in vest europe but for “regular” folks the col is similar. Also there’s a lot of “under the table” money involved in buying property, so actual prices are way, way, higher than official figures. Typically if you wish to make some _very_ high margins you invest in bucharest or cluj. British expats living there extatic, not just because they could afford to buy (working locally albeit for western companies), but also because they made decent profits if they bought 5-6 years ago.
orenlindsey 3y ago
That's a pretty good job. This may have been answered and I didn't see it, but how long did it take to get up to that level?
- alin23 3y ago
  Author here! It's a tricky question to answer. I wrote Lunar v1 in 2017, and it was fully free for 4 years, but those years were essential for the app to mature and get a good following. In June 2021 I launched Lunar v4 with the new support for Apple Silicon and I also added a paid tier. I started making good money from the start, most likely because Lunar was already "known". I was making about $3k/month back then, which was enough for me to not need a full time job anymore. Getting to $6k was a gradual process since 2021 until now: constantly launching free apps, giving more attention to those that provided utility to most people, adding paid tiers when I had enough to offer over the existing free features.
  - spike021 3y ago
    How do you plan what features should be added while the app is free, and then which features in the future will go into a paid tier? Last year I worked on a pet project iOS app (which I never released unfortunately) and one of my struggles was figuring out how I'd portion out the features from free to not-free after release. I was thinking at the time of doing what you've done, basically releasing as free for a while and then adding a paid set of features. It's just difficult to plan what should fit there.
    - alin23 3y ago
      If I want to build a feature that I know would need a lot of work so I’d like to make it paid, I note it down. That’s it, I just leave it there, and focus on getting the app launched as free first. After the launch, feedback will guide you through what noted features to act on, and even add some more. Launching it as free also gives you time to iron out the inevitable edge cases that won’t appear in your tests. People will have lower expectations, and feedback will contain less angry tone, which is usually a big demotivator. The “launch early” phrase you keep reading in maker circles, makes a lot of sense for indie devs. It’s easiest to validate an idea, and get help on the direction of the app. Your idea of what the app should be is not always the best idea, user feedback can help fine tune that. However if you have a very specific vision, and “if someone pays, good, if no one pays, still good”, then disregard what I said above. Keep working on your vision, something unique might sprout out of that. EDIT: I realized I might not have answered your actual question. Because I always build apps to fix a problem of my own, I make free only what’s essential for that problem. Like what I would do in a script, but with just a bit of polish and UI for it to be usable by non tech users as well. That’s how Clop launched: first it was a single Swift file that checked the clipboard for images in a loop and ran pngquant on them. I would run that at the command line. Then I packaged it as an app with minimal UI and released it as free. Most of everything else will be paid. That’s what happened with video and PDF optimization on Clop. But if it’s an improvement on an existing free feature, I will add it for free. That’s what I did with ignoring specific types of images from the clipboard, or detecting Universal Clipboard etc.
usui 3y ago
I have so much respect for people who know what they want and can execute on it, despite the financial implications of doing so in cases where it carries financial risk. It inspires others to clearly know one’s self-worth, desires, and agency. > But I could not fit into the same old Slack chat + Zoom meetings + SCRUM + daily report + doing something that you feel it has no purpose in the real world for 8 hours a day madness that consulting work needs. So I said "no, I'm sorry, I'd like to continue building my apps".
- TobyTheDog123 3y ago
  It's strange that I have the opposite feeling while consulting. I work for a "big tech" company and do consulting work on the side, and it's the former that has all of the Slack/Zoom/Agile/meaningless nonsense -- with consulting I feel as though I'm actually solving a problem for a business in a meaningful way. I guess all consulting gigs aren't created equal - I guess I've managed to avoid the bad ones so far.
kemenaran 3y ago
Congrats for knowing what's important to you (time and peace of mind, from what I read), and acting on it. I work as a consultant, but for the same reasons: I choose to work only a few days a week, take the salary loss, and spend more time with my young kids. A time will come where I'll start working more, which will also unlock more meaningful work – but for now that's a choice I'm happy to make.
- alin23 3y ago
  Thanks! And happy to hear you're doing that! I also asked for a 3-day work week from my last company when I wanted to try and make Lunar paid. It's incredible how much your life changes when you're not defined by your job anymore. Because you spend more time (4 days) doing some other thing than your job (3 days), you really start seeing what's actually important, and the question "what's your job" no longer has a straightforward answer.
  - asim 3y ago
    This ^^. What we call "work" gets totally redefined in later years. That flip makes you realise, you are not your job and your job is just a means to an end.
BubbleRings 3y ago
Thank you for making this post!
- alin23 3y ago
  Thank you for reading it, and glad you liked it ^_^
orra 3y ago
Wait, why are expenses deducted from profits, as opposed to before profits? Is OP doing something wrong, or is Romanian corporation tax different from normal?
- alin23 3y ago
  That's a confusion on my part, sorry about that. You are right, the expenses are deducted before profits. In my case, the expenses are so small (<$1k) that they would not significantly affect the final tax to be paid, so I just left it at the end as an aside.
w0mbat 3y ago
The Apple app store is a disaster for making a living as an indie. People can't find the apps so sales are low, market rate prices are also low. The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions, which I won't do. I made much more money writing $20 shareware in the 90s. That's why I write apps for a corporation now.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  That’s by design. You are meant to work for a corporation. Capitalism is nearly dead due to this - corporation flooding the market, drowning indie enterprise, and clogging money. We need a return to capitalism and do away with guilded corporatism.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    The specific case here is usually referred to as commoditizing the complement, it's probably intentional at this point if it wasn't intentional from the start. https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- czottmann 3y ago
  > The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions (Personal experience/anecdata follows.) I don't know. I sell a macOS/iOS productivity app on the App Store[1], and while not getting rich there, I can tell you that's actually useful to people, you can put a non-peanuts price tag on it. I love that it's relatively straightforward to get an app out in front of a lot of potential customer. That said, I wouldn't never rely on the App Store to surface my app on its own, it's ridiculous. [1]: https://actions.work/actions-for-obsidian https://actions.work/actions-for-obsidian
  - czottmann 3y ago
    Apologies for the post-eggnog grammar there.
vinni2 3y ago
I am surprised there is so much money to be made in such simple applications. Kudos well done
- mk89 3y ago
  I am quite sure that the author of this post doesn't mean it bad, however, I don't want this post to give people the wrong impression that the money asked is not worth it. Far far far from the truth. I am learning Swift/swiftUI (as a backend guy with little previous experience with frontend/UI programs, okay) and building apps for OSX can be very painful. Starting from outdated docs (basically no books about OSX development since ... 10-15 years? or more?) to the new fancy ways of doing things with SwiftUI (that sells the promise that "you do it once,..." and it will work exactly as they planned to when you sell *Hello World* apps). It's not the use case itself to be hard, but the fact you need to support multiple operating systems (which as you might know, Apple produces every year a brand new model, so imagine the fun), or that maybe the specific API you rely on (from Apple, not some random guy out there) has some weird memory leak because it's written in C++ or Obj-C, who knows last time someone touched it. And Apple is updating everything but that specific thing, so you need to build something around it. I don't even want to start on the lack of libraries for Swift - a lot of open source libs are outdated, bugged, last commits 1-2 years ago, which means you either have to fork and fix, or well, you do it yourself from scratch. Nowadays selling software for OSX has basically nothing to do anymore with the idea or use case itself but all the toil that the poor developer has to put with up. I learnt that most apps on the App Store deserves some money (sometimes they ask for a lot, nothing to say, but that's their business model).
  - alin23 3y ago
    I definitely feel your pain. I get flashbacks of interminable weeks of work where a bug that’s clearly not caused by my code is suddenly affecting a number of users. Reverse engineering skills have greatly improved the way I develop things on macOS nowadays. Having access to any process memory and variables and being able to alter it using Frida makes it less painful to navigate obscure macOS APIs. Although if it’s a problem in internal SwiftUI code, I’m afraid nothing can help you.
asim 3y ago
This is a beautifully poignant post about life and selling one's time. At 39 I've reached this point where I can verbalise that sentiment whereas before I could only really feel it. Having to sell one's time to others sucks. Doing things on someone else's schedule sucks. And ultimately as the post ended, having the freedom to spend life the way it should be spent means sacrificing that extra bit of money we might want but don't need. Great post.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  You have seen the light. Thing is it’s doable. Keep pushing.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  That's why I'm not that upset that no one wants to work with an old guy (that's me), and I was forced to retire. I still get to play with software, but on my own time, and on my own schedule. The difference is amazing.
  - Exoristos 3y ago
    How is that not actionable discrimination?
    - vasco 3y ago
      Something being illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
    - serial_dev 3y ago
      I assume it's not that easy to prove, so most people don't take legal action. Personally, I don't take legal action even if I think I can win the case, because it's just too much time and effort, and I don't want my life to focus on said legal procedure for the next n months. I assume other people also think they need to choose their battles.
    - dullcrisp 3y ago
      I imagine it’s a lot harder to sue an industry for not hiring you than it is to sue your employer for firing you.
Almondsetat 3y ago
Isn't $5800/month a shit ton of money in Romania? Who even gets paid similar amounts there? He mentions a consulting job, but you don't consult as many hours a month as a salaried person
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- alin23 3y ago
  Yes, it’s a lot of money in Romania. I could live very comfortably if that would continue being the case. If I had my own place. My “not bad” remark is because I still can’t afford housing with all the money I make. I’ve been living in rent since college >10 years ago and I’m sick of it. You get no legal benefits when renting in Romania, everything is done by hiding from the state and local authorities. So you can’t even get a family doctor in your area. Me and my wife have been trying to buy a house for the last 4 years and even tried to renovate a 100 year old house in an isolated village because it was all we could afford. Long story but we got scammed, the land plot is unusable in its current state. Housing prices are so out of control here that even with that consulting money I would still need to not spend anything for a year to be able to afford a house that doesn’t need heavy repairs and has all the paperwork in good order. It’s very common here to sell houses that were built without a permit.
  - codingcodingboy 3y ago
    No offense but I think you do not understand how privileged you are.
    - alin23 3y ago
      Offense seems to be the only thing you do around here. I know I’m privileged, I work with unprivileged people to help them get better sometimes and that is probably the best way to feel how much inequality there is between us. Having a lot of money relative to the place you live in doesn’t guarantee your happiness. Privilege means nothing in the face of illness of a loved one, having to live with parents at 30 because you had to evacuate a rent made without contract and more things I would like to not share on a tech forum.. Please get a sense of what’s being talked around here, what’s the negativity for?
int0x80 3y ago
Very interesting and inspiring post. I am considering also to start my own indie software business, this is great information.
bobse 3y ago
[dead]
threecheese 3y ago
I am a paying customer and regular user of Lunar and Rcmd (for which I might have paid more than 12 bucks, just sayin) and I am pretty sure I saw Clop on Setapp and was thinking of trying it. I’m glad to have the opportunity to give feedback: your app and website design aesthetic really makes you stand out from most of the “popular Mac app” authors (you know who you are), which have a very much Web1.0 look and feel (and many of these rockstars have been writing for the platform that long). I look forward to whatever comes next, and I always poke around when I see one of your links hit Reddit or wherever.
- alin23 3y ago
  Thank you! Wow, that’s.. I’m glad to read all that. Warms my heart.
  - perardi 3y ago
    I just browsed the article, and missed you make Lunar until this comment. Fantastic work. Absolutely critical for taming the weirdness of my LG 5K display.
    - leesalminen 3y ago
      I've been trying to get my LG 5K display to turn on from macOS for like 2 months now. I just downloaded Lunar to try and fix the problem, but nada. I know the monitor works because if I connect an iPad with the same cable, the display works fine. What's your trick?
hankchinaski 3y ago
It’s difficult to find but as a freelancer you can find a middle ground working on interesting projects with radical autonomy earning $100/hour
rubymamis 3y ago
Thanks for sharing! What factors contributed to higher earnings from some apps compared to others?
- alin23 3y ago
  Mostly, more work put into implementing features requested by users and fixing bugs reported by them, that’s what got me the most money. Some might say that spending more time on marketing is what gets more money, and that’s a bit true. But only after you have a good base and you’re confident in your app being stable and providing utility. Otherwise, the advertising peaks will not result in sustained revenue, they’ll be just that, peaks.
xrd 3y ago
I'm really curious how you found that MacOS consulting work. I have been battling MacOS build problems for years and so agree it is a rare and important skill. But I've yet to find the right place to sell that skill.
- alin23 3y ago
  I was tasked with packaging an app so that it would run as a root LaunchDaemon. So a bit of launchd config work, a bit of pkg install scripts, weird workarounds in code for having the “daemon app” run in the login session of any user. It needed a bit of sleuthing which I liked, it’s the other non-code stuff that I disliked. Oh I realized now that you probably meant how I found, as in searched for the job, not how I liked it. Well I had a small button in the middle of the front page of “The low-tech guys” that lead to this page: https://lowtechguys.com/business https://lowtechguys.com/business The copy is different now as I wanted to take another stab at helping my friend get into consulting. He just had his second child recently so we stopped that idea.
  - xrd 3y ago
    That's great. An inbound lead, it sounds like. Nice looking page! Really appreciate the follow-up.
edandersen 3y ago
Romania levvies "corporate income tax" on revenue and not profit? Wow.
- codingcodingboy 3y ago
  It's a special scheme. Normal corporate tax is 16%.
wsh 3y ago
The author writes, about his purchases of computers, phones, and other hardware, “These are not recurring so I can't count them in.” Here in the U.S., many such items would be considered capital assets, for which the cost would be recognized as an expense over time through depreciation, for both management accounting and tax purposes. It appears Romanian practice is similar; see “Depreciation” on this page: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/romania/corporate/deductions https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/romania/corporate/deductions
- tomschwiha 3y ago
  Here in Germany its similar, maybe its could be worth for the author to consult a tax consultant as he may be missing out quite some money. Also a wage you pay yourself is usually better off for tax readons - that's why the maximum wage you can pay yourself as business owner is limited.
  - dazhbog 3y ago
    Agree about the accountant, they are expensive in some countries, but usually worth it. Can you elaborate on your last point? For salary you still need to pay >20% income tax + social insurance, and for dividends you still need to pay >20% after you just paid your corporation tax >15%. I'm curious, why its better to pay yourself more, when your laptop, phone and even food can be covered by the company? (Assuming a single founder company, doing everything legally)
    - pard68 3y ago
      What is "social insurance"?
      - croemer 3y ago
        Literal translation from a language such as German, French or the like. The right translation would be payroll tax, all sorts of mandatory insurances like health, unemployment, retirement (continental Europe has a few more mandatory items than US)
madsbuch 3y ago
> But I like to believe that with that difference of $12k I'm buying time. As long as the semi-passive income from the apps leaves a bit to be saved every month, and there are better things to spend life on, then it seems to be a good choice. However, modern money system functions well enough that earning a lot a money in a period of time will afford not having to do that later. The question on what to spend time on is definitely harder a priori than a posteri.
andsoitis 3y ago
“In your world, people are used to fighting for resources... like oil, or minerals, or land. But when you have access to the vastness of space, you realize there's only one resource worth fighting over... even killing for: More time. Time is the single most precious commodity in the universe.” — Kalique Abrasa, Jupiter Ascending
justinclift 3y ago
> But I like to believe that with that difference of $12k I'm buying time. Sounds like a "lifestyle" business. One which provides income to meet (and exceed) your needs, but you're not stuck head down to the grindstone as life passes by. :)
justinclift 3y ago
> A bare metal Hetzner server: $600 Alin, are you ok to share the specs of that server? I'm interested mainly because I'm a server guy and have a bunch of stuff at Hetzner, but nothing (yet) big enough to be US$600 for a single server. :)
- bbatsell 3y ago
  The entire article is discussing annualized numbers, so $50/month, a fairly middling Hetzner server.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Thanks, very good point. Completely didn't realise that. :)
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  (Not OP) The cheapest are €44.76/month so that's already ~$600 (if you want your server to be located in germany you are already at minimum €51.36/month which would be ~$680) But you can get better bang for buck on the "serverbörse"/server auction. (That's what I'm currently renting) https://www.hetzner.com/sb https://www.hetzner.com/sb But if you want to have large storage while also using RAID + a decent amount of RAM you'll still get to the ~$600 per year pretty easily. I don't know what you have at hetzner, maybe you are thinking about VPS? EDIT: ah okay, you thought it was $600/month?
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > EDIT: ah okay, you thought it was $600/month? Yeah, complete brain-o on my part. We have several dedicated servers with Hetzner, but nothing like a $600/month one. :)
    - SushiHippie 3y ago
      Gotcha, that would've been very interesting But currently there is one server at the auction for €600, so there are definitely some people using Hetzner who spend that kind of money for one server haha There is no way to share a direct link to it, but these are the specs: CPU: AMD EPYC 7401P RAM: 16x RAM 32768 MB DDR4 ECC reg. (so 512GB total) DISKS: 2x SSD U.2 NVMe 960 GB Datacenter 4x SSD SATA 3,84 TB Datacenter
fells 3y ago
Great blogpost and congrats to OP on the success. As someone who, in a past life, also sold apps on the Mac App Store (with some success), I could never escape the sense of insecurity, whether it be Apple "breaking" (or fixing?) things every WWDC, constant pursuit of the next idea, or potential competition. Not to mention, the fact that sometimes reviews seemed oddly personal and the occasional rude customer support emails could ruin a day. (This all probably says more about my own mental psyche than anything and I'm glad some people thrive in it.) In the end, I felt more comfortable doing the 9-5 engineering job, but it was definitely worth it and really taught me to be self-sufficient and exploratory in software development.
- alin23 3y ago
  Yeah, nothing can protect your heart from the inevitable 1-star review that makes you want to punch that human through your screen. Thankfully, my best selling apps are published on my website, where I don’t have reviews. I have a contact form which can lead to the same disappointing messages, but at least they’re not public and don’t stay there forever. But yes I understand you, I had many periods when I contemplated going back to a “normal” job.
dinkblam 3y ago
> The disadvantage of using a Merchant of Record like Paddle is that I don't get to reclaim the VAT at the end of the year. > That's because it's some kind of B2B relation: > I sell them my app in gross with 0% VAT, and then they resell it and collect taxes themselves. thats confused and wrong. it doesn't matter one bit if the merchant-of-record collects and remits VAT or if you do it yourself. the money ain't yours either way. what does matter in a big way for small business is VAT liability in the first place. merchants-of-records like Paddle and the various AppStores are basically liable for VAT in every country around the world. however a small business (like in this example with 100k revenue) is not VAT liable everywhere because VAT thresholds are often much higher. if you sell directly (e.g. via Stripe), you don't have to collect the VAT when selling in most jurisdictions except Europe. so you can either offer the product for 20 percent less and have a more competitive price or increase the price by the VAT and pocket it yourself instead of having to give it to the government of the customer. if believe this makes a huge difference for small companies but is rarely mentioned.
- zerr 3y ago
  > except Europe EU, I suppose. What happens when you collect VAT from EU customers? Do you have to transfer to each of EU countries? Is it enforced somehow? What if you don't collect VAT at all? Technically speaking, EU customers buy stuff on your site, not in EU. E.g. they also buy stuff from US Amazon.com and don't pay any VAT. Especially for digital goods - there is no need for an EU delivery address.
  - croemer 3y ago
    European Economic Area to be precise (i.e. Norway, Switzerland etc abide by the same rules). Yes, if you're not a tiny business (OP isn't tiny) you have to pay VAT to each end customer's country. Though you can declare it in your home country to reduce bureaucracy. VAT law is well developed, what matters is the location of the end customer, not where the seller is, so your technically speaking isn't how it works. Wrong, if they buy from US Amazon, they pay VAT at EU customs entry (unless customs misses it or it's below threshold of some 40 EUR or so). Is it enforced? Yes. Do they catch everyone who cheats? No. Do you want to break the law? Better not.
underwater 3y ago
Interesting to compare the commentary about paying taxes vs app store fees. The effective tax rate for income and healthcare for "corrupt politicians to line up their greasy pockets" is very close to the 15% that Apple charges as a fixed percentage. But the latter passes without judgement.
fipar 3y ago
Great post, happy Lunar user here! I followed a kind of reverse path in a way: I ran my own small business for some years (first with a partner, then solo) but I eventually got burned out due to the feeling of being always-on. I’m now in contractor mode but working mostly like an employee for every project I participate in, and this did work better for me financially and personally too. That said, I always think of maybe trying my business again (though I wouldn’t have employees next time around) and now that my daughter is about to start University doing animation and video games, who knows, maybe she needs a programmer one day and I can be that guy. That’d also help her work for herself and not be an employee. Thank you for an inspiring post! Also, I somehow didn’t know about rcmd. I feel frustrated by cmd tab since ido-switch-buffer in emacs has spoiled me; it seems rcmd is close to that for task switching so I’ll give that a try right after my current vacation, so I’ll be a user of another software by you :) Edit: s/helped/herself/
zerr 3y ago
How's the market on Windows platform? Do people buy such apps there?
ttoinou 3y ago
But I could not fit into the same old Slack chat + Zoom meetings + SCRUM + daily report How hard is that ?
alberth 3y ago
64% net income. I totally appreciate the frustration the author has in various fees needing to be paid. But zooming out, having a business with 64% net income on sales is insanely good. We should never take for granted the margins in tech. Where almost all other industries have margins around 10%.
- gruez 3y ago
  >having a business with 64% net income on sales is insanely good. ...when you don't factor in labor costs. If this was google or similar, the company would need to hire a developers, which are a major line item on their budget.
voidmain0001 3y ago
It feels sad to read the comments about people reaching 30 years of age and these ones realize they are giving their time to someone else when they’re so well paid and when there are so many people in the world that have s*t work and will never get out of it. I hate this world, and how it delivers another year of pain, misery and greed. Just blow up and take us all with it please.
kj23iojI32i22iI 3y ago
It's funny how the author complains that he has to pay 15% taxes in Romania. In Germany you have to pay ~50% for taxes and different duties and all expenses are much higher than in Romania. Also German tax authorities are known for "torturing" self-employed people with different types of requests. So when I worked as freelancer in Germany I voluntarily abstained from possible tax reductions via expenses, because German tax authorities will make your life a hell to force you pay as much taxes as possible.
- mathverse 3y ago
  Any taxes paid in CEE are used by crooks to enrich themselves and eventually get back to you in Germany when those people buy luxury goods like MB,BMW cars. You pay high taxes but you get a semi decent education and health care services. That much money pays for millions of people coming from Romania to your country to work there and provide you with services. Those people are irreplaceable for Romania.
999900000999 3y ago
Glad to see he makes the majority of his money outside the App Store. I found Apple to outright manipulative. Pay 100$ a year and we reserve the right to delist or reject your apps for no reason.
CPLX 3y ago
These apps are neat I think I’ll buy at least one of them. Is there a good site or source or something to find more apps like this? I am a fan of these very simple purpose built Mac apps that are keyboard heavy and solve simple problems.
redcobra762 3y ago
[flagged]
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Surely making lots of people happier and more comfortable using their computers is at least somewhat meaningful.
- jwong_ 3y ago
  I took it to mean "do something with no real purpose" except they don't need to Slack/Zoom/Scrum/Checkins/8 hours a day. Doesn't really seem like highroading, more like efficient use of their time.
- fipar 3y ago
  I took it more as in when you’re part of a big enough org, even if (perhaps) what you’re doing has some purpose or positive impact in the world, you may be detached enough to not feel it. You may not care for the right command app (though I do actually!) but the thing is being a solo dev, the author will figure out if it has a purpose or not in a rather direct way since income is tied directly to people buying the app.
mberning 3y ago
The taxes seem low? If you earned that much on a w2 in the US it would be much higher by the time federal, state, and local tax came out. I have no idea what the tax implication would be if the earnings went to an llc. Might even be worse.
tambourine_man 3y ago
> Time I could have spent with my wife, my brother, my dog, instead of answering support emails from my first waking moment to right before sleeping That’s painful to read. I remember Marco Arment saying he didn’t do support at all via email. The argument was that it would take all his waking hours or he would have to hire a whole team just for that. I thought it was arrogant and, honestly, unacceptable back then, but maybe he was right after all. Congratulations on the apps, they seem incredibly polished. And kudos for the clarity of direction in life. I’d choose to make 3X what I do and deal with the Zoom and soul crunching day to day.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
aurizon 3y ago
There is a buzz word = turn-key ap. That is an app that installs and runs and they you have a pack of youtube/? videos for all install problems that you can use to prune support calls, along with remote access ap that you send to client on the basis that you as dev or your employee are so good at this stuff that once on his desktop you can solve all problems a lot faster than chatting on the phone. The first aspect - turn key = sell and never see them again apart from the annual fee = it must have seen-all/solved-all installation bugaboos, and eveyt ime you get a new one = fixed. Unless you reach turn-key, you are a boat with a leak, double sales = 2 boats = 2 leaks and you need more people on the pumps. You need a boat with no leaks at all - as if that was ever possible, so you get as close to that as possible so you waste less time on support = more in the bank.
koinedad 3y ago
Great blog for the info. What’s the best way to get into MacOS programming? It seems like all the resources are pretty old, any recommendations?
- avtar 3y ago
  A really good, free resource: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100 https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100 https://www.youtube.com/@twostraws https://www.youtube.com/@twostraws
eviks 3y ago
A rather inefficient system that results in such a large cut of the revenue
bufferoverflow 3y ago
Yeah, but how many hours have you actually worked with all these apps? You make them once, but then I don't imagine you spend 8 hours a day supporting them. So your hourly wage with the apps is, likely, much more than $120/hr.
- alin23 3y ago
  Indeed, I can take days and sometimes even weeks off fixing things in Lunar, those hours do add up. I still spend a significant amount of those days answering support emails and Discord chats though, there’s just so much an FAQ can help in highly specialized monitor setups. It also took 2 years of 8-12h work days to reach this state of quasi-stability. And it was my choice to build more apps and continue spending that earned free time writing code instead of using it all for outside stuff. Mostly because I still need more money to buy my own place. But you’re right, in the end everything will add up and I’ll hopefully have my own place and I’ll be left with enough free time and some of those apps will still sell well enough to make a living. Compound growth is real here, I’ll be getting a lot more worth than $120/hr.
zubairq 3y ago
Great comments about the 9-5 wage trap here!
p4bl0 3y ago
> - App Store commission fee (small business 15%): $2.3k > - VAT, Sales Tax, foreign currency exchange fees: $1.1k I find it horrifying that Apple takes such a big part of the revenue (and at the same time still forces developers to May for a membership program). It's double the taxes the benefit everyone and not just Apple shareholders. That's insane.
anovikov 3y ago
>doing something that you feel it has no purpose in the real world Bingo! In fact, i've been doing custom dev for my entire career and i developed an instinct that instantly tells me a good client from a bad one. If something clearly has no purpose in the real world, is an absurd bullshit, then i know it's a good project and worth taking. That's just how business works, a natural law of competition: if something makes any sense and provides any value to people, there will be a lot of talented, energetic people doing it so competition will be insane => no money to be made. After all, it's all just a game, in the end of which money either falls on your account or it doesn't. It's not supposed to make any sense in the first place, otherwise it's no longer a job, it's a hobby.
ggrelet 3y ago
Just passing by to say I’m a really happy paying Clop user and the design of your UIs and website in general is awesome!
- alin23 3y ago
  Thank you for stopping by to say this! So glad you like Clop ^_^
krembo 3y ago
I admire him for the last 2 paragraphs, they really shocked me.
inzbieda 3y ago
Reading you people I start understand Marie Antoinette telling the peasants had no bread to eat cakes. You are the small luckiest percent of humankind living safe comfortable rich life and you still complain. There are billions of people who dream all their life to have half of you have.
jq-r 3y ago
Thank you for the article Alin! Writing this from Croatia and whatever you said in your article and here in the comments you can interchange Romania an Croatia without a second thought. Myself, I work for a US company and the taxman takes almost half of what I've earned. I wouldn't paying any or all of the tax if I would actually get anything in return. Public health system is on the verge of collapse so you have to pay everything out of pocket to doctors working half of the time in the public hospital, the other half in their own, private clinic (yes you've read that right). Housing prices are astronomical made worse by speculation and foreign investment (for their own houses). Gov says: "Take a 30 year mortgage, there is no housing crysis". Public services are atrocious, schools are terrible, police is terrible. The goverment exists only for transfer of EU funds to Croatian private companies owned by those same politicians or their friends. Everything else is secondary. It's just depressing really as there is no long term goal to actually have a better future for the citizens. Its just a race on how much money the govermnent take from you almost at gunpoint.
- alin23 3y ago
  Wow, everything sounds terrifyingly similar to Romania. I guess we’ll soon see and participate in some widespread protests in Europe, I don’t see a better way to wake up the officials
pSYoniK 3y ago
One aspect that shocks me is someone complaining about having a 15.3% tax rate at an income of 84k/year. If your state is incompetent, corrupt and whatever else, its your duty as a citizen to do something about. Barring that, I guess paying less tax than the aprox 1.9 million Romanians getting paid minimum wage (aprox tax paid by a minimum wage employee is about 37%) while making about 3 times the average salary is still not good enough. I appreciate the writeup and the thoughts on time and money, yet the complaints about taxation for someone making this much money in that country, cannot but ruin it a bit for me.
- alin23 3y ago
  All I can say is: you’d complain the same if you’d live in this country and be yelled at by every state employee just because you had the audacity to ask them a question, and by every doctor because you got suddenly ill and so on. Only bribe money buys their reluctant cooperation. Don’t focus on the money, I could be making a million a year and it would still not fix the problem of life insecurity and overall sentiment of hopelessness.
  - pSYoniK 3y ago
    My argument is that most peopl, the very mast majority does not have the same option to pay less tax as a percentage of their salary. Complaining about having a huge advantage over the majority, while suffering from the same problem does smell a bit of privilege. I also do not necessarily like the implications you responded with, as I was discussing something you posted publicly about yourself and a detailed description you gave. I have made my choices and continue to make the choices I can. I understand I also benefit from huge amounts of priviledge and I try to use it to change what I can, not complain about it. I understand its frustrating and most importantly, the things you described show how dignity is being taken away from you, but imagine, for a second, how those millions making less than you feel. How they can't make any choice and if you do not lead by example from your position,if you, who sits so highly on Maslow's hierarchy, feel such injustice, what do those millions below you feel? Anyway, thank you for sharing the details, it was an interesting read.

677 points by alin23 3y ago

trollied 3y ago

The net revenue he gets is actually reasonable.

jurgenkesker 3y ago
Yes, here in The Netherlands I keep 60% of such income, compared to his 90% after tax.
- isoprophlex 3y ago
  Yeah. Start a BV (privately owned company) here and the tax calculation is similar, if not worse, in complexity and you get to hand over ~40% of your money... in a country with vastly higher CoL
  - Jhsto 3y ago
    It should be noted that for Europeans other alternatives exist, as you can freely shop any EU country to incorporate a business. Many of my tech friends have set a company in Estonia for tax planning once they have hit a certain revenue (and 0% corporate income tax).
    - newaccount74 3y ago
      You will still need to pay taxes once you take any money out of that company; whether it's payroll tax or capital gains tax. And there's also health insurance and pensions insurance.
jeduan 3y ago
Yeah. Was surprised to see him complain about a 15% business / income tax.
- m_a_g 3y ago
  As a person from a country similar to Romania, I can empathize with him. When you lose trust in the state and how they spend your money, even a 1% tax is too much.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    I think the countries where you actually get your money's worth when it comes to taxes is very small, and even then, it's not clear whether it's due to good policy or merely luck and riding off previous successes that are being eroded by short-sightedness, stupidity/incompetence or corruption (also known as "lobbying" in the West).
- alin23 3y ago
  The problem for me is not having to pay that tax. The problem is that we as Romanian citizens never see anything good done with them. And that's why I feel the need to complain. We're out of communism for more than 30 years but the mentality of officials has barely changed. People are dying in dirty hospitals of infections that they didn't have before getting there (see Colectiv 2015). Analphabetism is higher than in previous years. You will choke and get lung pain if you want to take a walk on the street in most villages because of the coal being burned by poor people. Education and healthcare are in dire need of money, and we're always on a tight budget and raising taxes.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
    Btw, Ceausescu was executed on this very day, December 25, thirty-four years ago. I was in the 3rd grade and our very distressed primary school teacher told us that some bad people in Romania have overthrown the Communist Party rule! That was the first political information session I ever was put into, and, luckily, there weren't much more of them later due to the dissolution of the USSR.
  - debugnik 3y ago
    > see Colectiv 2015 > At least 13 of the victims that died in hospitals were killed by bacteria, probably because the disinfectant used was diluted by the manufacturer to save money. (From Wikipedia.) That's so sad to read, considering they had actually survived the fire.
vinni2 3y ago
I’ve never worked as a consultant but is it reasonable to assume you always have work (8*21 hours) which pays $120 per hour?
- bdcravens 3y ago
  No, but estimating being booked 75%+ isn't unreasonable.
- xenospn 3y ago
  I do consulting work sometimes - I cap it at 10hr/month and charge $250/hr. That’s a good way of ensuring random jobs don’t take over your life. And yes; there’s always more work.
- alin23 3y ago
  Not really, that was a wild extrapolation on my part. But I did have at least 2 other companies waiting for me to be available on other projects, so in my specific case it would have been possible to continue working like that for the full year.
codingcodingboy 3y ago
Romania is basically a tax haven in Europe and he complains.
- avtolik 3y ago
  Poor eastern-European countries cannot compete easily for investments. Bad infrastructure, brain drain, small working population, judicial system, etc. Taxes is one of few things that they can use to attract investors.

strongpigeon 3y ago

To add context, it seems like the CoL of Romania is ~45% cheaper than the US [1]. Which seems like would make for a very comfortable lifestyle with that income. [1] https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states/romania https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states...

gumballindie 3y ago
Yeah but people’s budgets are not made fully of restaurants and groceries. The bulk is made of housing, cars, phones, goods, clothes, which cost the same as western europe for the most part. In some cases I find food in the UK cheaper. Petrol is also comparable. While far from London the real estate market in a large city is comparable to say Manchester or similar. I doubt people writing apps live in areas where a house costs as much as a house in Detroit’s rundown areas. So op’s expenses are likely higher than that stat.
- xenospn 3y ago
  Rent in Romania is similar to Western Europe? I thought the income levels were very very different.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Renting isnt as much a thing Romania. It’s a bit rare, like ownership in the UK. Rent and prices for decent quality are similar. I know because I made investments there. Folks here are quoting some rather below par prices, that local usually stay away from _if they seek decent housing_. There are rundown areas, such as that where Tate lives - next to a cemetery - but a few streets further away and prices double. You dont see the upper extremes as in vest europe but for “regular” folks the col is similar. Also there’s a lot of “under the table” money involved in buying property, so actual prices are way, way, higher than official figures. Typically if you wish to make some _very_ high margins you invest in bucharest or cluj. British expats living there extatic, not just because they could afford to buy (working locally albeit for western companies), but also because they made decent profits if they bought 5-6 years ago.

orenlindsey 3y ago

That's a pretty good job. This may have been answered and I didn't see it, but how long did it take to get up to that level?

alin23 3y ago
Author here! It's a tricky question to answer. I wrote Lunar v1 in 2017, and it was fully free for 4 years, but those years were essential for the app to mature and get a good following. In June 2021 I launched Lunar v4 with the new support for Apple Silicon and I also added a paid tier. I started making good money from the start, most likely because Lunar was already "known". I was making about $3k/month back then, which was enough for me to not need a full time job anymore. Getting to $6k was a gradual process since 2021 until now: constantly launching free apps, giving more attention to those that provided utility to most people, adding paid tiers when I had enough to offer over the existing free features.
- spike021 3y ago
  How do you plan what features should be added while the app is free, and then which features in the future will go into a paid tier? Last year I worked on a pet project iOS app (which I never released unfortunately) and one of my struggles was figuring out how I'd portion out the features from free to not-free after release. I was thinking at the time of doing what you've done, basically releasing as free for a while and then adding a paid set of features. It's just difficult to plan what should fit there.
  - alin23 3y ago
    If I want to build a feature that I know would need a lot of work so I’d like to make it paid, I note it down. That’s it, I just leave it there, and focus on getting the app launched as free first. After the launch, feedback will guide you through what noted features to act on, and even add some more. Launching it as free also gives you time to iron out the inevitable edge cases that won’t appear in your tests. People will have lower expectations, and feedback will contain less angry tone, which is usually a big demotivator. The “launch early” phrase you keep reading in maker circles, makes a lot of sense for indie devs. It’s easiest to validate an idea, and get help on the direction of the app. Your idea of what the app should be is not always the best idea, user feedback can help fine tune that. However if you have a very specific vision, and “if someone pays, good, if no one pays, still good”, then disregard what I said above. Keep working on your vision, something unique might sprout out of that. EDIT: I realized I might not have answered your actual question. Because I always build apps to fix a problem of my own, I make free only what’s essential for that problem. Like what I would do in a script, but with just a bit of polish and UI for it to be usable by non tech users as well. That’s how Clop launched: first it was a single Swift file that checked the clipboard for images in a loop and ran pngquant on them. I would run that at the command line. Then I packaged it as an app with minimal UI and released it as free. Most of everything else will be paid. That’s what happened with video and PDF optimization on Clop. But if it’s an improvement on an existing free feature, I will add it for free. That’s what I did with ignoring specific types of images from the clipboard, or detecting Universal Clipboard etc.

usui 3y ago

I have so much respect for people who know what they want and can execute on it, despite the financial implications of doing so in cases where it carries financial risk. It inspires others to clearly know one’s self-worth, desires, and agency. > But I could not fit into the same old Slack chat + Zoom meetings + SCRUM + daily report + doing something that you feel it has no purpose in the real world for 8 hours a day madness that consulting work needs. So I said "no, I'm sorry, I'd like to continue building my apps".

TobyTheDog123 3y ago
It's strange that I have the opposite feeling while consulting. I work for a "big tech" company and do consulting work on the side, and it's the former that has all of the Slack/Zoom/Agile/meaningless nonsense -- with consulting I feel as though I'm actually solving a problem for a business in a meaningful way. I guess all consulting gigs aren't created equal - I guess I've managed to avoid the bad ones so far.

kemenaran 3y ago

Congrats for knowing what's important to you (time and peace of mind, from what I read), and acting on it. I work as a consultant, but for the same reasons: I choose to work only a few days a week, take the salary loss, and spend more time with my young kids. A time will come where I'll start working more, which will also unlock more meaningful work – but for now that's a choice I'm happy to make.

alin23 3y ago
Thanks! And happy to hear you're doing that! I also asked for a 3-day work week from my last company when I wanted to try and make Lunar paid. It's incredible how much your life changes when you're not defined by your job anymore. Because you spend more time (4 days) doing some other thing than your job (3 days), you really start seeing what's actually important, and the question "what's your job" no longer has a straightforward answer.
- asim 3y ago
  This ^^. What we call "work" gets totally redefined in later years. That flip makes you realise, you are not your job and your job is just a means to an end.

BubbleRings 3y ago

Thank you for making this post!

alin23 3y ago
Thank you for reading it, and glad you liked it ^_^

orra 3y ago

Wait, why are expenses deducted from profits, as opposed to before profits? Is OP doing something wrong, or is Romanian corporation tax different from normal?

alin23 3y ago
That's a confusion on my part, sorry about that. You are right, the expenses are deducted before profits. In my case, the expenses are so small (<$1k) that they would not significantly affect the final tax to be paid, so I just left it at the end as an aside.

w0mbat 3y ago

The Apple app store is a disaster for making a living as an indie. People can't find the apps so sales are low, market rate prices are also low. The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions, which I won't do. I made much more money writing $20 shareware in the 90s. That's why I write apps for a corporation now.

gumballindie 3y ago
That’s by design. You are meant to work for a corporation. Capitalism is nearly dead due to this - corporation flooding the market, drowning indie enterprise, and clogging money. We need a return to capitalism and do away with guilded corporatism.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  The specific case here is usually referred to as commoditizing the complement, it's probably intentional at this point if it wasn't intentional from the start. https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
czottmann 3y ago
> The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions (Personal experience/anecdata follows.) I don't know. I sell a macOS/iOS productivity app on the App Store[1], and while not getting rich there, I can tell you that's actually useful to people, you can put a non-peanuts price tag on it. I love that it's relatively straightforward to get an app out in front of a lot of potential customer. That said, I wouldn't never rely on the App Store to surface my app on its own, it's ridiculous. [1]: https://actions.work/actions-for-obsidian https://actions.work/actions-for-obsidian
- czottmann 3y ago
  Apologies for the post-eggnog grammar there.

vinni2 3y ago

I am surprised there is so much money to be made in such simple applications. Kudos well done

mk89 3y ago
I am quite sure that the author of this post doesn't mean it bad, however, I don't want this post to give people the wrong impression that the money asked is not worth it. Far far far from the truth. I am learning Swift/swiftUI (as a backend guy with little previous experience with frontend/UI programs, okay) and building apps for OSX can be very painful. Starting from outdated docs (basically no books about OSX development since ... 10-15 years? or more?) to the new fancy ways of doing things with SwiftUI (that sells the promise that "you do it once,..." and it will work exactly as they planned to when you sell *Hello World* apps). It's not the use case itself to be hard, but the fact you need to support multiple operating systems (which as you might know, Apple produces every year a brand new model, so imagine the fun), or that maybe the specific API you rely on (from Apple, not some random guy out there) has some weird memory leak because it's written in C++ or Obj-C, who knows last time someone touched it. And Apple is updating everything but that specific thing, so you need to build something around it. I don't even want to start on the lack of libraries for Swift - a lot of open source libs are outdated, bugged, last commits 1-2 years ago, which means you either have to fork and fix, or well, you do it yourself from scratch. Nowadays selling software for OSX has basically nothing to do anymore with the idea or use case itself but all the toil that the poor developer has to put with up. I learnt that most apps on the App Store deserves some money (sometimes they ask for a lot, nothing to say, but that's their business model).
- alin23 3y ago
  I definitely feel your pain. I get flashbacks of interminable weeks of work where a bug that’s clearly not caused by my code is suddenly affecting a number of users. Reverse engineering skills have greatly improved the way I develop things on macOS nowadays. Having access to any process memory and variables and being able to alter it using Frida makes it less painful to navigate obscure macOS APIs. Although if it’s a problem in internal SwiftUI code, I’m afraid nothing can help you.

asim 3y ago

This is a beautifully poignant post about life and selling one's time. At 39 I've reached this point where I can verbalise that sentiment whereas before I could only really feel it. Having to sell one's time to others sucks. Doing things on someone else's schedule sucks. And ultimately as the post ended, having the freedom to spend life the way it should be spent means sacrificing that extra bit of money we might want but don't need. Great post.

gumballindie 3y ago
You have seen the light. Thing is it’s doable. Keep pushing.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
That's why I'm not that upset that no one wants to work with an old guy (that's me), and I was forced to retire. I still get to play with software, but on my own time, and on my own schedule. The difference is amazing.
- Exoristos 3y ago
  How is that not actionable discrimination?
  - vasco 3y ago
    Something being illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
  - serial_dev 3y ago
    I assume it's not that easy to prove, so most people don't take legal action. Personally, I don't take legal action even if I think I can win the case, because it's just too much time and effort, and I don't want my life to focus on said legal procedure for the next n months. I assume other people also think they need to choose their battles.
  - dullcrisp 3y ago
    I imagine it’s a lot harder to sue an industry for not hiring you than it is to sue your employer for firing you.

Almondsetat 3y ago

Isn't $5800/month a shit ton of money in Romania? Who even gets paid similar amounts there? He mentions a consulting job, but you don't consult as many hours a month as a salaried person

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
alin23 3y ago
Yes, it’s a lot of money in Romania. I could live very comfortably if that would continue being the case. If I had my own place. My “not bad” remark is because I still can’t afford housing with all the money I make. I’ve been living in rent since college >10 years ago and I’m sick of it. You get no legal benefits when renting in Romania, everything is done by hiding from the state and local authorities. So you can’t even get a family doctor in your area. Me and my wife have been trying to buy a house for the last 4 years and even tried to renovate a 100 year old house in an isolated village because it was all we could afford. Long story but we got scammed, the land plot is unusable in its current state. Housing prices are so out of control here that even with that consulting money I would still need to not spend anything for a year to be able to afford a house that doesn’t need heavy repairs and has all the paperwork in good order. It’s very common here to sell houses that were built without a permit.
- codingcodingboy 3y ago
  No offense but I think you do not understand how privileged you are.
  - alin23 3y ago
    Offense seems to be the only thing you do around here. I know I’m privileged, I work with unprivileged people to help them get better sometimes and that is probably the best way to feel how much inequality there is between us. Having a lot of money relative to the place you live in doesn’t guarantee your happiness. Privilege means nothing in the face of illness of a loved one, having to live with parents at 30 because you had to evacuate a rent made without contract and more things I would like to not share on a tech forum.. Please get a sense of what’s being talked around here, what’s the negativity for?

int0x80 3y ago

Very interesting and inspiring post. I am considering also to start my own indie software business, this is great information.

bobse 3y ago

[dead]

threecheese 3y ago

I am a paying customer and regular user of Lunar and Rcmd (for which I might have paid more than 12 bucks, just sayin) and I am pretty sure I saw Clop on Setapp and was thinking of trying it. I’m glad to have the opportunity to give feedback: your app and website design aesthetic really makes you stand out from most of the “popular Mac app” authors (you know who you are), which have a very much Web1.0 look and feel (and many of these rockstars have been writing for the platform that long). I look forward to whatever comes next, and I always poke around when I see one of your links hit Reddit or wherever.

alin23 3y ago
Thank you! Wow, that’s.. I’m glad to read all that. Warms my heart.
- perardi 3y ago
  I just browsed the article, and missed you make Lunar until this comment. Fantastic work. Absolutely critical for taming the weirdness of my LG 5K display.
  - leesalminen 3y ago
    I've been trying to get my LG 5K display to turn on from macOS for like 2 months now. I just downloaded Lunar to try and fix the problem, but nada. I know the monitor works because if I connect an iPad with the same cable, the display works fine. What's your trick?

hankchinaski 3y ago

It’s difficult to find but as a freelancer you can find a middle ground working on interesting projects with radical autonomy earning $100/hour

rubymamis 3y ago

Thanks for sharing! What factors contributed to higher earnings from some apps compared to others?

alin23 3y ago
Mostly, more work put into implementing features requested by users and fixing bugs reported by them, that’s what got me the most money. Some might say that spending more time on marketing is what gets more money, and that’s a bit true. But only after you have a good base and you’re confident in your app being stable and providing utility. Otherwise, the advertising peaks will not result in sustained revenue, they’ll be just that, peaks.

xrd 3y ago

I'm really curious how you found that MacOS consulting work. I have been battling MacOS build problems for years and so agree it is a rare and important skill. But I've yet to find the right place to sell that skill.

alin23 3y ago
I was tasked with packaging an app so that it would run as a root LaunchDaemon. So a bit of launchd config work, a bit of pkg install scripts, weird workarounds in code for having the “daemon app” run in the login session of any user. It needed a bit of sleuthing which I liked, it’s the other non-code stuff that I disliked. Oh I realized now that you probably meant how I found, as in searched for the job, not how I liked it. Well I had a small button in the middle of the front page of “The low-tech guys” that lead to this page: https://lowtechguys.com/business https://lowtechguys.com/business The copy is different now as I wanted to take another stab at helping my friend get into consulting. He just had his second child recently so we stopped that idea.
- xrd 3y ago
  That's great. An inbound lead, it sounds like. Nice looking page! Really appreciate the follow-up.

edandersen 3y ago

Romania levvies "corporate income tax" on revenue and not profit? Wow.

codingcodingboy 3y ago
It's a special scheme. Normal corporate tax is 16%.

wsh 3y ago

The author writes, about his purchases of computers, phones, and other hardware, “These are not recurring so I can't count them in.” Here in the U.S., many such items would be considered capital assets, for which the cost would be recognized as an expense over time through depreciation, for both management accounting and tax purposes. It appears Romanian practice is similar; see “Depreciation” on this page: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/romania/corporate/deductions https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/romania/corporate/deductions

tomschwiha 3y ago
Here in Germany its similar, maybe its could be worth for the author to consult a tax consultant as he may be missing out quite some money. Also a wage you pay yourself is usually better off for tax readons - that's why the maximum wage you can pay yourself as business owner is limited.
- dazhbog 3y ago
  Agree about the accountant, they are expensive in some countries, but usually worth it. Can you elaborate on your last point? For salary you still need to pay >20% income tax + social insurance, and for dividends you still need to pay >20% after you just paid your corporation tax >15%. I'm curious, why its better to pay yourself more, when your laptop, phone and even food can be covered by the company? (Assuming a single founder company, doing everything legally)
  - pard68 3y ago
    What is "social insurance"?
    - croemer 3y ago
      Literal translation from a language such as German, French or the like. The right translation would be payroll tax, all sorts of mandatory insurances like health, unemployment, retirement (continental Europe has a few more mandatory items than US)

madsbuch 3y ago

> But I like to believe that with that difference of $12k I'm buying time. As long as the semi-passive income from the apps leaves a bit to be saved every month, and there are better things to spend life on, then it seems to be a good choice. However, modern money system functions well enough that earning a lot a money in a period of time will afford not having to do that later. The question on what to spend time on is definitely harder a priori than a posteri.

andsoitis 3y ago

“In your world, people are used to fighting for resources... like oil, or minerals, or land. But when you have access to the vastness of space, you realize there's only one resource worth fighting over... even killing for: More time. Time is the single most precious commodity in the universe.” — Kalique Abrasa, Jupiter Ascending

justinclift 3y ago

> But I like to believe that with that difference of $12k I'm buying time. Sounds like a "lifestyle" business. One which provides income to meet (and exceed) your needs, but you're not stuck head down to the grindstone as life passes by. :)

justinclift 3y ago

> A bare metal Hetzner server: $600 Alin, are you ok to share the specs of that server? I'm interested mainly because I'm a server guy and have a bunch of stuff at Hetzner, but nothing (yet) big enough to be US$600 for a single server. :)

bbatsell 3y ago
The entire article is discussing annualized numbers, so $50/month, a fairly middling Hetzner server.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Thanks, very good point. Completely didn't realise that. :)
SushiHippie 3y ago
(Not OP) The cheapest are €44.76/month so that's already ~$600 (if you want your server to be located in germany you are already at minimum €51.36/month which would be ~$680) But you can get better bang for buck on the "serverbörse"/server auction. (That's what I'm currently renting) https://www.hetzner.com/sb https://www.hetzner.com/sb But if you want to have large storage while also using RAID + a decent amount of RAM you'll still get to the ~$600 per year pretty easily. I don't know what you have at hetzner, maybe you are thinking about VPS? EDIT: ah okay, you thought it was $600/month?
- justinclift 3y ago
  > EDIT: ah okay, you thought it was $600/month? Yeah, complete brain-o on my part. We have several dedicated servers with Hetzner, but nothing like a $600/month one. :)
  - SushiHippie 3y ago
    Gotcha, that would've been very interesting But currently there is one server at the auction for €600, so there are definitely some people using Hetzner who spend that kind of money for one server haha There is no way to share a direct link to it, but these are the specs: CPU: AMD EPYC 7401P RAM: 16x RAM 32768 MB DDR4 ECC reg. (so 512GB total) DISKS: 2x SSD U.2 NVMe 960 GB Datacenter 4x SSD SATA 3,84 TB Datacenter

fells 3y ago

Great blogpost and congrats to OP on the success. As someone who, in a past life, also sold apps on the Mac App Store (with some success), I could never escape the sense of insecurity, whether it be Apple "breaking" (or fixing?) things every WWDC, constant pursuit of the next idea, or potential competition. Not to mention, the fact that sometimes reviews seemed oddly personal and the occasional rude customer support emails could ruin a day. (This all probably says more about my own mental psyche than anything and I'm glad some people thrive in it.) In the end, I felt more comfortable doing the 9-5 engineering job, but it was definitely worth it and really taught me to be self-sufficient and exploratory in software development.

alin23 3y ago
Yeah, nothing can protect your heart from the inevitable 1-star review that makes you want to punch that human through your screen. Thankfully, my best selling apps are published on my website, where I don’t have reviews. I have a contact form which can lead to the same disappointing messages, but at least they’re not public and don’t stay there forever. But yes I understand you, I had many periods when I contemplated going back to a “normal” job.

dinkblam 3y ago

> The disadvantage of using a Merchant of Record like Paddle is that I don't get to reclaim the VAT at the end of the year. > That's because it's some kind of B2B relation: > I sell them my app in gross with 0% VAT, and then they resell it and collect taxes themselves. thats confused and wrong. it doesn't matter one bit if the merchant-of-record collects and remits VAT or if you do it yourself. the money ain't yours either way. what does matter in a big way for small business is VAT liability in the first place. merchants-of-records like Paddle and the various AppStores are basically liable for VAT in every country around the world. however a small business (like in this example with 100k revenue) is not VAT liable everywhere because VAT thresholds are often much higher. if you sell directly (e.g. via Stripe), you don't have to collect the VAT when selling in most jurisdictions except Europe. so you can either offer the product for 20 percent less and have a more competitive price or increase the price by the VAT and pocket it yourself instead of having to give it to the government of the customer. if believe this makes a huge difference for small companies but is rarely mentioned.

zerr 3y ago
> except Europe EU, I suppose. What happens when you collect VAT from EU customers? Do you have to transfer to each of EU countries? Is it enforced somehow? What if you don't collect VAT at all? Technically speaking, EU customers buy stuff on your site, not in EU. E.g. they also buy stuff from US Amazon.com and don't pay any VAT. Especially for digital goods - there is no need for an EU delivery address.
- croemer 3y ago
  European Economic Area to be precise (i.e. Norway, Switzerland etc abide by the same rules). Yes, if you're not a tiny business (OP isn't tiny) you have to pay VAT to each end customer's country. Though you can declare it in your home country to reduce bureaucracy. VAT law is well developed, what matters is the location of the end customer, not where the seller is, so your technically speaking isn't how it works. Wrong, if they buy from US Amazon, they pay VAT at EU customs entry (unless customs misses it or it's below threshold of some 40 EUR or so). Is it enforced? Yes. Do they catch everyone who cheats? No. Do you want to break the law? Better not.

underwater 3y ago

Interesting to compare the commentary about paying taxes vs app store fees. The effective tax rate for income and healthcare for "corrupt politicians to line up their greasy pockets" is very close to the 15% that Apple charges as a fixed percentage. But the latter passes without judgement.

fipar 3y ago

Great post, happy Lunar user here! I followed a kind of reverse path in a way: I ran my own small business for some years (first with a partner, then solo) but I eventually got burned out due to the feeling of being always-on. I’m now in contractor mode but working mostly like an employee for every project I participate in, and this did work better for me financially and personally too. That said, I always think of maybe trying my business again (though I wouldn’t have employees next time around) and now that my daughter is about to start University doing animation and video games, who knows, maybe she needs a programmer one day and I can be that guy. That’d also help her work for herself and not be an employee. Thank you for an inspiring post! Also, I somehow didn’t know about rcmd. I feel frustrated by cmd tab since ido-switch-buffer in emacs has spoiled me; it seems rcmd is close to that for task switching so I’ll give that a try right after my current vacation, so I’ll be a user of another software by you :) Edit: s/helped/herself/

zerr 3y ago

How's the market on Windows platform? Do people buy such apps there?

ttoinou 3y ago

But I could not fit into the same old Slack chat + Zoom meetings + SCRUM + daily report How hard is that ?

alberth 3y ago

64% net income. I totally appreciate the frustration the author has in various fees needing to be paid. But zooming out, having a business with 64% net income on sales is insanely good. We should never take for granted the margins in tech. Where almost all other industries have margins around 10%.

gruez 3y ago
>having a business with 64% net income on sales is insanely good. ...when you don't factor in labor costs. If this was google or similar, the company would need to hire a developers, which are a major line item on their budget.

voidmain0001 3y ago

It feels sad to read the comments about people reaching 30 years of age and these ones realize they are giving their time to someone else when they’re so well paid and when there are so many people in the world that have s*t work and will never get out of it. I hate this world, and how it delivers another year of pain, misery and greed. Just blow up and take us all with it please.

kj23iojI32i22iI 3y ago

It's funny how the author complains that he has to pay 15% taxes in Romania. In Germany you have to pay ~50% for taxes and different duties and all expenses are much higher than in Romania. Also German tax authorities are known for "torturing" self-employed people with different types of requests. So when I worked as freelancer in Germany I voluntarily abstained from possible tax reductions via expenses, because German tax authorities will make your life a hell to force you pay as much taxes as possible.

mathverse 3y ago
Any taxes paid in CEE are used by crooks to enrich themselves and eventually get back to you in Germany when those people buy luxury goods like MB,BMW cars. You pay high taxes but you get a semi decent education and health care services. That much money pays for millions of people coming from Romania to your country to work there and provide you with services. Those people are irreplaceable for Romania.

999900000999 3y ago

Glad to see he makes the majority of his money outside the App Store. I found Apple to outright manipulative. Pay 100$ a year and we reserve the right to delist or reject your apps for no reason.

CPLX 3y ago

These apps are neat I think I’ll buy at least one of them. Is there a good site or source or something to find more apps like this? I am a fan of these very simple purpose built Mac apps that are keyboard heavy and solve simple problems.

redcobra762 3y ago

[flagged]

nerdponx 3y ago
Surely making lots of people happier and more comfortable using their computers is at least somewhat meaningful.
jwong_ 3y ago
I took it to mean "do something with no real purpose" except they don't need to Slack/Zoom/Scrum/Checkins/8 hours a day. Doesn't really seem like highroading, more like efficient use of their time.
fipar 3y ago
I took it more as in when you’re part of a big enough org, even if (perhaps) what you’re doing has some purpose or positive impact in the world, you may be detached enough to not feel it. You may not care for the right command app (though I do actually!) but the thing is being a solo dev, the author will figure out if it has a purpose or not in a rather direct way since income is tied directly to people buying the app.

mberning 3y ago

The taxes seem low? If you earned that much on a w2 in the US it would be much higher by the time federal, state, and local tax came out. I have no idea what the tax implication would be if the earnings went to an llc. Might even be worse.

tambourine_man 3y ago

> Time I could have spent with my wife, my brother, my dog, instead of answering support emails from my first waking moment to right before sleeping That’s painful to read. I remember Marco Arment saying he didn’t do support at all via email. The argument was that it would take all his waking hours or he would have to hire a whole team just for that. I thought it was arrogant and, honestly, unacceptable back then, but maybe he was right after all. Congratulations on the apps, they seem incredibly polished. And kudos for the clarity of direction in life. I’d choose to make 3X what I do and deal with the Zoom and soul crunching day to day.

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aurizon 3y ago

There is a buzz word = turn-key ap. That is an app that installs and runs and they you have a pack of youtube/? videos for all install problems that you can use to prune support calls, along with remote access ap that you send to client on the basis that you as dev or your employee are so good at this stuff that once on his desktop you can solve all problems a lot faster than chatting on the phone. The first aspect - turn key = sell and never see them again apart from the annual fee = it must have seen-all/solved-all installation bugaboos, and eveyt ime you get a new one = fixed. Unless you reach turn-key, you are a boat with a leak, double sales = 2 boats = 2 leaks and you need more people on the pumps. You need a boat with no leaks at all - as if that was ever possible, so you get as close to that as possible so you waste less time on support = more in the bank.

koinedad 3y ago

Great blog for the info. What’s the best way to get into MacOS programming? It seems like all the resources are pretty old, any recommendations?

avtar 3y ago
A really good, free resource: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100 https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100 https://www.youtube.com/@twostraws https://www.youtube.com/@twostraws

eviks 3y ago

A rather inefficient system that results in such a large cut of the revenue

bufferoverflow 3y ago

Yeah, but how many hours have you actually worked with all these apps? You make them once, but then I don't imagine you spend 8 hours a day supporting them. So your hourly wage with the apps is, likely, much more than $120/hr.

alin23 3y ago
Indeed, I can take days and sometimes even weeks off fixing things in Lunar, those hours do add up. I still spend a significant amount of those days answering support emails and Discord chats though, there’s just so much an FAQ can help in highly specialized monitor setups. It also took 2 years of 8-12h work days to reach this state of quasi-stability. And it was my choice to build more apps and continue spending that earned free time writing code instead of using it all for outside stuff. Mostly because I still need more money to buy my own place. But you’re right, in the end everything will add up and I’ll hopefully have my own place and I’ll be left with enough free time and some of those apps will still sell well enough to make a living. Compound growth is real here, I’ll be getting a lot more worth than $120/hr.

zubairq 3y ago

Great comments about the 9-5 wage trap here!

p4bl0 3y ago

> - App Store commission fee (small business 15%): $2.3k > - VAT, Sales Tax, foreign currency exchange fees: $1.1k I find it horrifying that Apple takes such a big part of the revenue (and at the same time still forces developers to May for a membership program). It's double the taxes the benefit everyone and not just Apple shareholders. That's insane.

anovikov 3y ago

>doing something that you feel it has no purpose in the real world Bingo! In fact, i've been doing custom dev for my entire career and i developed an instinct that instantly tells me a good client from a bad one. If something clearly has no purpose in the real world, is an absurd bullshit, then i know it's a good project and worth taking. That's just how business works, a natural law of competition: if something makes any sense and provides any value to people, there will be a lot of talented, energetic people doing it so competition will be insane => no money to be made. After all, it's all just a game, in the end of which money either falls on your account or it doesn't. It's not supposed to make any sense in the first place, otherwise it's no longer a job, it's a hobby.

ggrelet 3y ago

Just passing by to say I’m a really happy paying Clop user and the design of your UIs and website in general is awesome!

alin23 3y ago
Thank you for stopping by to say this! So glad you like Clop ^_^

krembo 3y ago

I admire him for the last 2 paragraphs, they really shocked me.

inzbieda 3y ago

Reading you people I start understand Marie Antoinette telling the peasants had no bread to eat cakes. You are the small luckiest percent of humankind living safe comfortable rich life and you still complain. There are billions of people who dream all their life to have half of you have.

jq-r 3y ago

Thank you for the article Alin! Writing this from Croatia and whatever you said in your article and here in the comments you can interchange Romania an Croatia without a second thought. Myself, I work for a US company and the taxman takes almost half of what I've earned. I wouldn't paying any or all of the tax if I would actually get anything in return. Public health system is on the verge of collapse so you have to pay everything out of pocket to doctors working half of the time in the public hospital, the other half in their own, private clinic (yes you've read that right). Housing prices are astronomical made worse by speculation and foreign investment (for their own houses). Gov says: "Take a 30 year mortgage, there is no housing crysis". Public services are atrocious, schools are terrible, police is terrible. The goverment exists only for transfer of EU funds to Croatian private companies owned by those same politicians or their friends. Everything else is secondary. It's just depressing really as there is no long term goal to actually have a better future for the citizens. Its just a race on how much money the govermnent take from you almost at gunpoint.

alin23 3y ago
Wow, everything sounds terrifyingly similar to Romania. I guess we’ll soon see and participate in some widespread protests in Europe, I don’t see a better way to wake up the officials

pSYoniK 3y ago

One aspect that shocks me is someone complaining about having a 15.3% tax rate at an income of 84k/year. If your state is incompetent, corrupt and whatever else, its your duty as a citizen to do something about. Barring that, I guess paying less tax than the aprox 1.9 million Romanians getting paid minimum wage (aprox tax paid by a minimum wage employee is about 37%) while making about 3 times the average salary is still not good enough. I appreciate the writeup and the thoughts on time and money, yet the complaints about taxation for someone making this much money in that country, cannot but ruin it a bit for me.

alin23 3y ago
All I can say is: you’d complain the same if you’d live in this country and be yelled at by every state employee just because you had the audacity to ask them a question, and by every doctor because you got suddenly ill and so on. Only bribe money buys their reluctant cooperation. Don’t focus on the money, I could be making a million a year and it would still not fix the problem of life insecurity and overall sentiment of hopelessness.
- pSYoniK 3y ago
  My argument is that most peopl, the very mast majority does not have the same option to pay less tax as a percentage of their salary. Complaining about having a huge advantage over the majority, while suffering from the same problem does smell a bit of privilege. I also do not necessarily like the implications you responded with, as I was discussing something you posted publicly about yourself and a detailed description you gave. I have made my choices and continue to make the choices I can. I understand I also benefit from huge amounts of priviledge and I try to use it to change what I can, not complain about it. I understand its frustrating and most importantly, the things you described show how dignity is being taken away from you, but imagine, for a second, how those millions making less than you feel. How they can't make any choice and if you do not lead by example from your position,if you, who sits so highly on Maslow's hierarchy, feel such injustice, what do those millions below you feel? Anyway, thank you for sharing the details, it was an interesting read.