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The author will learn the hard way that their proposed, fair pricing model won’t even pay a solo dev. Making reasonable money on iOS is hard, like, really hard

The author will learn the hard way that their proposed, fair pricing model won’t even pay a solo dev. Making reasonable money on iOS is hard, like, really hard, and just having a good product is definitely not enough. Sorry to sound so pessimistic; I just want to emphasise that monetisation and marketing is at least as important on iOS as product development.

Spivak 1y ago
But it might buy you a nice vacation on top of your $dayjob for an app that's probably very low maintenance. Certainly not bad for three days work.
- amelius 1y ago
  How do you know what they make? Maybe it's only $100? For three days work, that's terrible.
  - vunderba 1y ago
    Made even worse by the fact that the apple developer membership costs 99 USD per year...
    - jll29 1y ago
      So Apple gets $99/year PLUS 30% app revenue share? So at a $2.99 "fair" price point as mentioned in the post, how many copies does he have to sell to break even (assuming 4 days of development priced at $2,500/day contractor rate)? (1 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (100 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (1000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (14574 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) = 0.78 The answer is => 14,574 downloads would give him $0.78 profit, before taxes. (In that time, he would have earned more than $13,000 for Apple.)
      - sokoloff 1y ago
        I thought it was 15% for devs selling under $1M per year. It also seems like a super-weird analysis angle to both pay yourself a (very generous) full day rate AND then expect upside on top of that and conclude that making just the $10K for 4 days’ work is somehow a loss for the solo entrepreneur.
        4hg4ufxhy 1y ago
        I think he is implying that that is neutral, not a loss. It is opportunity cost.
        sokoloff 1y ago
        Is the opportunity cost of someone who has never programmed an iOS app before $2500/day as an iOS dev? Maybe in some analyses, but that’s not where I’d estimate it. If they’re turning down other $300/hr work, sure, but that’s not how I read the account.
      - ricardobeat 1y ago
        On what planet do iOS contractors make $2500/day? That aside, 1) the author is not an experienced iOS dev 2) hourly rates != cost, and 3) you can certainly get the same app built for under $1000 by a freelancer. You also seem to have accidentally used a $0.99 price instead of $2.99. Real break-even would be closer to 1k-2k sales.
      - Spivak 1y ago
        We're talking about an app made as a weekend project to solve a problem the developer themselves has. Most normal humans would count their time as being free. I pity the person who considers the economic value and tax implications of their leisure time projects. So the calculation is just how many downloads do they need to make up for the $99 developer fee which breaks even at 47 downloads at 30% or 38 at 15%. Definitely not unrealistic.
        matwood 1y ago
neepi 1y ago
I had an idea years ago for an app but came to the same conclusion after some market research and a risk assessment so didn’t bother. I do not regret that decision for a moment. I either have to put enough time into the idea to do it full time or do a shitty job. I can’t win either way without incurring massive risks so I will continue to part time two jobs and invest the earnings from those wisely instead.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Did the idea really require being an app? Could it have been a website/webapp instead?
  - neepi 1y ago
    It could but I respect my potential userbase too much to make it more convenient for me and less convenient for them.
  - adastra22 1y ago
    How do you do photo deduplication on a website?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      WASM
      - adastra22 1y ago
        Photos are on device.
  - criddell 1y ago
    Do you think it’s easier to make a living creating web apps?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      There’s no code signing process or update review. There’s no $99/year registration fee for the privilege to have your code signed. There’s no up to -30% hit on your fees. So yeah, there’s an easier way of avoiding the Apple specific pain points. If you think that I felt it would be easier to program the actual app, then you’re clearly just trying to be a hostile commenter and insinuating something about me.
heliographe 1y ago
Yes, making money on iOS is an uphill climb, many times more so if you’re not playing the TikTok ads and subscription model. I’ve been making iOS software independently for almost 2 years now (https://heliographe.studio https://heliographe.studio) and am about ramen profitable. A few notes in case OP (or anyone interested in making some money in the App Store) is reading: - you have to make the app free to download, and quickly demonstrate value then show a paywall if you want any purchases. Paid upfront just does not work unless you’re an already recognized product. I had some apps that were paid upfront, and would mostly get $0 days. Switching to free to download immediately brought me to a slow but steady trickle of daily downloads, and from there you just have to work on your conversion rate. - but that's still going to be pretty low, if you want any meaningful user acquisition, you're going to have to go look for the kind of people who might be interested in your product. The broader your potential audience is, the harder that's going to be (but that's why TikTok ads can work so well). In my case, choosing to focus on a somewhat niche area (tools for photography) is helpful; there's a strong photography community going on Threads and regularly posting on there yields good results (for now...) - $2.99 is dramatically underselling yourself, especially if you offer a quality product that you put time to craft to your standards and has no tracking, no subscription, no ads, etc. You should play with pricing to see what the sweet spot in terms of conversion is, but in my experience it's always worth it to start at least at $4.99/$7.99 for these sort of utility apps. Of course, the design of your funnel/paywall will make a huge difference (ie you'll likely sell more of an app marked as $4.99 at 50% off, than just $4.99) - learn about what makes for good App Store screenshots, descriptions, how keywords work, etc. Ariel from App Figures has some good videos on YouTube about what they see and what seems to work based on their data. The days where you could make a little app, chuck it on the App Store for $.99, and have it just blow up are well over. If you want to make any money on the App Store (even if to just pay back for your Apple Developer membership), you have to put as much effort, if not more, in the marketing and promotion of your product than you put in the design & development of it. It's a grind for sure — and don't count on Apple to help you in any way (by and large they seemed more interested to promote games and dating apps with $49.99/mo subscriptions than small indies doing interesting things). Good luck! Eager to try your app :)
- vachina 1y ago
bredren 1y ago
The author mentions code signing as a tricky ecosystem thing. Well, wait until the app has to get new assets to be resubmitted with bug fixes for new versions of iOS. And if they don’t keep updating it, it will stop working and the buy it for life idea commits the dev to maintenance that isn’t paid for either upfront or through subscription. There are folks who make and give away a lot but some learn their lesson quickly and find ways to get people to put a reasonable amount of recurring payment into the app to make it even remotely sustainable beyond a hobby. FWIW, AI may make this cost so much lower that this kind of thing can make sense now. Something to consider, I suppose.
- x0x0 1y ago
  Or just developing in Apple's crappy ecosystem. eg Apple publishes a new ios rev; debugging on it requires upgrading xcode; and that requires updating your OS.. Good thing you don't mind wasting a full day or more reinstalling every other devtool you may happen to use. Or xcode just doesn't connect to your ios device because reasons. (The reason is apple writes shoddy slapdash software because monopoly.) So now you're spending another $1500+ on a studio so you can do all this in VMs and see how bad the damage will be to avoid blowing up your main devbox. etc etc.
  - F7F7F7 1y ago
    This sounds like Python development....and React.....and Svelte....and oh, remember Angular 2 to 3? Or people who invest time in Clojure? Were you a fan of the MEAN stack a decade ago? Build something on it? How's that app doing? What you're describing is not unique to Apple. It's a regular occurrence for anyone who's not writing for a enterprise SAAS company with a largely legacy codebase and a dozen DevOps guys mostly obscuring that stuff from you.
    - tonyhart7 1y ago
      well atleast those react,angular apps still works ios app on apple store??? not so much
    - ClumsyPilot 1y ago
ensignavenger 1y ago
At 3 days to develop, the author could make 100 of these apps a year. Of course, they will probably spend additional time developing and fixing bugs, IF the app gets any traction. And if it becomes something more substantial, they could up the price or release a preium in app purchase to upgrade with new features.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
9d 1y ago
Pure iOS apps stopped being profitable in 2009 or so.
MBCook 1y ago
It’s not just that. Companies who are anywhere between unethical and outright complete scams have discovered how incredibly easy it is to get people to sign up for a free trial for something that milks them of tons of money they don’t realize. Despite the fact that Apple tells you when your subscription will renew it doesn’t seem to help enough people. So they buy a scientific calculator app because they don’t realize that it’s built into the one on the phone and then end up paying five dollars a week for it. And even if they find out after the first renewal that means the app developer got five dollars (minus fees). There’s tons of subscriptions out there that are just completely out of whack with their prices. And Apple just doesn’t seem to care.
dylan604 1y ago
Isn't this why most apps are a front end for a data hoovering process so that they can monetize that as well as using ads?
fractallyte 1y ago
I released my game for free on the App Store. 1.5 years of effort - for free? Well, it's a calling card that I can flaunt whenever needed. So far, it's helped me land two jobs, and I can confidently leverage it in future too. I never bothered with rankings or marketing, since I can send out the link to anyone. So, that's how I get value out of the App Store.
nikolayasdf123 1y ago
true to that. App Store is flooded with junk. it is hard to get to users even with legit free good app. and marketing is unbelievably expensive. users trust into random apps on App Store is very low too. getting iOS apps to work is very very hard.
nikolayasdf123 1y ago
it should go without saying that development cost, and rest of operational cost (design, legal, etc.) should be considered as zero. meaning do yourself with no pay. with all money goes into marketing. only then there is slight hope to break even.
criddell 1y ago
> Making reasonable money on iOS is hard It’s also difficult to be a solo dev on Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, the web, etc… The safest way is to work as a developer for a company that will pay you to do it.

Spivak 1y ago

But it might buy you a nice vacation on top of your $dayjob for an app that's probably very low maintenance. Certainly not bad for three days work.

amelius 1y ago
How do you know what they make? Maybe it's only $100? For three days work, that's terrible.
- vunderba 1y ago
  Made even worse by the fact that the apple developer membership costs 99 USD per year...
  - jll29 1y ago
    So Apple gets $99/year PLUS 30% app revenue share? So at a $2.99 "fair" price point as mentioned in the post, how many copies does he have to sell to break even (assuming 4 days of development priced at $2,500/day contractor rate)? (1 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (100 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (1000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (14574 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) = 0.78 The answer is => 14,574 downloads would give him $0.78 profit, before taxes. (In that time, he would have earned more than $13,000 for Apple.)
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      I thought it was 15% for devs selling under $1M per year. It also seems like a super-weird analysis angle to both pay yourself a (very generous) full day rate AND then expect upside on top of that and conclude that making just the $10K for 4 days’ work is somehow a loss for the solo entrepreneur.
      - 4hg4ufxhy 1y ago
        I think he is implying that that is neutral, not a loss. It is opportunity cost.
        sokoloff 1y ago
        Is the opportunity cost of someone who has never programmed an iOS app before $2500/day as an iOS dev? Maybe in some analyses, but that’s not where I’d estimate it. If they’re turning down other $300/hr work, sure, but that’s not how I read the account.
    - ricardobeat 1y ago
      On what planet do iOS contractors make $2500/day? That aside, 1) the author is not an experienced iOS dev 2) hourly rates != cost, and 3) you can certainly get the same app built for under $1000 by a freelancer. You also seem to have accidentally used a $0.99 price instead of $2.99. Real break-even would be closer to 1k-2k sales.
    - Spivak 1y ago
      We're talking about an app made as a weekend project to solve a problem the developer themselves has. Most normal humans would count their time as being free. I pity the person who considers the economic value and tax implications of their leisure time projects. So the calculation is just how many downloads do they need to make up for the $99 developer fee which breaks even at 47 downloads at 30% or 38 at 15%. Definitely not unrealistic.
      - matwood 1y ago

neepi 1y ago

I had an idea years ago for an app but came to the same conclusion after some market research and a risk assessment so didn’t bother. I do not regret that decision for a moment. I either have to put enough time into the idea to do it full time or do a shitty job. I can’t win either way without incurring massive risks so I will continue to part time two jobs and invest the earnings from those wisely instead.

dylan604 1y ago
Did the idea really require being an app? Could it have been a website/webapp instead?
- neepi 1y ago
  It could but I respect my potential userbase too much to make it more convenient for me and less convenient for them.
- adastra22 1y ago
  How do you do photo deduplication on a website?
  - dylan604 1y ago
    WASM
    - adastra22 1y ago
      Photos are on device.
- criddell 1y ago
  Do you think it’s easier to make a living creating web apps?
  - dylan604 1y ago
    There’s no code signing process or update review. There’s no $99/year registration fee for the privilege to have your code signed. There’s no up to -30% hit on your fees. So yeah, there’s an easier way of avoiding the Apple specific pain points. If you think that I felt it would be easier to program the actual app, then you’re clearly just trying to be a hostile commenter and insinuating something about me.

heliographe 1y ago

Yes, making money on iOS is an uphill climb, many times more so if you’re not playing the TikTok ads and subscription model. I’ve been making iOS software independently for almost 2 years now (https://heliographe.studio https://heliographe.studio) and am about ramen profitable. A few notes in case OP (or anyone interested in making some money in the App Store) is reading: - you have to make the app free to download, and quickly demonstrate value then show a paywall if you want any purchases. Paid upfront just does not work unless you’re an already recognized product. I had some apps that were paid upfront, and would mostly get $0 days. Switching to free to download immediately brought me to a slow but steady trickle of daily downloads, and from there you just have to work on your conversion rate. - but that's still going to be pretty low, if you want any meaningful user acquisition, you're going to have to go look for the kind of people who might be interested in your product. The broader your potential audience is, the harder that's going to be (but that's why TikTok ads can work so well). In my case, choosing to focus on a somewhat niche area (tools for photography) is helpful; there's a strong photography community going on Threads and regularly posting on there yields good results (for now...) - $2.99 is dramatically underselling yourself, especially if you offer a quality product that you put time to craft to your standards and has no tracking, no subscription, no ads, etc. You should play with pricing to see what the sweet spot in terms of conversion is, but in my experience it's always worth it to start at least at $4.99/$7.99 for these sort of utility apps. Of course, the design of your funnel/paywall will make a huge difference (ie you'll likely sell more of an app marked as $4.99 at 50% off, than just $4.99) - learn about what makes for good App Store screenshots, descriptions, how keywords work, etc. Ariel from App Figures has some good videos on YouTube about what they see and what seems to work based on their data. The days where you could make a little app, chuck it on the App Store for $.99, and have it just blow up are well over. If you want to make any money on the App Store (even if to just pay back for your Apple Developer membership), you have to put as much effort, if not more, in the marketing and promotion of your product than you put in the design & development of it. It's a grind for sure — and don't count on Apple to help you in any way (by and large they seemed more interested to promote games and dating apps with $49.99/mo subscriptions than small indies doing interesting things). Good luck! Eager to try your app :)

vachina 1y ago

bredren 1y ago

The author mentions code signing as a tricky ecosystem thing. Well, wait until the app has to get new assets to be resubmitted with bug fixes for new versions of iOS. And if they don’t keep updating it, it will stop working and the buy it for life idea commits the dev to maintenance that isn’t paid for either upfront or through subscription. There are folks who make and give away a lot but some learn their lesson quickly and find ways to get people to put a reasonable amount of recurring payment into the app to make it even remotely sustainable beyond a hobby. FWIW, AI may make this cost so much lower that this kind of thing can make sense now. Something to consider, I suppose.

x0x0 1y ago
Or just developing in Apple's crappy ecosystem. eg Apple publishes a new ios rev; debugging on it requires upgrading xcode; and that requires updating your OS.. Good thing you don't mind wasting a full day or more reinstalling every other devtool you may happen to use. Or xcode just doesn't connect to your ios device because reasons. (The reason is apple writes shoddy slapdash software because monopoly.) So now you're spending another $1500+ on a studio so you can do all this in VMs and see how bad the damage will be to avoid blowing up your main devbox. etc etc.
- F7F7F7 1y ago
  This sounds like Python development....and React.....and Svelte....and oh, remember Angular 2 to 3? Or people who invest time in Clojure? Were you a fan of the MEAN stack a decade ago? Build something on it? How's that app doing? What you're describing is not unique to Apple. It's a regular occurrence for anyone who's not writing for a enterprise SAAS company with a largely legacy codebase and a dozen DevOps guys mostly obscuring that stuff from you.
  - tonyhart7 1y ago
    well atleast those react,angular apps still works ios app on apple store??? not so much
  - ClumsyPilot 1y ago

ensignavenger 1y ago

At 3 days to develop, the author could make 100 of these apps a year. Of course, they will probably spend additional time developing and fixing bugs, IF the app gets any traction. And if it becomes something more substantial, they could up the price or release a preium in app purchase to upgrade with new features.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

9d 1y ago

Pure iOS apps stopped being profitable in 2009 or so.

MBCook 1y ago

It’s not just that. Companies who are anywhere between unethical and outright complete scams have discovered how incredibly easy it is to get people to sign up for a free trial for something that milks them of tons of money they don’t realize. Despite the fact that Apple tells you when your subscription will renew it doesn’t seem to help enough people. So they buy a scientific calculator app because they don’t realize that it’s built into the one on the phone and then end up paying five dollars a week for it. And even if they find out after the first renewal that means the app developer got five dollars (minus fees). There’s tons of subscriptions out there that are just completely out of whack with their prices. And Apple just doesn’t seem to care.

dylan604 1y ago

Isn't this why most apps are a front end for a data hoovering process so that they can monetize that as well as using ads?

fractallyte 1y ago

I released my game for free on the App Store. 1.5 years of effort - for free? Well, it's a calling card that I can flaunt whenever needed. So far, it's helped me land two jobs, and I can confidently leverage it in future too. I never bothered with rankings or marketing, since I can send out the link to anyone. So, that's how I get value out of the App Store.

nikolayasdf123 1y ago

true to that. App Store is flooded with junk. it is hard to get to users even with legit free good app. and marketing is unbelievably expensive. users trust into random apps on App Store is very low too. getting iOS apps to work is very very hard.

nikolayasdf123 1y ago

it should go without saying that development cost, and rest of operational cost (design, legal, etc.) should be considered as zero. meaning do yourself with no pay. with all money goes into marketing. only then there is slight hope to break even.

criddell 1y ago

> Making reasonable money on iOS is hard It’s also difficult to be a solo dev on Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, the web, etc… The safest way is to work as a developer for a company that will pay you to do it.