5 ms·

Growing iPhone Development into a Viable Business (~$100/day with ads)

19 points by hbien 18y ago

ardit33 18y ago
still, this is sad. 36k a year. Just open a coffee shop, and you will make a lot more.
- jrnkntl 18y ago
  And you have to work a lot more, consider this, invest ~40 hours in a simple application and get $100 a day for it. Sounds better than juggling with coffeebeans and latte macchiato's every day.
  - patio11 18y ago
    I'm happy if it is sustainable for him, but it relies on a) continued downloads and b) advertisers continuing to be willing to pay $0.70 CPMs for advertising in joke apps to iPhone users who are demonstrably unwilling to pay $0.99 for things. But yeah, there is no magic like having already written code. All additional work you do (marketing, new versions, SEO, etc) acts as a force multiplier for all the work you've already done. It's capitalism at its finest (since you're leveraging intellectual capital). Plus you can always play the "Hey, if I can write one application and make $100 a day, and the application doesn't take the majority of my time to maintain or support... couldn't I write two applications and make $200 a day?" game.
  - JunkDNA 18y ago
    Yeah, it's also not bad supplemental income if he's got a "day job". He's easily offset the purchase of the iPhone, developer account, and maybe even computer. On top of that, he has an extremely valuable research project feeding him data on the app store and his users. He's learned some lessons that I'm sure will help smooth the release of his future more ambitious (and hopefully lucrative) work. I'll bet his game will have a "lite" version for sure now, whereas he might otherwise not known how important that can be to drive revenue of the full price version. The app is also quite valuable as a motivator. I know I get discouraged from time to time working on my app thinking that nobody is going to buy it. I'm certain I would have more gusto if I was watching sales numbers from a simple app roll in, even if they were incredibly modest.
- axod 18y ago
  Doubling traffic, and thus revenue in a webapp, is a simple matter (If you can get people to come use it). You might not even need to spend any extra money on servers or bandwidth. How well does a coffee shop scale? Not so well. Space in the real world, is not free. Space on the internet is essentially free. You also seem to have assumed that a graph that has grown from 0 to 100 in 2 months, is now going to stop growing and stay at 100 for a year. Off topic: Love the about: "mobile is the future" in your profile.
blasdel 18y ago
Why not make $100+/hour as a contractor writing iPhone apps for people with "a really good idea"?
- patio11 18y ago
  For one, you have to work an hour. Often, several, right in a row. When other people want you to.
- yan 18y ago
  Why not do both? When he says it makes "$100 a day," I doubt he means his days are filled with development and heavy effort. As he said, it provides him with a decent stream of money to continue work on his primary project.
JunkDNA 18y ago
Thanks for posting a "middle of the road" kind of story like this. I have found all the stories from the extremes of iPhone app revenue curve to be almost completely useless in understanding how to grind out a reasonably profitable app.

19 points by hbien 18y ago

ardit33 18y ago

still, this is sad. 36k a year. Just open a coffee shop, and you will make a lot more.

jrnkntl 18y ago
And you have to work a lot more, consider this, invest ~40 hours in a simple application and get $100 a day for it. Sounds better than juggling with coffeebeans and latte macchiato's every day.
- patio11 18y ago
  I'm happy if it is sustainable for him, but it relies on a) continued downloads and b) advertisers continuing to be willing to pay $0.70 CPMs for advertising in joke apps to iPhone users who are demonstrably unwilling to pay $0.99 for things. But yeah, there is no magic like having already written code. All additional work you do (marketing, new versions, SEO, etc) acts as a force multiplier for all the work you've already done. It's capitalism at its finest (since you're leveraging intellectual capital). Plus you can always play the "Hey, if I can write one application and make $100 a day, and the application doesn't take the majority of my time to maintain or support... couldn't I write two applications and make $200 a day?" game.
- JunkDNA 18y ago
  Yeah, it's also not bad supplemental income if he's got a "day job". He's easily offset the purchase of the iPhone, developer account, and maybe even computer. On top of that, he has an extremely valuable research project feeding him data on the app store and his users. He's learned some lessons that I'm sure will help smooth the release of his future more ambitious (and hopefully lucrative) work. I'll bet his game will have a "lite" version for sure now, whereas he might otherwise not known how important that can be to drive revenue of the full price version. The app is also quite valuable as a motivator. I know I get discouraged from time to time working on my app thinking that nobody is going to buy it. I'm certain I would have more gusto if I was watching sales numbers from a simple app roll in, even if they were incredibly modest.
axod 18y ago
Doubling traffic, and thus revenue in a webapp, is a simple matter (If you can get people to come use it). You might not even need to spend any extra money on servers or bandwidth. How well does a coffee shop scale? Not so well. Space in the real world, is not free. Space on the internet is essentially free. You also seem to have assumed that a graph that has grown from 0 to 100 in 2 months, is now going to stop growing and stay at 100 for a year. Off topic: Love the about: "mobile is the future" in your profile.

blasdel 18y ago

Why not make $100+/hour as a contractor writing iPhone apps for people with "a really good idea"?

patio11 18y ago
For one, you have to work an hour. Often, several, right in a row. When other people want you to.
yan 18y ago
Why not do both? When he says it makes "$100 a day," I doubt he means his days are filled with development and heavy effort. As he said, it provides him with a decent stream of money to continue work on his primary project.

JunkDNA 18y ago

Thanks for posting a "middle of the road" kind of story like this. I have found all the stories from the extremes of iPhone app revenue curve to be almost completely useless in understanding how to grind out a reasonably profitable app.