Hi all - I appreciate your concern over my methodology. Fact remains that I turned a $156 into a startup which has generated over 30k since launch about a month ago - while you might not understand the niche it serves our customers are schools for which there are no shortage of. All of the UI has been reskinned since the fiverr mockups and if you see the finished product it needs little resembelence. We also have two full time devs working on the software to continue to value add to the solution.
Yes I've launched over 100 products in 4 years many of which are international award winning - you can search Jarrod Robinson on the app stores to see that they are NOT throwaway products and represent hundreds of thousands of investment from me. I'm just blessed to be able to do what I love .
You're absolutely right. I made the rookie mistake early on of focusing entirely on the app before getting any market feedback. The copyright issue you pointed out is evidence of that.
I do have a ton of the app built. I'd actually be done if I hadn't made a silly mistake a while back while migrating computers and having to redo a bunch of work.
As a side project though, the amount of work I accomplish in 4 months is something that is entirely unique to my situation. And in this cas I'm terrible at marketing copy, design, etc. So I'm proud of what I've accomplished.
I'd be interested to hear how you marketed the app. Just building an app seems to be only half (or less) of the battle these days, as far as App Store success goes.
I've got seven apps on the App Store, and combined they usually don't even bring in $200/mo. Discouraging.
Let me get this straight: you spent a few hours last week to build an app, and it already generated $100K of business? Did I miss something in that story?
I don't want to be overly negative, but I have launched quite a few indie 6 figure apps over the last five years, and something generating $500 a month isn't really working (in my book).
Have you even tried to just sell licenses for it? If your software delivers value then that should convert better than a nag screen. Worth giving users a 30 day trial and seeing how that converts.
awolf, thanks for chiming in based on your experience. I'm really pleased to hear you've had success with your apps.
I'm sorry about my hyperbolic tones earlier. It's just that there's so much blind hype about the app stores, that it upsets me to see indie devs getting lured in and going bust. I don't hate Apple. I think they are brilliant.
I haven't done huge amounts of research on the distribution of outcomes for developers in the app store, but the typical prices are so low that you'd have to sell to a hell of a lot of people to make any decent money. Moreover, most devs only charge a small one-time upfront fee or IAP, which means you need to keep finding more customers or churning out apps.
I know how hard it is to make a good business even with a SaaS recurring revenue product. A life-time value of $2 sounds horrifying.
There is no doubt in my mind that some people are making good money on the app store. My point is that they could be doing a lot better in another market, with lower risks.
You mention one of your apps is making you enough money to live on. Do you expect that to carry on for a while? Or will you need to make more products? If you're willing to share, I'm curious to know more about your business, but I'll understand if you don't want to share too much.
Would you mind sharing what your app is? I'm curious what level of technical sophistication is needed for an app that makes $2k/day. Was it more engineering or marketing or equally both that helped you gain users and traction?
My iPad app got a bunch of good reviews, was featured in stores all over the world, and pulled close to 100 sales a day for the first week. It's looking like lifetime revenue is still going to be in four figures though. When I consider how much time it took to write, I could have easily made 10x the money consulting.
I know there are indie devs out there doing well on the app store but statistically speaking I'm not sure it's a smart investment of time compared to other options. Prices are too low and there's just too much competition.
That is some nice revenue. I would assume you have pretty high margins on that as well. How long has your app been released?
I'm going down this route and making dev tools that help replace the sucky entrenched big players. I haven't officially launched a proper version (early access is going on now) but I'm hoping that I'll be able to be as successful as you are.
Neither approach is right. There's nothing wrong with the write-once sell-many approach, that's basically all of non-custom software development. You shouldn't be charging for your time to learn, either. His 10 apps aren't worth $500,000 in any universe. Maybe you could argue that the entirety of the development was worth $50,000 and value each app at $5000. Maybe. I wouldn't argue that, but someone else could...
Yes. Made ~75K last year. On track to triple that this year (I've released 2 more apps this year).
In response to below:
- How? Started off first app as a side project, released on app store. Got traction and went from there. Then started releasing more apps and each of those did well also.
- How long did it take you to reach this point? Released first app May 2010. Quit soul-sucking BigCo Dec 2010. Started traveling the world Apr 2011. Released second app last week (both are ranked Top 5 in sports on iPhone & iPad).
- Was luck a big factor? (Honestly.) - I think less so than for most apps. My app is pretty niche and I knew there was a market opportunity and took it. It was definitely not just throwing something out there to see if it would stick. I knew the market and knew there was pent up demand for my product because I am part of the community.
- Is your revenue spread evenly across your apps, or does it follow a power curve? Does your top-selling app account for around 50% of your income? - I have 3 apps. One accounts for 50% the other 2 account for about 25% each. Each of them are considered pretty successful by app store standards (currently all Top 5 in category).
- How did you market / promote your apps? - Did not do any marketing. Just released it and it grew organically.
- How did you decide what apps to build? (Probably the most important question.) - Built something that I needed to have, and I knew others would pay for. Much easier to do this if you have other interests outside of nerd-dom. Hint: Stop reading hacker news so much and get a hobby where the majority of participants are NOT technical.
- Do you have a "launch strategy"? Well, this is a bit of a cheat since I already have a pretty large userbase. But I have code in my app that notifies the user when I have a new app and links them directly to the app store. That's how I got traction for my 2nd and 3rd app. I'll give you an example of how powerful this is. When my 3rd app was released last week, iTunes rankings were broken. I did not show up AT ALL on the app store except via manual search. Despite this, I shot up all the way to #4 in spots purely on downloads from existing customers and (I suspect) word of mouth to their friends. Lesson here is to not just get customers, but get fans who will evangelize your product for you. That's probably the best advice I can give.
I'm very concerned that as a solo founder you've put this much effort, money, and time into something that doesn't have PMF. Validating ideas is basically the first step of a business, and if you can't validate demand and secure PMF, then it doesn't really matter how much money or time you put into the project.
Real talk: it's entirely possible that you've wasted $1MM on a product that nobody wants.
But given that you have an app that works, and given that you built the app for yourself first, I think it's fair to assume there are other people out there that are like you and would find this app useful. With that in mind, I think the absolute right thing to do is try and identify your target demographic, market the hell out of it (as cheaply as possible) to specifically those people, and get some recurring revenue to subsidize the costs as you expand from there.
Any work you're doing now is basically unvalidated work. You have no idea if people will pay for it, if people even want it, or if they are turning off users. You don't know what price point makes sense.
You need to get some humans in the mix and find out whether your product is viable and whether people will use it. Once you get that validation, you'll have more of a direction to head that will satisfy actual prospective customers, which you can then hopefully convert into paying users.
I wish you the best of luck and I'll be looking out for your app, as I'm also a bit obsessed with fitness. Good luck!
Thanks for sharing. Really good and honest write-up. Everyone needs to put bread on the table. It's much more rewarding investing your time in your own project than selling your time to some corporation. At least you actually have something to show for it. Respect. And if people found your project useful - you succeeded. The mere fact that the apps were making money shows that those apps were used by some other people who found them worth using.
Fair point. But I bet you have earned quite a good experience from building that app. And it was an idea that could be profitable. It's never 100% guaranty.
First 1 I spent 12 months developing and only generated a few hundred dollars.
Few more in between all not generating much interest.
One took a few weeks of dev time and a bit coming out of it, still big potential there so I will pursue it, it just involves getting out to more businesses.
The most recent one built in a day to test the waters. Lots of positive feedback, 1 more day to polish the site (ie. make it look pretty) and now a large company is getting on board and lots of small businesses jumping in. (2 days work total) Obviously I have a lot more days of dev to keep expanding it.
I think the actual thing you learn is don't reinvent the wheel, just do something better than everyone else. And second start VERY simple, then build. Otherwise the app is too complex to get a quick and rapid user base who will then spend the time to use your app more.
>My idea was to release an app every 3-5 months and make at least 60k/year. I cannot sell that much in Brazil as a individual (limit here is 36k BRL). I don't see the app store as a viable way of making a living anymore (for single developers). I'll try to build something that doesn't depend of other company's mood.
It was never a "viable way of making a living" in the sense you describe. Who told you you can "release an app every 3-5 months and make 60k/year at least"?
For one, a proper apps takes a lot more time.
Second, no app is guaranteed to make anything at all.
Especially if it's coming from someone that hasn't made released any other iPhone app, doesn't know the market and doesn't know Objective-C! The App Store is like any other market: it takes effort, determination, hard work and/or luck.
And you devised all this plan (and even paid to start a company) without even testing the waters with a single app? Perhaps seeing something in the range of 2K a year for your first app (as many developers do, and most even less) would have spared you all this trouble.
Seems to me like you had this idea that the App Store was like a money printing service, where you just churn out some apps and roll in the dough, and in the first sign of trouble (and BS trouble at that, like the DUNS requirement) you demand the free money you were promised...
I don't know what to think about stories such as these to be honest.
My inner entrepreneur says "Wow, great job guys! I wish you every success".
My inner software developer winces, and fears, both professionally and personally, that the ever-growing number of such low-quality apps will eventually make it pointless for developers to invest in creating a ConvertBot or Instagram.
(FWIW I currently make $15k a month from sales of apps $1.99 or higher)
So it was deemed too expensive or risky to just turn it into an app? Sounds like you had your business model already figured out, building the app sounds like the easy part.
Yes I've launched over 100 products in 4 years many of which are international award winning - you can search Jarrod Robinson on the app stores to see that they are NOT throwaway products and represent hundreds of thousands of investment from me. I'm just blessed to be able to do what I love .
reply