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Comment by venusflytrap90 | Hacker News Reader

New account because I don't want my employers knowing.

My sideproject on iOS and Android generates 1.1M a year. About 90-100k a month.

I'm still employed because the app runs on its own, very low maintenance, so might as well get a salary doing something else and learn new things

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My question is how do you still have employers when you're making 1.1M a year. Jeez.

Certainly is amazing!

I want to know the secrets to being such a good company and/or manager that you can keep someone earning 1.1m on your staff!

Lots and lots of work! Go home at 6pm, work till midnight. Eventually it paid off for me but a lot of times I thought it was just digging a hole to nowhere.

I think the GP was asking about how your company/manager is able to keep you working there.

I'd guess it's not the company keeping GP there; it's GP choosing not to leave.

You got it! Nothing that special about the company but it's in a good enough space that I choose to hang around and learn as much as I can about the space.

It's by no means guaranteed to last, 1M is not enough to retire in Silicon Valley, and 1M pre-tax is ~0.6M after tax.

we don't know if OP is even in the valley

The app serves a good niche, I don't want to be stuck in the niche. Employer is in a very fast moving space so a lot of good learnings there. Would hate to stop learning about new things stuck at home

How do you have something like that going and remain anonymous? Is your name not attached to the product in any way?

Incorporate and use your corporation name as the App Store and Playstore publisher name

Wow, congrats. Are you getting those numbers from selling new copies or through a subscription?

In-App purchase!

Just curious. Are you proficient iin both java and objective c, as in you developed both the apps natively. Again, how dependent it is on a web service? Did you do the back end yourself too?

I believe answering above questions will not affect your anonimity.

Proficient in both Java and Obj-C. I like just going native and learning about the platform rather than cutting corners with cross platform frameworks.

Very dependent on the API, wrote the API myself in Go.

Hosted on Google Compute and using RethinkDB as the database.

In general terms can you talk about how you obviously successfully marketed the app?

I think the commenters are jumping to conclusion that OPs profit = 1.1M - 100k. Most of these apps have a big running cost and the profit is not so much as one imagines. Otherwise, OP won't be gainfully employed.

39% profit margin. Server costs $350 Google Cloud Hosted

Very impressive. What is stopping you from working on the product full time?

Tell your story!

One day when If leave my full-time job!

I thought nobody but the big names were making money with apps ...

Sometimes the little guy sticks it to the man!

That's awesome! I'd love for you to give some more details if you could. Do you sell the app or is it from ad revenue? What sort of app is it?

In-App purchases, no ads.

can you share your app?

That would reveal who (s)he is.

Exactly, the corporation can easily be looked up and the ownership information can be found.

Also, I don't think you should work for an organization that does not allow you to hack up projects on the side for fun! Unless you think they can prove that you used company equipment/time to develop this project.

They allow side projects, they have no problem with it, but when your side-project is more profitable and earns more revenue than the company itself, it can bit tricky to explain

Also it hurts your position when negotiating pay & benefits and can give your colleagues a case of sour grapes.

So like $350,000/yr after the 30% cut from the app stores, and additional 40% cut from state and federal taxes?

yeah I'd keep my job too and look forward to those sweet tax deductions and getting all that extra social security withholding back

Where do you live that $350,000/yr isn't enough to live on?

the first question: do I feel like debating wealth inequality to get my HN karma back up?

naaaaaaaaaaaah

anyway, in silicon valley (or san francisco in particular) you could not retire on that. you could coast, but you couldn't use it to buy a house (or apartment/condo), the moment you make a downpayment you absolutely have to keep working to make the monthly payments

350k after taxes and you couldn't retire? Do you mean in one year of work? You can live on 50k after taxes no problem even in SV. Also, why stay in SV if you're not working there? If you can maintain revenue for 5 years you can buy a house in cash no problem.

If you can maintain revenue, yes, get decent cash flow on a rental property, sure you can make it work

not everyone is living in the silicon valley.

That says more about the foolishness of living in a boomtown during a boom than anything else.

We're talking about annual income 7x the Per capita income in the US and 10x of countries like Italy, Spain and Israel.

I'm having a hard time understand the point of this comment. Are you saying this is not enough money to live?

theoretically? no, I would have said that verbatim then

the comment broke down the parent comment's earnings in a way this thread wasn't currently pointing out.

40% a bit too high for Canada.

Plus a 105k a year salary from day job. Its enough to live on for a 27 year old.

cool, can't get a palladium card with those aspirations

I would not have been satisfied with that when I was 27 and would have likely gotten an additional side contract, while writing calls in the options market, while buying powerball tickets

@cloudjacker - It's enough for me to live on, doesn't mean I'm not trying out a lot more things to earn even more

"This will never end 'cause I want more / More, give me more, give me more"

preaching to the choir, it was other people that thought my spot on observations were an insult to their aspirations

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