Poll: Have you failed to make money with iPhone/Android apps?

12 points·Tichy··4 comments

I wonder about the odds of at least becoming Ramen profitable with iPhone or Android apps (earning at least 2000$ per month of invested development time - earning 100$/month for 20 months does also count). Specifically, what are the odds of earning more with freelancing one month than investing one month into creating apps?

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I "failed" (your word, not mine) on the App Store for almost two years before getting to some decent, steady success with an iPad app. I put out several apps myself and on behalf of two different employers since day one of the app store, and most of them went (more or less) nowhere.

For the app that does make money, it was really about the tried and true technique of "build something people want", instead of "build something useless you think is awesome and pray".

I haven't tracked my development time closely, but I'd estimate my Android app sales come out to around $25/hour (after Google's cut, before taxes). Not as profitable as my day job, but much more fun.

Some winners, some losers. I think the key for me was keeping at it, getting a library of snippets and lowering the dev time on each successive app until I got a hit.

Failure here. Outsourced development of an iPhone app for $700. The outsourcing went great. He was the lowest bidder and developed the app ahead of schedule with few bugs. The app never caught on though, and at my current revenue rate, I'll make back the investment in 25 years.

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