Ask HN: How do you make money on a non-viral iPhone app?

2 points·amichail··2 comments

Suppose that the number of daily purchases without ongoing advertising would be too small to make any reasonable money.

Would constant spending on advertising potentially be profitable?

What sorts of numbers are involved? How would one proceed in this direction?

I have several applications in the AppStore. Among them is a ballistics calculator that caters to only a small group of people. I've found that the same basic rules apply to the AppStore, that apply elsewhere in life: work hard, design a quality product, and support it... you'll make good money. Word of mouth is the best advertising you can have. Have an occasional sale when sales slow down and that's all you need to know.

You don't have to spam, advertise, or write a bunch of useless rubber-dog-poop toys. Just make something that's good quality and keep supporting it.

My personal experience is very similar to what jzdziarski mentioned. Make a good quality app and support it, you will make money on it. Dont invest money on marketing, I have heard horror stories about it, unless you are someone like EA, amazon or target.

There are a few dirty tricks that I have noticed being constantly used by other developers like releasing an update as soon as your previous update gets approved to be in the new release section. We don't do that because we are serving a niche market and we don't want to upset users, but it works. (IQ Test by McPhun is amongst top 5 apps in education for last 6 months and they come out with an update every week. They do it for almost all their apps.)

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