IAmA: I sell an app for iPhone and Android. I make $10k per month. | Hacker News Reader

IAmA: I sell an app for iPhone and Android. I make $10k per month.

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121 pointssadiq45 comments

It's an ask-me-anything where you can ask him anything except the one thing you really want to know: what app is it and what does it do?

As such the top question at the moment is "What do you do with the money?" which seems like a pretty dull question. What does anyone with $120K a year do with the money? The usual stuff, no doubt.

Really? That's the only point of information that you'd find valuable?

And the top comment is this:

  What are you doing with the money?
  How old are you?
  Do you have a college degree?
  How hard it is for a new comer to achieve your level of success?

There's hardly grounds for assuming that the first question was the only one people cared about.

Every experienced redditor knows that you have to sort comments by "best" not by "top".

Read it. While the average post on news.YC is better than the average on reddit, there are many diamonds in the rough.

what app is it and what does it do?

It's called "360 Live", it lets you see your friends' Xbox 360 Live stats.

Some other notes:

  * single developer, aged 29, maintains separate day job
  * ratio of iPhone:Android sales is 3:1, but Android is unquestionably growing
  * his sales are ~90% US, ~10% UK
  * he very strongly prefers the Android dev environment
  * but he prefers the AppStore to the Marketplace
  * about 27% of Marketplace apps are "returned" (he suspects they're pirated)
  * on Android, copying an app to your SD card lets you refund but keep the app
  * he likes Java over Objective-C (but reiterates that it's a personal preference)
  * the back-end is written in .NET, which he works with full-time
  * best place for help on writing an app is Stack Overflow
  * the app got traction by being mentioned in a popular industry blog
  * he started the app on a hackintosh
  * evolved from personal hobby (gaming)
  * feedback and a lot of iteration were essential for a good application
  * personal phone is Nexus One
  * Apple's marketplace makes taxes easier
  * he has no plans to move to Window 7, Blackberry, or Nokia (no $ incentive)

My biggest take from it: when you have an industry that is very "tight" and hence easily targeted (gaming platforms, specific games, etc), making a great product into a successful product will require absolutely minimal marketing.

It's a shame that people can't respect his wish to remain anonymous. I know you didn't do the detective work - it was Reddit user THE_IDENTIFIER - but it would be sad for him to get in trouble.

Yeah, but it was his risk to take, and he took it. He seems wise enough to be somewhat risk-averse, but I really doubt he'll get in trouble for it.

I recall there being a Penny Arcade strip about just this sort of thing...

Ah, here it is: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/6/19/

I have to say that it does seem like an app of limited utility. Surprising that thousands of people per month have decided that they really want to see their friends' xbox 360 stats when they're away from their xbox 360s.

Still, good luck to him!

For some people xbox is their facebook or twitter.

Microsoft's limited access to the GamerTag/Gamercard XML feed is the barrier of entry. I've looked into building a similar app but still awaiting MS approval. Although there is an application to gain direct access to the feed, I suspect it is mostly limited to developers who are already part of the network (ie. a paying member of the Xbox Registered Developer Program).

Some interesting points:

* 3x profit on the iPhone version ($7500 vs. $2500)

* android store piracy: 35%. iphone: 10%. (apparently it's easy to abuse the android 24-hour return policy)

* OP claims that eye candy is extremely important - "50% of the battle." Android doesn't require you to follow design guidelines, which might be why most of the apps 'look like crap'.

* Advice: "Find a broad niche and study your competitors. If you see room for substantial improvements, go for it. You'll make money."

i think people are making the same mistakes here, that music producers are making with music pirates. They're assuming that if piracy were impossible, all of the pirates would have purchased the app rather than steal it.

but in this case there are bandwidth/server costs involved with the pirates using the app.

Also, the app costs a one time payment of $1.99.

I'm not sure I buy that all of those returns are piracy. His app could just be broken on the G1, for instance. Or people could misunderstand what the app is when they download it. I find it hard to believe that many people have rooted phones.

the numbers he mentions are all piracy. his app involves a server-side so he counts the users on the server-side and the actual paying users per platform.

Both the numbers seem high to me, but that could be a function of targeting the young, techy gamer crowd.

I thought modern mobile phones had locked-down DRM which prevents you being able to disassemble the app? You know, RSA-encrypted assembly code sent straight to a proprietary CPU with nobody outside Apple and the internal of the CPU able to read the app code.

Sorry, had to totally butcher the title to get it in to 80 chars.

He mentions his app works on the iPad too.

I find the 3:1 ratio of iPhone:Android sales to be quite interesting actually, higher than i'd expect given what i'd read about people's experiences (or maybe those doing well from it are just keeping quiet?).

Well, he did say that the app gets returned 27% of the time on Android, which certainly doesn't help (he guessed a large number of the returns are because the user pirated the app and returned it).

It makes me feel better (somehow) that someone with this many sales has the same cancel rate as me. I don't really think people are pirating anymore, I think they just uninstall the later when they realize they may not want to replay my game over and over again.

My puzzle game gets WAY LESS returns than my sports app. I think people see more repeat play value in the puzzle game though the puzzle game sees less sales than the sports game.

It's the pirates, they continue using his web server part of the app

There's no reason to assume that people are paying for the app and then pirating it -- it's perfectly easy to install a pirated apk from off the internet without paying for it at all. This in and of itself likely accounts for Android's higher piracy rate.

Later in the thread he mentioned the actual piracy rates (computed from number of instances that access his server vs number of units sold):

35% android, 13% apple.

Looks like, even if all of the pirated Android versions were paid for, he'd still be making about twice as much on the Apple version.

That figure might be overestimating though?

At least on the App Store - when you buy an app it's tied to the account - not to a device.. So In my house there are two devices that use a paid version of the app..

But the app is set up in such a way that even if you had two devices, he'd know it was still one user. The numbers could still be off, but knowing what the App is and what it entails, it's actually pretty easy to get a fairly accurate piracy rate.

I don't buy this - as an Android customer, there's a lot of apps that simply don't do what they say. Gameloft has a 3D racer called 'Ashphalt' that has great screenshots, but runs at about 10 frames a second on a current gen device. This isn't a limit of the hardware - other racers are suitably smooth - but the returns are needed to make sure you don't get scammed by something that isn't usable.

The iPhone still had a 4-5x market share advantage last I checked.

One interesting point he makes in the comments is that he does NOT offer a free version of his app.

That's actually pretty cool that the guy is making $2500 a month on Android.

These kinds of posts always send me into a tailspin of jealousy. :) I've still not made enough money on the AppStore to even be paid out once. And my app went up almost a year ago!

I'm in the same position, had an app out for a while now. Released it for free for two weeks, seen INCREDIBLE numbers -- almost 200K downloads -- then back to paid, and... fizzle.

Does anyone have any experience in marketing apps? I would love to know which methods have the most results.

I have friends that game their apps into the Top 50 by buying it with 30 or so different accounts they set up. This is not in the entertainment category though. I hate marketing and I hate marketing for the iPhone more than anything. So many of the iPhone app review blogs seem like payola plays too. "Expedite your review for $200" and that kind of crap. This guy's smart because he probably got Xbox blogs to cover it, not iPhone blogs.

Agreed about payola, although most of the avenues I've advertised through did not require anything other than a free copy of my app (game). Some wanted you to advertise through them, although it's a no-obligation deal.

But I like your comment about getting XBox to cover your app -- the XBox market probably isn't very saturated with iPhone apps, so his must have stood out well. Good idea, thanks :)

There were couple of points he attributed to the success.

1) Eyecandy (he said it is 50% of the battle, on iphone people love eyecandy) 2) Getting genuine reviews on the blogs which allowed the app to go viral 3) Make an app for yourself, if it helps you getting something done and you can't live without it, others may also find it useful.

You should "tell hn" about your app and "ask hn" for some thoughts, ideas. Congratulations on shipping the app.

I like this AMA format. Can we have something like that here on HN as well?

I just read most of the thread and there are a lot of posts concerning about app piracy on Android where the user buys the app and returns it for a refund after copying the binaries.

But interestingly a user on the thread pointed out this... "You can't backup any app on Android. You can set the apk to non-distributable, which won't allow it to be backed up." Others say you can copy the app if you have root access.

And I found another thread on the Android Market forums Google. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?...

Can any other android developer here throw some light on this?

That is correct. Rooted users can copy whatever they want. I believe some of the popular GUI file management tools like Astro won't allow it even if you're rooted but that's only a minor stumbling point. You can do it via a shell or use one of the utilities that does it automatically.

So the answer to the question "will i make enough $ on android with the piracy problem?" would be "depends on the number of generous users".

Sure, just like most other platforms. Pirating apps on the iPhone is trivial as well.

His return rate seems high; mine is less than 10%. No idea what my piracy rate is, and I don't really care. Although I would if my app required server resources that I was paying for.

I don't even think about it.

Yes, my apps get a canceled order every day. Sometimes two. But if those people didn't think they could steal my app, they never would have paid for it to begin with so it's not like that's money I wouldn't have made.

I won't lie. It sucks, I feel violated and hurt when my apps are returned, but I choose to enjoy the good feeling I get from the sales I do make instead.

I'm making about $30/month on Android... damnit

If it makes you feel any better you're beating me :-)

I'm pulling in about $22/month...

What app?

And what are you doing with the money?

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