Hacker News Reader

Comment by murph37 | Hacker News Reader

After a year of being free on the iOS app store, my app Dark Hacker News has received some positive reviews and maintained a 5-star rating.

About a month and a half ago, I decided to make Dark Hacker News a paid app at $1.99. I felt at this point it had enough features and I've never had a paid app on the app store so I decided to just go for it!

In the first month and a half as a paid app, its been able to generate $42 in sales! I've never made money off of an app I've built so its been awesome to see those sales come in.

At one point in June I even made it to #7 on the list of top paid news apps!!! (I'm not exactly sure how the app store algorithm works, but hey I'll take it) Up to this point I really haven't done any marketing so I'm considering getting the word out there to see how it would impact sales.

All in all, it's been awesome to make my first real dollars as an Indie Developer!

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> In the first month and a half as a paid app, its been able to generate $42 in sales!

> At one point in June I even made it to #7 on the list of top paid news apps!!!

So being #7 for sales in a whole category on Apple's all store (famously the easier market in which to make money as compared to Android) means only $42 in sales? Are the economics of making apps really this tough?

Maybe that's why everyone just tries to make a game app? Is that the only way to make money?

Yes, the economics of mobile apps really are that tough. The App Store has been around for over a decade now, and the "race to the bottom" has brought us the almost exclusive use of in-app purchases for monetizing apps.

Market is a big part of app success which is why we see games and companies with real budget making the $$ in the App Stores. Gotta market to those whales!

Furthermore, users expect a very high quality mobile app these days and often don't want to pay for features. Got a great app with a few amazing paid features? Expect some negative app reviews. Everyone, app developers included, expect amazing, free, mobile apps. It's unrealistic.

I would guess many news Apps are free, with subscriptions used to make money.

Also, looking at the list on my iPad, I‘m sure the top lists aren’t global. They seem local by country (and might even be personalized, but that would surprise me)

That was my thought too. The listing have to be more localized or personalized for a small indie app like mine to climb the charts for a day. I'd like to talk with someone who has more experience with the app store rankings and algorithms that drive them. I'd be curious to know all of the factors that are in play.

Can you check the top paid news chart now? Thanks to the HN support we are back up to #8! I'd be curious to see if it is at #8 for other people as well.

It isn’t in the top 50 in paid news apps (checked iPhone and iPad)

That's interesting. It's back down to #11 for me now. So it seems then like it is personalized to user to some extent.

#8 here.

Yeah I'm really not sure on this one. I was only at #7 for a brief moment during a weekday. I have to imagine the apps that are consistently high in the rankings are making much more on a daily basis. On my post on IndieHackers I included screenshots showing the #7 ranking (https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-made-my-1st-sale-and-mad...).

Hacker news readers are pretty niche as apps go

Congratulations! I just started using DHN and I love it. The bookmarks feature is awesome. Thanks for all your hard work!

Awesome!! The bookmarks folder feature was one I really wanted to get into the app so I'm happy to hear you like it! Let me know if you have any features you'd like to see added and I can add them to my backlog.

Does your app make the code blocks readable in the comments? I would buy it just for that on mobile.

That's a great question. Let me try and find an example post to see if it does. If it does not, I'll definitely add that to my backlog because I'd love to have that feature as well.

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