Ask HN: Does an app need to be big to make money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does an app need to be big to make money?

8 pointstucaz16 comments

I thinking a lot lately about building a web app to start a business. However, if you look around, all companies that are making money in the web business have really big/huge apps (lots of features, too many moving parts) or some sort of physical extension (selling goods, renting places, etc) which increases complexity a lot and has a greater entry cost that is almost prohibitive for someone who works full time and has only a few hours per day to invest in an idea.

So, is there a place for small apps to make money?

Edit: It would be nice if people could post more examples of successful businesses like patio11 did

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You don't need to build a big app with lots of features to make money. That's the wrong lens to look at it through. You need to build an app that solves a big problem. People pay you based on what solving that problem is worth to them.

In Patrick's case, BCC solves a problem that is worth more than $30 to his customers. It turns out, making bingo cards by hand is a pain in the butt.

You asked for some other examples:

- http://audiomixology.com/ - The problem is "I want to learn to be a bartender". The perceived cost is the cost of bartending school, which is hundreds of dollars. This site has rotted since I first spotted it, but I think the price was $79. And the product was basically a set of mp3s with mnemonics to remember drink recipes, an iphone app that present those same menomics (and maybe a flash card system), and a couple ebooks. This guy was definitely making money and had written a few blog posts about his process of developing Audio Mixology on http://muselife.com though I can no longer find them...

- http://onswipe.com - these guys have gotten funding and a lot of press recently. However, I think they started as pretty much just a wordpress plugin that made your wordpress site look better on an ipad. And if that isn't what their mvp was, it still sounds like a legitimate mvp to me:)

BCC has more customers than lines of code. Complexity and commercial success are orthogonal.

What does BCC stand for, please ? (I might sound dumb but I couldn't figure it out :)

Don't know what that means too :)

It would also be nice if you know any other small apps that are successful out there.

Bingo Card Creator http://www.bingocardcreator.com/

BCC is Bingo Card Creator (http://www.bingocardcreator.com/). It's patio11's business, a tool for schoolteachers to easily create bingo cards for their classes. It's not sexy, but it's enabled Patrick to quit his job as a salaryman and work exclusively on his own projects. He's more concerned with profitability than with his (or his businesses') image, and here, he's saying that a big / complicated app isn't necessary for a business to be successful.

There are two main options, when it comes to making money from an app :

1- sell a small (cheap) app to many people

2- sell a big (expensive) app to a few people

While it is true that the most successful apps are usually pretty complex and expensive to produce, there are ways to make money with small apps. Games are a good example, as some hugely successful games are human-sized projects.

One thing : Starting a project with money as your unique goal won't lead you very far...passion is a way bigger motivation (that often leads to success, too).

I agree with you completely when u say that passion is necessary. However, I plan on being able to start living from my own work sometime in the next 10 years and that's why thinking about money is somewhat important even in the beginning.

I would like to be able to work with a small (and cheap like you said) application but even though "small" apps in the web that are making money (basecamp? fogbugz? and others...) are not that small and simple.

Unfortunately I'm really not into games (no passion here, see? :) ) so a LOB app is more like something I would go for.

There is ample opportunity for technical solutions to ordinary problems. It does not need to be "big/huge" to be successful. Good luck.

No.

You do however need the following first-order equation to work out to a quantity of money which is meaningful to you.

(customers * profit per customer * number of times each customer pays) - (customers * cost per customer + static costs)

Of course there's a place for this. If you are serious about building an app, then you wouldn't be asking for justification before doing so - just build it, and see what happens.

http://www.edibleapple.com/ifart-developer-makes-40000-in-2-...

I am not sure why you dismissed selling physical goods out of hand due to perceived complexity or cost barriers. When my company first began operations, my cofounder and I both had 'only a few hours a day to invest' as well.

Can you share a little bit about how was it? Looks very interesting!

The story of our origins is far too long to detail here. The very short edition is that we both had primary jobs and worked on the business in the evenings. After crossing the $1mm revenue mark, we decided to make it a fulltime thing.

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