I must be crazy
splinter.com.au
splinter.com.au
I've been doing exactly this for the last year and I'm very close to switching my focus back to web development. From what I can tell the easy money in the app store is long gone and conditions do not favor the lone developer now. I have two iPad apps that frequently appear in the "What's Hot" list for music and if the revenue they generate is any indication most of us would be better off working as fry cooks.
The web gives you so much more insight into your potential customer's behavior that I think that alone might make it a better bet for a solo dev.
If you do decide to go solo I'd strongly recommend you hire a professional designer. Aesthetic standards are very high now and from what I can see pretty graphics matter a lot more to the typical iOS app buyer than features.
How's your experience been with getting users for your mobile apps? How does it compare to your experience with web apps?
I suspect most of my users have found my apps via posts I've made on dedicated music-making forums but I can't say for sure.
I haven't tried selling a web app yet but I did port my iPad synthesizer to the desktop and that seems to generate a lot more traffic without much effort on my part.
It seems like the difference between having a big shop on a quiet backstreet and having a tiny shack on a busy high street. You can watch every move of every visitor with a dozen CCTV cameras in your backstreet shop, but the footfall is all on the highstreet.
One tip for web apps: make sure to list it on the Chrome web store and keep pushing regular updates and replying to user reviews.
Just being in the app store may have been worth something a few years ago but now with users searching through 600,000 apps with Apple's crappy search UI I don't think it counts for much any more. For example, for the Technology Review having a professionally designed app in the store was worth 353 subscriptions:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427785/why-publishers-d...
But you just heard from someone who said that even when their app shows up in the What's Hot list, they still don't get a lot of sales. Which also implies it doesn't take very many sales to get there.
Speculation about how truth may not be true is not very productive. It really doesn't matter how many people enter the funnel if few make it to the "give you money" step and you have no control over or visibility into the intermediate steps. It is for theory to explain reality, not the other way around.
At least I qualified my speculations as a feeling. If you're going to misread, at least don't be so snipy.
Anyway, I say all of this as a web app developer myself. I prefer the high street to the mall.
No "What's Hot".
I agree that the "easy money" (e.g. air horns and flashlights) is entirely gone, but there is still a ton of opportunity available if you're willing to put in the work. The type of work necessary now is 1) different than it was 3 years ago and 2) different than what would be required of a web app. The App Store has evolved quite a bit over time and the bar seems to be getting set higher and higher.
In particular, user experience, design, and polish are supremely important on the App Store. I think unfortunately a lot of indie developers (especially engineering types, including myself at the start) tend to overlook this aspect - either from lack of time, energy, or budget, and as a result they make a poor first impression and never really build a following. On the App Store, it's more difficult to ship a MVP and iterate because users expect quite a lot. (You can still do it, but the 'M' might be in different areas than you would expect.)
On the other hand, there are a ton of iOS devices on the market right now, that number is continuing to grow, and that means there are many many users willing to put down money for your software. Apple takes care of the details of collecting payments and makes it easy for users to buy your app.
That said, there are definite tradeoffs to selling via the App Store vs selling on the web.
- You're definitely cognizant of the fact that you're playing in someone else's walled garden, and this can bite you if you're not careful. - Like you mentioned, the sales funnel is a black box, which means it's very difficult to measure or optimize. - Traditional advertising methods (e.g. AdWords) typically don't work cause app prices are too low.
I've also done both and prefer the App Store by far - business aspects aside, there's just something really fun about making iPad apps.
Have you gauged the efficacy of advertising on directly applicable sites, such as (for games) TouchArcade?
I can easily see the low unit pricing being a hindrance - I suppose therein lies the temptation to bolt on IAPs, which opens an entirely different can of worms.
Why can't I find a link or description to them anywhere in your post?
I’m the breadwinner with a wife and daughter to support, My wife is due to have our second child in 8 weeks, We’re currently building a house, and the builder’s bills will soon arrive
I may be the only person to say it, but I don't think quitting your day job at this time is a good idea.
I'm a little less concerned now that I see he has actually made some apps, but it still kind of freaks me out just reading this post.
No big or crazy risk-taking here. It's always scary of course to go off on your own when you've spent your entire life in the comfortable employee universe so best of luck to the OP!
* I have enough savings to last a few months if i sell my motorbike
* I'm reasonably well connected and, if all goes badly, getting an ios contract/job in a few months time won't be hard
* I already have a dozen apps on the app store, bringing in between $100-$150 daily
* Due to a recent house move, i'm unable to code on the train any more which used to be brilliant, so my part-time efforts have dwindled.
As for the apps, I really need to make a promo-page for them, the best i can currently give you is here: http://apps.splinter.com.au/
Congrats on the success of your apps on the app store and good luck with your upcoming venture.
Best to find out now if it's sustainable for you. Good luck.
i imagine the train ride would be full of interrupts, maybe you could convince me otherwise about your commute system
This is a scary scenario. If you are starting out with no revenue, a few months can come and go very quickly. I like to set a runway of 1 year of income for myself. That being said, I peg my income to the bare minimum I need my family to survive on. Everything after that is just profit and is saved.
Anything can happen in 3 months that will cost you a lot of unplanned money. It's really only one season in a year, and things change so quickly nowadays that you can't possibly prepare for every bad event.
If you need to sell your motorbike in order to give yourself some extra savings to live on, that's even worse. Get yourself some more money so that you don't have to consider cutting into flesh just to trim fat.
Also - you're building a house? If I was going to quit my consulting gig to do startups (which I'm strongly considering doing) I would (and do) keep my debt to a bare minimum.
Edit: Based on OP's answers in reply to the parent comment, it appears as though the situation is not quite as dire as it sounded at first read of the article.
> I’m going to make, market, and hustle my iPhone apps like my life depends on it
Sounds like his child's life will quite literally depend on it.
the times when my kids were born (once when i was 20 years old, the other one when i was 30) were the most productive of my life (and i always quite my job when a new kid arrives). you always rise with your challenges, so it's a great idea to create some big challenges for yourself.
in 2 days i will be in the salar the uyuni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni) with my family, in 2 days i have a conf call with the CEO of an international top 500 website to talk about their content strategy. it's a challenge, i love challenges, keeps life interesting.
Since you mention it, if anybody needs some freelance help with an app I'm available. As a self-outsourced American currently living in Vietnam I can significantly undercut $150/hr. ;)
Let the client tell you your price is high, if that's the case, no need to do it yourself.
I mean, sure, you have a cost of living which will let you attempt to compete on price for the worst projects from the worst customers, but why not just deliver desirable projects for great customers at the price which the market has decided professional iOS development is worth?
But your point is well taken. If I do decide to shift my focus from my own products to consulting I'm not going to do it at too high a discount.
Can I tell you a story of something stupid I once did which nonetheless does not constrain me to always acting stupidly in the future? A particular prospect asked for a quote of my rate. I quoted my then-going rate and then, because I could not stop my fingers, said "But since we're Internet buddies I'll give you a discount." He said "OK, what's the final rate?" And I chopped 50% off. He accepted.
Note that in no point prior to that had he evinced any problems with paying the actual rate and, indeed, the difference between X and 2X is meaningless to him because a) he's a millionaire and b) neither X nor 2X comes out of his pocket, it comes out of a budget of a corporate entity he happens to own a lot of shares in, and both of us assumed (accurately) that the engagement was going to make those shares worth substantially more than X, 2X, or 10X more.
I set fire to five figures with two emails, and he probably doesn't even remember that conversation. Facepalm. But I don't have to facepalm next time, and neither do you.
To be fair I hire a lot of developers on a contract basis. If you were in Vietnam (which is pretty much always off when we're on in SF) I would expect a discount. If I'm paying SF rates I'd rather have you in SF. There's a very real communication and feedback loop in design and dev that is difficult to deal with when folks are on the other side of the world. (Heck I expect a developer in Cleveland to be less expensive then one in SF)
All that being said, and to Patrick's point. One thing I learned running a consultancy was to never assume someone is looking for a less expensive solution. Once we stopped doing this and started charging what we felt we were worth, a lot of our cash flow issues started magically clearing up.
But the going Elance rates are ridiculous. I can make more money here with way less hassle as an English teacher.
When my wife quit her job at Intuit to start Copy Hackers, she also had to figure out how much to charge for her freelance copywriting work. After some investigation, she found that there are writers on eLance who charge $10 for an entire blog post and $20 for a press release. In addition, I make a very comfortable living working for a large software company -- enough that she could easily compete with the inexpensive off-shore writers because we have no real need for the extra money. However, none of that was factored into her decision, because she priced her services based on the value they would generate for her consulting clients -- and has moved her rates up twice in the past year from $50/hr to $150/hr. She has plenty of work at that rate, too...
I signed up for elance, looked at a few projects, and found myself seriously undercut (and I don't want to compromise on quality or bid on projects over my head).
If I do get some projects at what I believe is a correct market rate (and it's not very high), it probably won't be thanks to elance (which looks like a great website, don't get me wrong).
Joanna (my wife) stays far away from sites like eLance, because those tend to be the places where cost-conscious people go to find freelancers. The heavy focus on pricing (by both buyers and sellers) on eLance makes it challenging to sell yourself based on other benefits (like writing copy that actually converts).
If you are selling something on a small scale (such as what your wife is doing) it's a wrong assumption to think that everyone knows the going rate for something in the marketplace. People overpay for products and services all the time because of convenience, FUD, or simply not knowing what a typical price in the marketplace is. Sometimes of course they also infer quality into pricing thinking that it is either inferior or that there must be some catch to low pricing as well. While at a certain point (large numbers) you can get hurt, at a smaller level it is not as much of an issue.
"based on the value they would generate for her consulting clients"
Agree. That is the key in many cases to the question of "what to charge" for something (once again it definitely depends on the scale of what you are doing obviously).
Are you just upset that he is competing on price? Given his cost structure it makes perfect sense for him to want to deliver desirable projects for great customers at a great price.
Clearly you know that there is no fixed price that the market has decided professional iOS development is worth. And now that there is one additional professional iOS developer working from Vietnam the price turns out to be lower than what you think it should be.
I read that as a perfectly valid suggestion that he could raise his rates, make more money, and enjoy the clientele even more in the same stroke.
Although I don't think this is what he is doing, marketing wise sometimes people want an explanation for why the price of a product or service is less than the going rate for a certain quality.
Many people judge quality by price and by giving a reason (even one that doesn't hold water upon inspection by someone in the know) you can explain away doubts in a buyers mind and instil confidence.
Some other examples (and there are many) are companies who claim their price is less because "we don't advertise" or "we cut out the middleman" etc. so we can charge less.
Added: Above examples I am giving don't always explain away the difference in price being charged. So they could be a redherring disguising the real reason for the price differential.
Then one time I decided to not cut my rate in half on a quote. Nobody but me seemed to notice.
So now I don't do that anymore. Life's even gooder.
No doubt there are brilliant deals out there -- awesome devs who do great work, professionally, and don't know their worth -- SOMEWHERE. But considering how I've failed over & over to find them, I don't bother trying any more.
If you're good, you can ignore everything that goes on at low price points. And well you should.
Someone charging a freelance rate of $30/hour in north america for iOS work is either not invested much in learning the platform in-depth and therefore won't be able to do much more than populate table views and wire up transitions, or they'll tackle a complicated project at that rate and make a mess for someone else to clean up.
But what Patrick says is right: consulting is a GREAT opportunity right now for iOS devs.
However, where I disagree with him is this pivotal phrase: "Should there ever be a gap…" No no no!
Don't wait for there to be a gap. The absolute worst time to be prospecting for client work is when you need it.
I'm all for throwing your energy into growing your existing revenues, but there's no way I would have ever done what you did and I have no kids and no mortgage. We consulted while we built up our app -- and it was stressful as hell but those big fat checks were a godsend. I can't even imagine trying to squeak by on $3k pre-tax with a spouse much less kids. Or with non-subscription income.
If you read the other things I write, you'll know I'm anti-magical thinking and rainbow gum drops and fairy dust. You know, unicorns, like the one being impaled by Mr Pointy the Narwhal of Truth on my blog header (http://unicornfree.com).
Well, this is unicorns in action, dude. The deep down, heartfelt belief that if we just throw yourself at something hard enough, we must succeed, is a horrible thing we internalize from movies and TV shows. It makes great television but it's not the truth.
If you fail to protect yourself & your family, income-wise, all the joy from working on your own thing will be worthless. You will feel so terrible, and be in such stress, that you will long for the days of your boring, unrewarding job. True money stress (not "I can't afford this luxury and I want it now!" but REAL stress) is worse than almost any career dissatisfaction. Worrying about your basic needs is way more time consuming and soul-sucking than a crummy job.
So:
Bust ass to pick up consulting gigs now. Make the transition as seamless as possible. Build up a client base and you can charge more and more for better and better clients and fewer and fewer hours. It'll still be consulting, it'll still be working for somebody else, but for a while, getting paid double and triple the amount is novel enough that you'll cope.
You'll thank me later.
And take my word for it - i harbour no illusions as to the steepness of the mountain that is facing me. Looking for consulting / freelancing work is my number 1 priority during my resignation notice period. In fact, i started today and found a couple of good gigs that i'm going to pursue. I thank patio11 for the suggestion.
Having said that, I'm in a similar situation (sole bread winner, 2 kids) and I'll probably be handing in my notice this week too. It's partly because the job was causing me debilitating levels of depression that I just couldn't work in my spare time. I'm planning to work as a freelance rails developer (got my first client on board already) and work on my 30x500 product.
I found Jonathan Fields' book 'Uncertainty' quite enlightening and motivating.
PS please blog about your experiences freelancing and applying amy's principles, i'd love to read about it. Congrats on your first client!
My advice to someone looking to start something on the side: don't quit your job, but find a low-stress job at a large corporation with normal 8 hour workdays and a short commute.
...or a long commute by train or other transportation that gives you the opportunity to work on your project with a notebook :)
I left my moderately paying (but extremely boring) job in Virginia and moved back to India few months ago and I am making apps full time. Unlike you I was'nt making anything when I started.
Life in a big city in the US and India are so different that initially I was in a "wtf did I just do" phase but I kept going. Recently I started selling my hacker news app (http://www.hackerno.de ) for $$$ and things are looking better now. Even my parents have stopped asking me to get a job!
The thing that sucked most about this whole experience is undoubtedly Xcode. Your life depends on it and it will crash all the effin time!
Ultimately, we want to be the Apple of consumer robotics, and to have our robots in your homes and offices. That's a big ask, so we're starting out by using robotic technologies to solve various problems. Our first product line will be a combination of augmented reality, computer vision, and SLAM* - we're calling it Augmented Reality over IP. It lets a remote operator draw things in your local environment, and we think this is useful for training, helping the less tech-savvy, tele-medicine, and a bunch of other stuff.
One of the coolest parts of our five year plan is that this first product is essentially one component of the head of our ultimate mobile robot. So we get a nice product and some revenue early on, but also solve a bunch of the problems that we'd have to solve later anyway.
If you want to know more, ask here, on Quora (there's a TPR topic), or by email to tom@jugglethis.net. I've got HN's noprocrast turned on, so I don't get around to responding here much more than once a day.
[*] Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping; an algorithm that is traditionally used to let a robot build a map of its environment at the same time as using the features of this map to work out where it is. We're using it to work out where a camera took a picture from, so that we can stabilise augmented reality overlays projected on the real world.
Having no safety net makes you well aware of all the opportunities that arise. Having that fail safe makes it so you have a built in excuse, "there is no rush to get this done I am already paying the bills from the day job.".
Just a reminder surround yourself with people who will uplift you and that are liked minded, not the ones that say "isn't that pretty risky" or "are you sure you want to do that? You have a baby on the way".
What say you?
Contact me at the email in my profile!
But I have been preparing for this for the past 2 yrs. I aready have few ios, android apps out. And i am in the process of finding co-founders.
Thanks to HN for helping me think it is possible to make a living, I have seen so many examples in the past two years here of positives and negatives of self employment.
Oh and i also have saved enough money to last a year without a paying job.
Think twice
Don't quit now, generate ideas while at job, start research and then plan accordingly.
There are so many incubators that could later help with your idea/prototype.
Just my 3c Nilesh
I built infocaptor while consulting
So you're right based on the blog alone, but not necessary 100% right had the OP exposed his side income.
I'm sure he'll chime in, but Patrick was making more from BCC than he was from his job by the time he quit. http://diycomputerscience.com/blog/post/2011/07/01/create-a-...
In all seriousness, good luck!
I admire those who can persevere at their dayjob whilst building up a side business, i really wish i could do that without going insane. Patrick must be made of sterner stuff than I ;)
Have you experimented with in-app purchases? (E.g. looking at the impromptu presenter and the fertility app)
Your icons look a little bland, though (maybe it's just my taste) :)
Networking is the most valuable thing you can do in business.
Some great networking hubs are @inspire9 in Melbourne (tweet at them they're really responsive), the York Butter Factory also in Melbourne and Fishburners.org in Sydney (they have co-working spaces in Ultimo and urr, Darlinghurst I think?).
I know there's a good place in Brisbane, too but I can't remember the name. If you tweet @pc0 he'll tell you :) He visited recently (and is one of the foundational members of the Fishburners community).
* I don't have savings, so I took a loan amounting to about 3 months of expenses. Having cash in the bank makes me feel a lot better about doing this with a baby on the way. It also means I'm not forced to do low-paid work to make rent. Best case: You pay it all off + early payment fee when you sign your first big deal. Worst case: You get to the end of the runway and have to go back to perm work to pay it off. [1]
* It's been said many times but bears repeating: Charge more. Every lead I followed up got a daily rate roughly $200 USD more than the last. I can barely stomach quoting my current rate to clients, but I'm not going to argue with those willing to pay it. [2]
* Read about negotiation. Secrets of Power Negotiating for defence, Getting to Yes for doing the actual negotiating. Biggest bit of advice I can give personally is to shut up more often. Never talk the other person into paying you less money when they're perfectly happy paying you more!
* Same again for networking: Never Eat Alone is the standard text. If like me you have the social skills of a cave troll, How to Win Friends and Influence People is a good read.
* Remember to spend time on your thing. If you're not sure what your thing is, spend time figuring out what your thing should be (still at that stage myself). With networking, chasing client work, planning meetings and then doing client work, it can be difficult to keep this up. Alternatively, once you know what your thing is, Charge More and spend a few weeks at a time (this is my plan and something I've seen others execute successfully).
* Have actual, zero-business-value downtime. Pick up a hobby or two if you need to. I chose amateur robotics and catching up on classic SF. It will help you stay sane when things get rough (based on my experience and that of every consultant/freelancer I've spoken to, things will get rough).
Good hunting!
[1] I'm not a financial advisor, yadda yadda.
[2] Another good thing about charging more: clients see you as a consultant rather than additional technical resource. I've found that at higher rates, people tend to value your opinion a great deal more than otherwise, leading to a nice virtuous cycle.
Good Luck!
I think you will love it every day.
Basically following the 37signals model: subscriptions-based SAAS. Pretty neat stuff - i'd do that in a heartbeat over iOS apps if my ruby-on-rails skills weren't so rusty.
Sorry, just kidding. The center of gravity of my business is a moving target. As of present, it is consulting, largely on marketing topics for software companies. Not where I want to be for forever but, well, wedding to pay for.
Appointment Reminder is coming along decently well -- the enterprise pipeline is starting to bear fruit, finally, and the self-serve is quietly growing every month. BCC remains my fun little laboratory where lab accidents can't kill anybody. I will probably have some sort of productized version of consulting services available sometime after the wedding -- maybe August, who knows.
Can't go wrong with daisies right?
I wish you success!
subscribed to blog: check
What is your plan for the next week, month, quarter? What are your targets? How many months can you survive without income?
Could you not have remained employed by building the foundations of your new business?
Will you be sharing your journey?