Will the real app millionaire please stand up? | Hacker News Reader

Will the real app millionaire please stand up?

blog.adduplex.com

52 pointsailon25 comments

I've made almost a million dollars in 2 years as an indie developer. I also know many others as successful as myself or more so they are definitely out there. A top grossing iOS app makes 500k per DAY, so there are definitely a lot of success stories out there in the app world. Not many of them hit techcrunch, as they are mostly "lifestyle businesses"

Yet the median lifetime revenue for an app now is < $1000.

There's a lot of terrible software on the app store, median revenue is a poor indicator of the market's success. Most restaurants fail, but that's not to say restaurants aren't a good business. Some are just a lot better than others.

I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just responding to the question posed by the article. There are quite a few app store millionaires. But like most tech markets, there are a few players that take the lion's share of the profits.

The real app millionaires are all working at Apple. They're the ones who win when people develop apps.

And beyond that, Pages for iOS has been on the top-selling (sometimes top-grossing) list most of the time when I was looking at it. On the Mac App Store, I wouldn't even be surprised if Apple was the top grossing developer.

Actually, I'd be surprised if Apple was not the top-grossing developer on the Mac App Store. 8 out of 10 top grossing apps are Apple apps right now. (iPhoto?? Who has not gotten that with their Mac?)

> iPhoto?? Who has not gotten that with their Mac?

Upgrades to the latest version aren't free.

Yeah, it's kind of like developing for the Nintendo platform. There are, of course, a handful of third party app developers who do very, very, very well. These are the outliers. Mostly, third party devs don't succeed and their apps are simply a selling point for Apple to use for the platform as a whole.

A quote: "For those who have never heard about it, AppCampus is an initiative by Microsoft, Nokia and Aalto University that grants 20,000 to 70,000 Euros per Windows Phone application. You apply to the program and, if you get approved and deliver the bits according to specification, you get the grant and you still own everything (all of your shares, IP, etc."

It's easy to measure the true potential of a mobile OS -- pay attention to its creators' desperate offers of money to develop apps for it.

They are trying to get some momentum and solve chicken-and-egg. Consider this a marketing effort.

> They are trying to get some momentum and solve chicken-and-egg.

Perhaps. I think they're trying to overcome the platform's innate disadvantages. Reasonable people may differ.

> Consider this a marketing effort.

When someone tries to pay me to use their product, all my alarm bells go off at once. :)

> When someone tries to pay me to use their product, all my alarm bells go off at once. :)

I believe it's widespread enough practice to hand out devices to developers willing to make applications for new platform. $75k free grants, well, not so often, but if they can afford it and it helps them to catch up with other ecosystems faster, why not.

With that line of logic, don't do anything that's hard and has a slim margin of success when applied to the population as a whole.

The question suffers from selection bias, the reason you don't have small teams making millions is that small teams making millions hire more developers and stop being small.

Sure there are companies that are financially successful and choose not to grow (i.e craigslist, plentyoffish) but they're a tiny minority.

> Seriously, how many stories of a small team making at least 70k from a single app have you heard in 2012? Not many.

Maybe it's because we're from different places, but a team of three creating $70k in revenue in a year is not rare or even that great of an accomplishment (that's not a reasonable living wage here). Maybe it is if you're spending your time making a free game or a $.99 throw away app, but there's no reason why three smart people can't solve a problem for a type of business and generate real revenue. Like patio11 and his Appointment Reminder app.

The title is link bait but I really don't think there are that many teams making good money on any of the app stores.

>20,000 to 70,000 Euros per Windows Phone application

... is not bad at all!

>there's no reason why three smart people can't solve a problem for a type of business and generate real revenue

True, but not as many as hype makes us believe.

> generate real revenue. Like patio11 and his Appointment Reminder app.

How much revenue is that generating?

Selling your own stuff on the App Store is tough. But two developers doing iOS freelancing for a year will easily make $70k in my experience. Not through the store - through clients who request apps.

Of course, it's not nearly as creative and cool.

Two people freelancing iOS development should be bringing in a whole lot more than $70k a year combined.

> True, but not as many as hype makes us believe.

I'd wager a ton more than the hype make us believe--most people just go about their lives and don't bother hanging out to talk about their SaaS or app business. Bragging about $70k between three people is not much more than bragging about a minimum wage job.

> How much revenue is that generating?

I don't think he's announced it, but a lot more than 70k/3 I'm sure. (He'd only need 25 customers using the featured value plan for that kind of coin!)

Where is it written that it takes a whole year? For all we know you could get that grant at the end of a week.

You don't even have to apply if you have already an interesting and popular app on other platforms. A client of mine has been contacted by Microsoft and been told, that they wanted to sponsor the development of his app for Windows Phone. And so they did.

I guess "Will the real app thousandaire please stand up?" didn't have the same ring to it?

I think people are upvoting due to the clever name. I clicked because of it. This article brings up some interesting points but the title is definitely "link bait".

I upvoted because of AppCampus information.

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