Ask HN: Mobile app devs making $1,000+/month on your app(s), how did you do it?

42 points·tagabek··1 comment

I think there are a lot of people here on HN that are interested in making consistent revenue on the side. If you have a mobile app that is making about $1,000/month or more, please share any details and advice for others looking to do so.

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We're a bootstrapped indy app shop with a few iOS apps that are making over the $1k/month threshold. We focus on making great apps for kids of all ages, and we've worked hard over 4 years to build a base of loyal parents and kids. I wish there were some secret sauce we had to share, but it's a lot of the basics that have worked for us:

- build great products

- find ways to effectively cross-sell to your users

- go above and beyond in responding to support inquiries

- track, test and optimize your marketing spend

- enhance and refine the apps that get traction in the market

In our experience, it's also not quite as simple as IAP vs No IAP or Ads vs No Ads. We've had paid apps hit the $1k/month threshold, and we've had paid apps fail to do so. Same with IAP. Same with ads. The overall market seems to be moving full speed ahead towards a freemium model, but there's still the opportunity to get traction with a niche audience and have a paid app pull in over $1k/month.

Happy to answer any follow-up/detailed questions, email is in my profile.

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