Show HN: I made 22 apps and games this year mostly by myself – here they are
davesapien.com
davesapien.com
Have also been toying with an idea to start doing apps for a while now and rather than do a major idea, instead do many small apps. Like for example if 1 app brings 100$ per month - then making 20 could make 2000$ and so on - but does 1 app make 100$ on average at all?
I've also noticed that you started doing more iOS apps towards the end of the year. Is this because (as some people previously reported) iOS apps tend to generate a lot more sales currently? i.e. could you compare different stores in terms of the number of sales?
Thanks!
My definition of small is even stricter than yours :) I'd say something that you'd be able to make in 2 weekends - like lottery/weather apps (of course both of these have been done to death - but in that general direction). I'm not expecting those to make anyone rich - just curious if something like that could make nothing, 10$ per month, 100$, etc...
Like just from appstore exposure and no marketing... but lets assume that all the apps would be decent looking and programmed to work nicely - just with a limited feature set... and maybe a mix of appstores if I develop them in something thats able to do cross-platform compiles...
Toto, we're not in 2008 anymore :)
I know of a person (via one of the local game dev groups I was part of in a previous city I lived in) that would just crap out a "new" app every couple of days by making a super simple game (like infinite runner) and then get some artist in Romania to reskin it 4-5 different ways for $10/hour, then SEO the title for popular keywords (names like "Runner Game for boys and girls with cute bunny! Christmas edition!").
If you have an idea for a genuinely useful app or good game, something you would enjoy working on and can imagine others enjoy using, then go for it. But don't do shotgun-dev of shit app. We have enough of those already.
Just waiting til you've made the perfect app and only launching that would mean you were one of the most brilliant people in tech, having complete knowledge of your target market even before release.
And relative to your comment about not releasing 'low quality apps', you might as well tell people not to release their blogs on wordpress because all these 'low quality' websites are just re skinned versions of the same blog engine.
I'm not saying don't try to release MVPs quicky to test the market, I'm saying don't log in to itunes, check out the top 10 games and then make cheap generic rip offs with different skins and optimized titles. The summery of what I'm trying to say is: do something you care about, in one way or another. It would be better for your mental health and probably also more likely to be a viable business. Don't be the ios equivalent of spammers & spyware-laden internet explorer toolbars.
I should say that I've been making a living as an independent developer for almost 3 years now so I'm not just talking out of my ass here.
I mean the whole point of business is to maximize the return on your investment.
Now making absolute garbage may not be the right solution, and making incredible product that takes 5 years to develop is probably not the right solution either... finding the right mix is key
I was talking about doing specific niche apps by limiting their feature-set, not their quality.
Depending on your aim with these, next year would be a great year to focus less on dev and more on marketing. Many of these have zero reviews on the play store but are on par with other more established apps.
Concerning making money, I think you need to explore other ways of revenue streams than just paid apps. For example freemium or ad based. I'm currently making $0.07/download, with 20,000 downloads/month on Android using an in app purchase freemium model. I'll be adding more IAPs, so revenue should be going up in 2014.
http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/12/make-a-game-month-result...
The lab has a public open night every Tue and Thurs though. General hacking then. The game things is a once a year special event. (check out the Doodle app for this year)
Join the mailing list, or just email me if you want to visit.
Oh there are bitcoin talks on the 3rd of Jan I think. (check the mailing list)
The reason I wonder about it though is that the open nature of hackerspaces is one of the huge selling points. To be honest I can gain access to much better equipment than exists in your average hackerspace, elsewhere, but the fact that some random stranger coming in off the street might have something amazing to contribute is a big reason why I prefer to participate in the hackerspace scene. The truly open hackerspaces I've been to here on the continent, too many to list now, have always been very vibrant and alive - but my experience in the UK was, to put it frank, quite a lot more gloomy in that regard.
Anyway, I understand - each hackerspace has its own thing, and I'm glad its not a government-enforced situation, which had me wondering ..
What city you in? Some cities are more vibrant than others. London Hackerspace is huge (>300 members??), with a pay-what-you-want policy for membership.
London Hackerspace seems to be modelled a bit like noisebridge. Lots of people, maybe too many people to make socializing all that easy because there are so many subsets.
Edinburgh Hacklab open to public twice a week. Edinburgh is a relatively small city (~800k people), so distributing everyone over the week would not be so good. Also our membership is relatively expensive (£25). So our model is about a smaller group of dedicated hackers with stronger social ties. Small means we can keep our expensive equipment running without feeling like a public service.
Newcastle Hackerspace is pretty awesome too. They are bigger than Edinburgh with a pay-what-you-want. They have a mobile CNC they bring to field events!
Maybe we in the UK are not as good as Austrians at organising regular events ("an average of 1 event per night at Metalab"). But equipment wise metalab has a similar standard of tooling as all the above have.
My old space while I was still in Philadelphia was more like what you described in the UK, and we would occasionally get people who would complain about it not being more like what you described for Vienna. We had a set membership fee, only one public night a week, and membership had to be approved by unanimous vote of the current membership.
But every space is there to serve the membership. Our membership decided the space was a workshop first and foremost. I think anywhere you are out of the mainland-European anarchist scene, you're going to see hackerspaces gravitate more towards that form. A wide open space like Noisebridge with pay-what-you-want mentality takes a non-traditional mindset.
Luckily, there is room in the world for both types.
For anyone in/near Edinburgh, the Hacklab is fantastic in general - if you haven't checked it out, you should. It opened my eyes to the potential of laser cutters amongst other tech last year.