The sales are staying fairly consistent at around $250/mo. Keep in mind the minimum exchange requirements I mentioned in my last post which mean I'm receiving much less money than this.
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Here are the only two deposits to my bank account. ^[1]
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129.10 + 240.80 = $369.90

This is over my informal commitment to make a V2 that is much higher quality once I reach 150 in profits from V1.

So, now I'm busy building a very large remote desktop suite. This time I will have a proper website with many features (eventually I will add an in-browser javascript based client as well! ).

Usage Stats

I want to find out if people are figuring out how to use the app successfully. If they are not, that is both bad for them and will lead to bad ratings later on.

I ran a quick query

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT account_id) as AccountsWithAnActiveComputer FROM computer WHERE account_id IN
(SELECT DISTINCT serial FROM account) AND remote_ip IS NOT NULL

AccountsWithAnActiveComputer: 17

Next a simpler query.

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT serial) as ActiveAccounts FROM account

ActiveAccounts: 57

The result is quite bad, 70% of users haven't used it once! Either my supposed to be super-simple installation process is too complicated or there is a serious bug in the code. Another possibility is people aren't reading the description closely and buying it for a Windows machine. I will address all three of these issues in V2. I have received 3 customer support emails asking how to install for Windows -- so that is a clear issue but I'm unsure what the percentage of users this accounts for.

Slippage Stats

There are 49 sales + 2 refunds = 51 legitimate apps.
The ActiveAccounts query tells us we have 57 unique iPhone serial numbers.
57 - 51 = 6 Slipped Apps.
Slippage: 12%^[2]

I make more than that per day, but I actually have to work a few hours.

You've got the right idea though with "simple" business apps. Keep it up and you'll be an intarweb thousandaire who never has to work again!

The correct term is intarweb millionaire .^[1]

_{edit: Changed smiley}

I, too, want to make money.

My iphone game is still making money, but it hasn't reached my goal of 2000 sales (half that). I made $185 this month, in August I'll get a cheque for about $300. 60% of that is mine to do whatever I want with.

Take heart, guys. You have a much better chance and rationale than all those lottery players.

http://www.moddb.com/games/minecraft/news/minecraft-status-update-and-1000-sales-in-24-hours

Maybe, but I've seen people make more than 5 grand per day selling speakers out of a van doing nothing besides asking "HEY! Wanna buy a speaker?".

I'd have to say the problem with selling software is the corporate world which dominates most markets and very few niche players exist. I'm surprised minecraft is doing that well, I don't see much there but I guess people are willing to throw 15 bucks on something so be it.

You haven't been paying much attention to the iPhone app store I'm guessing...

Lag is an uncountable noun. I would not buy your software because the poor grammar in the description makes it look like it was outsourced to India.

Change it to "distracting lag" or "distracting periods of lag" and you might sell a few more.

Have you tried going free for a day. I made one of my games free for a day and it got 41 sales the next day in France. Wish it would have sustained though. And before you ask Trent. The categories were action and arcade.

that's nice, what else you did when you put the game for free (besides changing it on iTC) ?, what promotions did you tried ?

I like to try free for a day too..

Good idea. Monster RPG 2 free tomorrow.

Other promotions? Not too much apart from posting on touch arcade and giving away promos. Because the app store is so oversaturated I'm not willing to spend any money on advertising.

I should also say that I tried this with just about all my apps and afterwing 3d was the only one to make money after it's free day likely because it hit #15 free in France according to igamestats.com. The other two games beer machine and tube tennis both sold almost 0 copies the day following the release and got destroyed in the ratings. So beware.

My ratings already got destroyed when I put it on sale for 99c. I had an over 4 star rating, now it's down below 3.5 (and I think below 3 for the current version).

You think thats bad? I had crash reports flooding in from jailbroken os users. Somehow I used a piece of API that triggers a crash only on jailbroken OS's. 1 stars flooded in from those people.

AFAIK my game doesn't work on jailbreak either :x... Oh well, the ratings can kiss my ass. If someone doesn't leave a reasonable review, their opinion doesn't really mean anything to me. And of the people that do leave reviews for my game, the vast majority are 4 or 5 stars.

Same here. I've discerned its not the reviews that impress upon people, but the sheer amount (oh look at all the people who took a $1 risk on it, I suppose I can). Hence the free technique. AW3D is up to 44 ratings now I think.

I like your math.

Anyhow, you guys seem to do an awful lot of work coming up with ideas, creating them, and marketing them for such minimal returns. $150 in sales is enough success that you will spend more time creating version 2? I guess I just don't understand the mindset - maybe I'm just spoiled by earning more than that just for getting out of bed in the morning.

BAF. Indeed you are right. After being so appauled at spending a month working on afterwing to make a few hundred dollars. I refuse to spend more than 2 days at at time on a new app and then wash my hands of it.

Obviously, My primary job pays me enough to make a living. The app thing is kind of that "hey if this blows up I can pay off my car but likely won't" idea. Like the other guy said, its like a lotto ticket in my pocket that pays me dividends.

The mindset is to make millions of dollars. Don't confuse stepping stones with end results.

Refunded apps still have an account on my system, there's no reason to flush them.

My mindset is to make good games, because I enjoy doing it and the money attracts good help. I've made over $1500 on my first and only app, that's not too bad for a first. I don't make games in 1-2 days like Mike. Even the current game we're working on, which is nowhere near done, has been in the works for months. We're hoping it's a success, but if not, it sure as hell is going to kick ass.

What time UK does the free day run out? or is it midnight regardless of country?

I guess it runs out at midnight pacific time (Apple time). That would be... around 5-6pm in UK I think.

edit: Actually, I don't know how it works. It may just be 08-03 regardless of timezone.

Ok, I've been asking everyone at work to download it and rate it well (presuming that's why you're giving it away free), but it's impossible to download 80mb over 3G.

Heh. 30MB? It's actually almost 80 . Thanks though.

I put an 8, are your eyes fooling you

OMG stabs eyes repeatedly

So are iPhone games generally not profitable enough to sustain someone economically?

They certainly can be. Some people make hundreds of thousands or millions.

Oh, btw, Monster RPG 2 is now #4 in free RPGs in the home of the JRPG. What an honor.

For the average Joe though, it's not possible, is it?

Some of those people are average joes.

edit: I wouldn't risk a lot on it though.

Look at Angry Birds. Yes, it's pretty, but it's just another 'side scrolling throw an object onto some physics blocks game', probably using a pre-made library like box2d. Nothing special, but it's number 1 and has probably made a very large amount of cash at 0.99 per download.

With a lot of luck though. E.g. the guy I currently work for made a few millions with his iphone app.

The speciality comes from building something people want. I wouldn't call it simple but I also wouldn't call it hard to figure out.

The key is having the correct kind of open mind and paying attention.

Making money is mostly about marketing and having a good sales team. This means your product has to cost enough to justify paying for that.

It's easier to make money paying people to sell and support $50,000 software than it is to make money with $1 applications. I once wrote a content management system for a company that did just that. The software probably cost them around $100,000 over six months, but they were able to sell 50 (?) licenses per year via a dedicated sales team.

I concur. You can have the greatest thing since the integrated circuit, and it'll be relegated to your garage unless you've got the sales team to push it. All the great ideas eventually make it to the world and make millions of dollars, because if you don't have the sales team to do it someone else will and ideas are not unique.

This doesn't mean the average Joe can't make it big with their idea. You just have to know the right people, and not be full of yourself.

Anyway, I downloaded monster 2

A lot of people have, apparently

Like I've said before, there is a big jump between free and spending any money. Once you get somebody to buy it, it doesn't matter much if it's 99 cents or 5 dollars.

0.01/0 == INF
5.0/0.99 ~= 5

I've got another, smaller simpler game that I'm about to submit in the next couple days... I'm sort of torn between making it 99c or free :/.

I hate being overly critical, as I can see it should be a really good game, but I just couldn't get past the quirky interface:

- The yes/no dialog, no matter how much I pressed, wouldn't let me quit or continue - it would happily go from yes to no but nothing else
- On the standard movement control (the overlay buttons), the control images are right in front of the main menu so you can't see the menu and the overlay for the red/green showing what they do are underneath the green/red button images. Moving it to the top hides most of the screen
- Whenever I used the touch mode to scroll the screen, it jumps randomly all over the place, usually to the bottom
- In the tutorial I couldn't even figure out how to get to the beach as requested as pressing over an icon just wasn't doing anything. Eventually it did it, but I have no idea how I did it. In between this, in standard movement control it seemed to scroll one pixel per second
- Playing the game in hybrid or touch mode it just wouldn't move to where I wanted half the time and pressing seemeded to scroll the screen a few pixels instead

btw, When I first started (ipod touch) the music started but all I got was a corrupted bitmap (of nothing, just random yellow mainly) and had to restart. It worked ever since though.

Are you wearing rubber gloves?

Congrats on your position Trent. Afterwing HD (the ipad one) has been free for its second day and I hit #8 in action. I'm waiting for it to slip before I set it back to paid. The ipad market is alot smaller though, so I'm not expecting much.

You should have a real nice boost in sales when you set it back to paid though.

Ya, nobody has ever complained about any of the things you're mentioning, and it doesn't even make sense. The only explanation for that behaviour is a malfunctioning ipod..

Mike: Yeah, that would be nice, but I'm not counting on it. Right now it's sitting at #7 in free rpgs and #14 in free adventure games in the USA.

For the app store, Apple's whole system and algorithm for apps is effectively the perfect marketing team. Many businesses try to apply traditional marketing to iPhone, waste tons of money on it, and get nowhere doing it. The more I study successes the more it is clear to me the app store is about making quality apps people want. If you can do that you will find success.^[1]

Let me reiterate that for emphasis: The app store is about making quality apps people want.

The sales cost varies from industry to industry. By industry I mean some very specific industry (ie. talking about 'software' is too big of an industry. Think more like software to run a parking garage).

Every industry has some kind of sales to work out. And that is the natural order of things. People have their own lives, their own businesses to worry about. And you're worrying about yours. To connect your business to your customer's business there must be some translation of mindsets that makes your value clear.

People often complain about how hard it is to do sales and also complain about how people selling to them don't 'get it.' I find this very humours because they're the same problem. You should "get it" when it comes to your customers just like people selling to you should "get it."

A lot of engineers are black on and white on sales issues. They imagine a world of perfect information where everyone researches every exact detail of everyone else's work and picks the best one. The cost of this is too high to be a reality. It would be economic suicide to aim for it!^[2]

What I sense from the comments is that few individuals have made good profits. The majority of the developers have made a few bucks, but nothing serious. Am I correct?

I still don't get the Screen Spy app store entry. You click to go to the home page for more information and end up at Dusty's food emporium.

9 989 downloads of free MoRPG 2 yesterday.

This is the wrong way to look at the market. Every market attracts people that don't figure it out. The iPhone app store, while not an exception, probably has a much better success rate than any other software venture.

The right question you should be asking is: Can I figure this out?

In the majority of cases the reason smart people can't figure it out is because they've convinced themselves of some stupid reason not to.

Apple requires a webpage. I don't care to build a webpage until I have serious traction. dustytech.com is another one of my businesses.

I wouldn't like to invest my free time in something that will not yield good profits.

Do you mean how to figure out how can one have a successful app in the app store?

This is only me, but if I were looking for a seriously priced application for my iphone I know I would choose an app which had a website rather than not, as it shows professionalism and more importantly support capabilities.

Good move! In answering the question of what will yield good profits it is unintelligent to look at the average success of everything in an industry. You should figure what percentile you are aiming for and look at their success.

In this case yes, but it's meant in general.

Trent: did you saw an increase on sales ?, or more downloads of the Lite one ?

Is it? I'd like to have a look to what others have done and see if I can make something similar or better. If I can't, then obviously there is no point to try.

vbovio, a slight increase yesterday, not really major but I'd say it was worth it just to get a few extra bucks... I think today I'll sell more than usual too, but as it appears now, it probably won't last very long.