Carlos Ribas is an indie developer. His app is called HoursTracker. HoursTracker went live in July, 2009 and has been a work in progress ever since.
The linked story lays out Carlos’ experience with the App Store from a financial perspective. He shares his revenue figures and his experience with iAds versus in-app purchase.
Bottom line, with a broad enough customer base, he makes more money with the App Store than he could with a full time job. And for many people, that’s the dream.
[Via MacStories]
Irony: Guys builds an app to track hours across multiple jobs, resulting in him not needing to work multiple jobs.
I suggest they don’t rest on just the one time popular app. They need to come up with other trends like a Mac Store app that one can sync to the iPhone app. This way it can be add up and weekly or months;y billed via email to a client.
I’m just catching up on this now – great article. This quote in particular:
“We say “Come on! It costs less than a cup of coffee!” But, if we’re being honest, that’s a false comparison. People spend their money on coffee every morning knowing what they are getting. The fact is, people don’t buy unproven goods with no guarantees. It’s not about the price.”
He has an extremely good point. I think more apps should have limited functionality so folks can get a taste and see if they like it, then IAP for the full version. Games included. I have a ton of apps i’ve paid for and downloaded, then immediately deleted when they didn’t perform the way I expected them to. I’m not a huge fan of IAP, (think Candy Crush) but I think this is the best way to make it work…