Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Number of iPhone apps you published & income you get from them

news.ycombinator.com

1–10 of 57 posts

Ask HN: Number of iPhone apps you published & income you get from them

#1
It would be useful to see the level of success HN'ers have had with iPhone apps. Several articles mention general statistics, but what is the level of success for a population with the background of people who read HN?

So, if you have published iPhone apps, can you tell us

a) How many apps have you published?

b) How many are paid vs free?

c) How much effort have you put into marketing them?

d) What is the level of income you get from them?You can simply use one of the following levels: negligible, small, decent, large, or huge, or you can provide more details or actual numbers if you'd like

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Re: Ask HN: Number of iPhone apps you published & income you get from them

#5
Don't know if Android numbers are helpful to you too (maybe just the contrast will be interesting), but here's my experience in the Android market: a) 1 b) paid c) I posted in a dozen message board threads or so where people were looking for such an app, and I've diligently answered every e-mail I get about it. d) It's been in the Market for about a month and a half, and I've made a little over $2000. Hard to give a per-month answer as I don't know if it will taper off and run out of customers. ;)

Re: Ask HN: Number of iPhone apps you published & income you get from them

#6
post #2

I've never published an iPhone app personally, but at my last job we hired TakeFiveLabs to make an app for us (Veritas Prep GMAT app), and though it was completely free, it brought in $10,000+ in signups for our $1500+ course and tutoring

How much did you pay to have this app created?

Also, by $10K in signups, does that mean seven or so signups for a $1.5K course?

Re: Ask HN: Number of iPhone apps you published & income you get from them

#7
Thanks for posting this! This is something I've been wondering myself.

I'm particularly curious because I recently started a mobile contracting company for iPhone and Android applications, as well as websites. We've only been doing fixed price contracts so far, but we've been wanting to try our hand at writing our own applications too. We're just about done with our first three applications (in the process of getting one into the App Store, and two more are ETA to be done by the end of the week).

In case you're wondering what normal costs are for mobile application contracting: For simple apps, a fixed price would be in the $500 to $2000 range; something moderately complicated - say, an interface to a social network - would be in the $4000-6000 range; after that it usually goes on a case by case basis depending on what the customer wants.

(By the way, completely shameless plug: we're going to be done with our currently running contracts soon... so if anyone happens to be interested, contact info is in my profile. We build websites, Android, iPhone, and iPad apps, mostly.)

Post reply on HN