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Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

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Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#21

Post by TheOnly92 »

If earning $100/month is a failure, mine will be an epic failure. I'm totally not earning anything, plus it's still running totally based off my own wallet.

A way to indicate whether it is a failure or not is whether or not it continues to grow, if you're targeting a very specific market it is very unlikely that you will earn a lot of money (I personally don't have that much amount of email that I need InboxCleaner to do some job for me...).

If however it is an awesome thing, people will get to know it and start using it, then it won't be a failure.

Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#22

Post by Paymo »

Think about it this way, a ton of startups that get funded with huge amounts of money end up making $0/month :) On the other hand, pricing is a real problem. I don't see many people paying $19.99 for it. If you believe many people have this problem i'd suggest a very low monthly fee - although it will make less in the begining it could make more in the long run (as long as twitter doesn't implement a feature like this).

Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#23

Post by mootothemax »

Paymo wrote: post #22

Think about it this way, a ton of startups that get funded with huge amounts of money end up making $0/month :) On the other hand, pricing is a real problem. I don't see many people paying $19.99 for it. If you believe many people have this problem i'd suggest a very low monthly fee - although it will make less in the begining it could make more in the long run (as long as twitter doesn't implement a feature like thi…

i'd suggest a very low monthly fee

I was previously charging $4.99/month, and before that $19.99/year. So far, the one-time fee is winning, although I'll be interested to see if that continues next month ;)

Quick edit: Right in the early days, I experimented with charging $1/month and $4.99/year, just to see what'd happen. End result: a lot of nothing. Still not sure what to make of that, other than people don't want to pay for the service ;)

Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#24

Post by mootothemax »

larrik wrote: post #19

The app is still new. After a while, it may make more. Or it may not. Who knows? I wouldn't call it a failure. For instance, I haven't updated one of my iPhone apps in a few months, but in the past week or two my sales for it have been better than I normally get in a month. Sometimes it gets better, and you just have to let it grow.

The app is still new

To be fair, it's not that new - it's well over seven months old at this point :)

Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#25

Post by mootothemax »

wccrawford wrote: post #6

If you put more than an hour a month into it, then yeah, it probably is. Your time could probably be better spend elsewhere. Of course, that assumes the main goal of the app was to earn money. The knowledge gained from creating it could very well be worth it.

If you put more than an hour a month into it

Thankfully, the support costs are, err, maybe an email every few months? Basically, extremely low. Combined with sharing the hosting with TweetingMachine, it is essentially all profit at this point :)

Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#28

Post by switch »

Yes and No.

You have the wrong approach. You can't predict success and you can't predict what markets will work and you can't prredict what the perfect product for a market is. You have to release products and track ALL possible metrics and tweak consistently.

Basically, even the really big companies have hits and misses. And more misses than hits.

So, firstly, you should be releasing 5 or 10 high quality web apps and seeing which stick and focusing on the ones that do.

That's the first step - finding a market demand.

Second is hitting the value for money/quality/perfect market fit.

That's the second step - after you have found market demand, making the most of it.

An inbox cleaner for $20 is just too expensive. Too much friction - especially for a new product from an unknown developer. You have to minimize regret for users - or rather, potential regret.

Instead of thinking in terms of what you want to make think in terms of what people want to get in terms of value for money. 5 people is too small of a data point. So you have to lower the price anyways - to get enough customers to find out whether there is market demand or not and what things people want and what they are willing to pay for.

So play around with the price a bit. Plus release 4-5 other products and see if you find a market with huge demand - one where even lower value for money sells well.

Re: Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

#29

Post by mootothemax »

switch wrote: post #28

Yes and No. You have the wrong approach. You can't predict success and you can't predict what markets will work and you can't prredict what the perfect product for a market is. You have to release products and track ALL possible metrics and tweak consistently. Basically, even the really big companies have hits and misses. And more misses than hits. So, firstly, you should be releasing 5 or 10 high quality web apps an…

So play around with the price a bit

Previously, I have charged $4.99/year, $19.99/year, $1/month, $4.99/month, and $19.99/one-time is the latest price. You're right that the sample is too small to make much of... on the other hand, it is double what the tool usually makes per month.

I'm happy to experiment, my main question is: am I missing out on the bigger picture by charging for this app instead of using it to promote TweetingMachine? I'm not convinced that the target audiences are the same... but guess I'm going to have to do another experiment ;)

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