Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#61

Post by b0 » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:28 PM UTC

Of course there are. They just aren't as noisy which is why you don't think they exist.

Away from the buzz of the tech cities, the trendy "apps" culture and tech giants, there are lots. In fact, these people are actually the silent (and better paid) majority in the industry.

However, there is not much fanfare and most of them produce specialist software for niche industries.

I myself produce specialist financial modelling software which is all Windows desktop (C# + WinForms). I spent a few years doing logistics software (C# + WinCE + WinForms) and before that I spent 10 years writing a large desktop based system for distributed logistics and asset management for the defence industry.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#62

Post by nl » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:32 PM UTC

LTheobald wrote: post #42

There most definitely is still a market for people making desktop applications. Take Sparrow ( http://sparrowmailapp.com/ ) for example. They seemed to be doing well for a desktop application - so well they got acquired by Google. An number of other applications I have purchased on my Mac are done by small teams: Alfred, 1Password, TextExpander, Things, Coda, Tweetbot. As other comments have mentioned, it may be easi…

They seemed to be doing well for a desktop application - so well they got acquired by Google.

I think the general consensus was that the correct characterisation of that was that they were doing so badly that an aqui-hire was an attractive exit. Google certainly didn't buy them for the app...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#63

Post by GFischer » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:44 PM UTC

jakobe wrote: post #49

My Mac app grosses around 3k € / month ( http://jabakobob.net/mdbviewer/ ). Might not be much for someone living in SF, but it's more than my day job at an Austrian research institute pays.

The website looks great :) .

Also, I'd love to make 3k € / month ! . I'll probably be in Vienna for a few months next year, are there Hacker Meetups or similar?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#64

Post by GFischer » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

guilloche wrote: post #50

I used to develope desktop applications for security printing. In such a niche market, it is very hard to gain customers. Now I moved to web application and launched online Torapp guilloche designer ( http://www.torapp.info ). Hopefully things will be better.

What's your market? Aren't you replicating the problem? (it's still a very niche market). I hadn't heard of guilloche before now.

Also, the website doesn't look professionaly designed - maybe you don't need it to, but it might help.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#65

Post by adambenayoun » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

jakobe wrote: post #49

My Mac app grosses around 3k € / month ( http://jabakobob.net/mdbviewer/ ). Might not be much for someone living in SF, but it's more than my day job at an Austrian research institute pays.

Care to share your marketing channels? Are you spending money on Ads?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#66

Post by DeepDuh » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:49 PM UTC

jakobe wrote: post #49

My Mac app grosses around 3k € / month ( http://jabakobob.net/mdbviewer/ ). Might not be much for someone living in SF, but it's more than my day job at an Austrian research institute pays.

That's a nice, clean portfolio site, congratulations on that.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#67

Post by jakobe » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 3:54 PM UTC

GFischer wrote: post #63

jakobe wrote: post #49

My Mac app grosses around 3k € / month ( http://jabakobob.net/mdbviewer/ ). Might not be much for someone living in SF, but it's more than my day job at an Austrian research institute pays.

The website looks great :) . Also, I'd love to make 3k € / month ! . I'll probably be in Vienna for a few months next year, are there Hacker Meetups or similar?

I was at a couple of Cocoaheads meetings (http://cocoaheads.at), nice people there, but I am too busy lately...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#68

Post by brolewis » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 4:00 PM UTC

skulquake wrote: post #58

brolewis wrote: post #31

Desktop apps still have a place in some B2B settings. For a year I worked for a company that developed software that managed fork lift battery inventories for warehouses. These were warehouses that had little to no internet connectivity on the floor and so having a desktop application was crucial. It was a niche market but highly profitable.

It always amazes me how a business can be built out of anything, "fork lift battery inventory" You just need to find a pain point.

Surprisingly, its such a pain point that a company would spend $50,000 - 150,000 for a single installation.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#69

Post by ShellfishMeme » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 4:03 PM UTC

terhechte wrote: post #14

I'm a lone developer hacking away on a couple of Mac apps. I also have a few iPhone apps, but these generate little to no income. The Mac apps are better. Most notable is InstaDesk ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) which generates my main income and I can live off it thus living the dream (i.e. right now I'm sitting outside in a small cafe, enjoying the sun, watching people, and fixing a couple of bugs for the upcomin…

I just looked at http://www.instadesk-app.com and noticed that you forgot to add

    class="teaser-imag-container"

to two of your slider image containers. That causes the padding to be off and the images overlay the text. Just thought I'd tell you.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#70

Post by jakobe » Mon, Jul 23, 2012, 4:15 PM UTC

adambenayoun wrote: post #65

jakobe wrote: post #49

My Mac app grosses around 3k € / month ( http://jabakobob.net/mdbviewer/ ). Might not be much for someone living in SF, but it's more than my day job at an Austrian research institute pays.

Care to share your marketing channels? Are you spending money on Ads?

I assume most people find my app directly on the Mac App Store. There is the "Search App Store..." button that Mac OS displays when you double click an unknown file type. I think that's important for my app, but I have no numbers to back that up.

On the website, I get some hits from fileinfo.com. I also posted to a couple of forums where people asked how to open mdb files on a Mac. I tried to be as little spammy as possible, and always disclosed my affiliation with MDB Viewer when writing about it (for example see http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=27957 at the bottom of the page)

I provide really thorough documentation on my website. I hope that the docs double as search engine landing pages.

I tried Google Adwords (I got 100€ credit for free), but I don't know if that actually led to any sales. I didn't continue because it seemed too much of a hassle.

I don't do much analytics, so I have no clue how successful the different things I did were. I occasionaly check my website using awstats, and I check app sales with AppViz, and that's about it.