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Costs of running a macOS app studio business

notes.alinpanaitiu.com

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Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#161

Post by alin23 »

codingcodingboy wrote: post #116
alin23 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offense seems to be the only thing you do around here. I know I’m privileged, I work with unprivileged people to help them get better sometimes and that is probably the best way to feel how much inequality there is between us. Having a lot of money relative to the place you live in doesn’t guarantee your happiness. Privilege means nothing in the face of illness of a loved one, having to live with parents at 30 becaus…

I don't want to be negative and it's great to see what you've accomplished, the problems you are mentioning and alluding to are unfortunately not exclusive to your country, I could share some horror stories too and I come from the "developed and rich" western europe. The point is that the net income you get is very high for european standars, let alone Romania. With that level of income it is really weird that you ca…

Bonkers it is yet it’s true. The house prices are a joke right now here. I don’t know what drives such prices, 95% of Romanians will never be able to afford a €200k house with 50sqm of paved courtyard in front. Supply and demand my ass…

Believe me, I’m so sick of “calling for details” because everyone hides most useful details in the house ad, then asking if it has paperwork ready which most don’t and expect you to buy the house based on how the house looked 20 years ago before heavy renovations with the cheapest materials possible, then spending numbing hours on trains to get to see that house in real life only to see how many lies were said on the phone and how that house would never be evaluated at more than half its price…

That above is extremely common, I’ve been going through this for the past 4 years and I’m So. Sick. Of. It.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#163

Post by p4bl0 »

> - App Store commission fee (small business 15%): $2.3k > - VAT, Sales Tax, foreign currency exchange fees: $1.1k

I find it horrifying that Apple takes such a big part of the revenue (and at the same time still forces developers to May for a membership program). It's double the taxes the benefit everyone and not just Apple shareholders. That's insane.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#164

Post by [deleted] »

croemer wrote: post #108
pard68 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "social insurance"?

Literal translation from a language such as German, French or the like. The right translation would be payroll tax, all sorts of mandatory insurances like health, unemployment, retirement (continental Europe has a few more mandatory items than US)

[deleted]

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#165

Post by zerr »

croemer wrote: post #114
zerr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except Europe EU, I suppose. What happens when you collect VAT from EU customers? Do you have to transfer to each of EU countries? Is it enforced somehow? What if you don't collect VAT at all? Technically speaking, EU customers buy stuff on your site, not in EU. E.g. they also buy stuff from US Amazon.com and don't pay any VAT. Especially for digital goods - there is no need for an EU delivery address.

European Economic Area to be precise (i.e. Norway, Switzerland etc abide by the same rules). Yes, if you're not a tiny business (OP isn't tiny) you have to pay VAT to each end customer's country. Though you can declare it in your home country to reduce bureaucracy. VAT law is well developed, what matters is the location of the end customer, not where the seller is, so your technically speaking isn't how it works. Wro…

EEA might demand their citizens to pay the VAT, but how can it demand/enforce this e.g. for some company in Vietnam? What happens when EEAians buy goods in Vietnam with EEA bank's credit cards, e.g. in a not-tiny restaurant? Is the VAT cancelled because they are physically in Vietnam for the time being?

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#166

Post by sebastianz »

hereonout2 wrote: post #74
IshKebab wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems implausible. I looked it up and the first result was: > A one-room apartment in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Brasov, Sibiu or other big cities will cost from €350 to €500 per month Good luck finding that in Manchester!

I just found a newly built 7 bedroom villa with pool in Bucharest for under €500k, not ideal as it's near the airport but if anyone could point to an equivalent in the Manchester metropolitan area I'd be very interested. Also found an entire building on Bucharest's second busiest street Magheru Blvd for €1.4M. Out of my price range unfortunately but it does include 12 separate 3 bedroom apartments, a floor of offices…

> Also found an entire building on Bucharest's second busiest street Magheru Blvd for €1.4M. Out of my price range unfortunately but it does include 12 separate 3 bedroom apartments, a floor of offices, and a restaurant, cafe and art gallery at street level.

This sounds extremely dubious and I would not take that into account in any relevant real estate price for central Bucharest :)

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#167

Post by alin23 »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #158

Yeah, but how many hours have you actually worked with all these apps? You make them once, but then I don't imagine you spend 8 hours a day supporting them. So your hourly wage with the apps is, likely, much more than $120/hr.

Indeed, I can take days and sometimes even weeks off fixing things in Lunar, those hours do add up. I still spend a significant amount of those days answering support emails and Discord chats though, there’s just so much an FAQ can help in highly specialized monitor setups. It also took 2 years of 8-12h work days to reach this state of quasi-stability.

And it was my choice to build more apps and continue spending that earned free time writing code instead of using it all for outside stuff. Mostly because I still need more money to buy my own place.

But you’re right, in the end everything will add up and I’ll hopefully have my own place and I’ll be left with enough free time and some of those apps will still sell well enough to make a living. Compound growth is real here, I’ll be getting a lot more worth than $120/hr.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#168

Post by anovikov »

>doing something that you feel it has no purpose in the real world

Bingo! In fact, i've been doing custom dev for my entire career and i developed an instinct that instantly tells me a good client from a bad one. If something clearly has no purpose in the real world, is an absurd bullshit, then i know it's a good project and worth taking. That's just how business works, a natural law of competition: if something makes any sense and provides any value to people, there will be a lot of talented, energetic people doing it so competition will be insane => no money to be made.

After all, it's all just a game, in the end of which money either falls on your account or it doesn't. It's not supposed to make any sense in the first place, otherwise it's no longer a job, it's a hobby.

Re: Costs of running a macOS app studio business

#169

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

alin23 wrote: post #161
codingcodingboy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be negative and it's great to see what you've accomplished, the problems you are mentioning and alluding to are unfortunately not exclusive to your country, I could share some horror stories too and I come from the "developed and rich" western europe. The point is that the net income you get is very high for european standars, let alone Romania. With that level of income it is really weird that you ca…

Bonkers it is yet it’s true. The house prices are a joke right now here. I don’t know what drives such prices, 95% of Romanians will never be able to afford a €200k house with 50sqm of paved courtyard in front. Supply and demand my ass… Believe me, I’m so sick of “calling for details” because everyone hides most useful details in the house ad, then asking if it has paperwork ready which most don’t and expect you to b…

To my ears, supply and demand sounds like it makes a lot of sense here. Romania began as a country where most people owned their home, and still is; and it sounds like making the move from owning to renting comes with significant loss of political privileges, like healthcare, apparently. If I didn't speak English and would lose access to healthcare if I sold my house, I probably wouldn't sell it either unless it was absolutely necessary. Hence the supply is low, and when you throw corruption on top of that...

OP, consider moving to a country where renting doesn't turn you into a second class citizen if this really bothers you so much. It's counterintuitive, but you'll probably find the property markets to also be more sane there.

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