How to make money from iPhone Apps
How to make money with iPhone applications? – It may seem like a daunting prospect but if you hit on a popular idea – no matter how simple it may seem – you stand to earn a nice amount of cash (after Apple take their 30% cut of course!).
Since the inception of Apple iTunes App Store in 2003, millions of people have downloaded apps from not just large software companies but also small, independent developers. In the first 60 days of operation, 100 million downloads were achieved and its popularity has grown and grown.
The iPhone and iPod Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) has enabled people to become developers overnight and has allowed them to earn huge sums. Small time programmers have embraced the relatively low learning curve from what they were already programming in and have been able to make use of the touch screen technology with prebuilt code modules. There are now numerous businesses setting up whose primary focus is on developing iPhone applications. After all, what other business do you know of that for no initial outlay other than time can earn millions?
iFart Mobile app
Take the iFart Mobile, a 99-cent “fart machine for all ages,” developed by Joel Comm, which staid as the top downloaded iPhone app in Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes App Store for a good week or so netting the developer well over $100,000 in royalties over that short period. One year on that figure probably stands at treble that!
It would also seem that christmas and other holidays are great times to release apps. Joel himself said that his sales per unit increased by 50% during the 2 days of xmas (24th and 25th). Imagine earning $27,249 in one day – that’s the power of iPhone apps! It’s often the simplest ideas that spawn the most popularity. The iFart app just caught App store users imagination – most of them probably thinking “that’ll be a laugh for work tomorrow!”. Of course, when you start earning a lot of money in the iTunes store, like many other industries, you can often get people’s backs up as was the case with Joe Comms iFart. A similar app, released shortly before iFart was called ‘Pull my finger’ released by Eric Stratton.
Pull my finger vs iFart application Court Case
The video below shows how the dispute has ended up going to the Supreme Court of Justice!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| iFeud | ||||
|
||||
Air-O-Matic and Eric Stratton of ‘Pull my finger’ and Joe Comm ’s InfoMedia are still locked in battle over unfair business practices and trademark infringement. InfoMedia claims the term “pull my finger” is common English slang and a “descriptive phrase” and therefore not covered by trademark. Apple says “sort it our amongst yourselves!”.
There are of course plenty of other examples of how to make money from selling iPhone and iPod applications.
Steve Demeter, developer of iPhone game Trism
After an initial expenditure of $5000 on developing the game, Steve is selling it for $5 a go on iTunes Store. Doesn’t seem that much for $5k but just 2 months after releasing the game to the world, Steve Demeter ’s company raked in $250,000 profit….sorry, $245,000 net profit! He ended up breaking the $2 million mark 8 months later.
Demeter offers the following advice to wouldbe app developers – make sure your app includes unique gameplay; high replay value and an online leaderboard to help build up a community.
It obviously will involve a certain amount of luck to have a hit app in the iPhone App Store. However, you can certainly increase your chances by having a useful product and marketing it across the social platforms effectively. Word-of-mouth is a really effective tool for marketing – using sites like Twitter can mean you start to build an online marketplace for your app within days. Of course, also having a well designed website with a strong internet marketing campaign can work wonders – visit Web Design Showroom and see what they can offer you.
So why don’t you start on the road to making money from selling iphone apps: iPhone App Developer.
