Gold digging on the App Store

The iTunes App Store has been wildly successful and created quite a few wealthy developers in the process. Interestingly, there’s been several sob stories from developers who have overextended themselves, causing near or below break-even results for their hard work and investment.

In itself, that’s unfortunate. What we’ve found a little strange is mainstream media’s take on these stories, making it sound like that was anything but an obvious outcome.

I’d go as far as saying that most of the App Store’s success stories have been from individuals or companies who were already developers, not gold-rush-induced capitalists with aspirations to become overnight millionaires.

If you’re not a programmer or a designer, you need to seriously ask yourself what you’re bringing to the table. Ideas are a dime a dozen—it’s the execution that makes great apps excel. This doesn’t mean non-coders and non-designers shouldn’t release iPhone apps, but they should realise that their situation comes with more risk and financial investment attached—they’re competing against people who are more comfortable with the platform and have less time and costs getting to market.

How long is a piece of string?

“Most apps take at least six months of full-time work and cost between $20,000 and $150,000 to develop, according to Forrester Research, which covers the tech industry.”

While large games and corporate tie-ins are likely to take a long time to develop, it seems like Forrester’s numbers are way off for indy developers.

With the exception of iStat, none of our apps have taken longer than two months for our two-man dev team to develop (iStat only took longer if you take the Mac app and Dashboard Widgets into consideration). That places most apps we have experience with on the skinny end of Forrester’s scale, even if you assume a decent salary. The feedback we’ve been getting from other indy developers echos a similar story.

Weightbot and Convertbot — 3 months part-time for one programer and one designer.
Tweetie 2 — 4 months full-time for one developer.
tramTRACKER — 2 months full-time for one developer.
Cellar — 2.5 months full and part-time for two programers and one designer.
Barista — 2.5 months full and part-time for one programer and one designer.
Footy Lite — Less than 1 month full-time for one developer.
iTweetReply — 2 months part-time for two programers.
Pocket Weather AU — 1 month part-time for two programers.
iiQuota — 3 months full-time for one developer.
Age of Curling — 3 months full-time for one developer.
Postman — 3 months part-time for one developer.

Please note that the development times are for the initial version, not the subsequent versions or time taken to support the app. Development times have been sourced from the companies or individuals themselves.

Assess the risk

“Then came the expenses: $29,000 for programmers, $15,000 living costs, $14,000 to Apple, $7,000 for marketing, $5,000 for legal and administrative services, $4,000 for logo and Web-site art, and $1,800 in loan repayment.”

Calculating your profit is dangerously simple: Revenue - Expenses = Profit.

You only have limited control over revenue (beyond choosing worthy ideas, building quality apps and being clever about marketing), so be smart about expenses.

Out-sourcing some components you can’t handle yourself can lift the quality of your product, but out-sourcing the entire project is probably the fastest path to failure. If nothing else, your app will be built by people who aren’t as passionate about it as you are. They might care about the project, but they won’t care as much.

Don’t be wildly unrealistic about the potential of your niche app either. The idea you’ve had is not Flight Control. Even Flight Control required some luck to become Flight Control.

Work hard, love what you do

At Bjango, we don’t publicly talk about money. I don’t know why, we just don’t. It’s not the main yardstick we use for our success. However, the App Store has enabled the two founding members of Bjango to work full time on apps, earning more than they did previously. It’s let us employ a full time support person, a part time finance/PR person and given us the chance to work with some talented contractors for some apps we plan to release towards the end of the year and beyond. It’s given us a complete lifestyle change (and for that, we’re grateful).

Boom or bust?

There is a mid-point between overnight hit and disastrous failure. However, if money is your primary motivator, then you’ve probably already lost the battle.