zshakked

Hm. I want to say zero because I built 7 apps that literally went nowhere. I'm talking less than 5 downloads a day. I don't think I really got lucky. If anything I got unlucky because you'd think that I would've been able to at least have had a semi-successful app after 5 or 6.

The idea for Command came because I was pissed off at how crappy and redundant all the other Instagram stats apps were and thought I could do a better job. What I learned is that you are better off finding validation before you build you app. If I had known that from the beginning, I think it would've been relatively easy to build an app that the market wanted.

Absolutely. I remember very vividly about a year and half ago feeling absolutely restless. I had been pouring hours upon hours into my apps and was not making more than a couple hundred dollars a month. I had nothing to show for my hard work so people often thought I was being lazy by not getting a job or taking my schooling seriously.

To learn iOS, I highly recommend buying a book (Check out Big Nerd Ranch) rather than doing random online tutorials. The structure that a book can provide is crucial for building your foundation as an iOS Developer.

In terms of building an app that's successful, look through the Top Grossing or Most Downloaded categories and find apps that suck. Believe me, there are a lot of them that haven't been updated in years, have ugly design, and sometimes don't even work. Then, create a competitor app that does everything better than the crappy app.

The truth is, if an app had made it to the Top Grossing or Most Downloaded, it has already proved validation (there is a demand for that idea). So you know that if you build a competitor app, people will already be searching for similar apps.

Things never really took off. It was very incremental growth over the course of months and years. A fews month ago, BuzzFeed quickly mentioned the app in one of their videos which gave it a big boost, but other than that, it has been very gradual growth.

Ads, from my experience, are really hard to make money with because you need sooooo many people on your app. Plus, they ruin the experience in the app IMO.

The best way that I've found is with auto-renewable subscriptions. I think a lot of developers are leaving money on the table when they charge a flat fee for an app or feature. There are plenty of people out there who recognize value and are willing to pay month to month for it. From these users, you end up making a lot more money over time then you would have if you just sold the feature by itself.

The most crucial part of making money of an app though is to have a high-quality product that people enjoy or find useful. Nobody is going to pay for something crappy.