Making A Living (Barely) On The iPhone App Store (aka The Numbers Post)

The reviews in the app store for Flower Garden tell another side to this story. For example:<p>"It costs 2.99 just for the base app. It costs 99 cents for more pots. 99 cents for fertilizer (to get your flowers to grow faster, since some flowers take as long as a week) and now, for the new seeds of winter, you have to pay another 99 cents."<p>That seems like a legitimate complaint. But his numbers do suggest the IAP helped a lot. I wonder if he could have found an even better balance and eaked out a bit more money.

I'm very interested in that sort of business model - selling real or virtual products within a free application. I remember reading an article last year (<a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/06/eas-new-motto-please-pirate-our-games-er-storefronts.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/06/eas-new-motto-ple...</a>) wherein the CEO of EA Games claimed not to mind piracy of certain games which had products for sale in-game. Many websites and applications seem to be using it to great success - IMVU and the social site Gaia Online come to mind. Somehow it seems strange to me that users who are so hesitant to buy something outright will pour their money into it when it is ostensibly free.

Thought this was a very well written interesting article. What chart/graph software are you using, or is that a tool provided by apple?<p>BTW, graphs without labeled axises are a huge pet peeve (you can thank a certain georgia tech professor for dropping me a letter grade for that one).

Everyone's sales have gone up 100% post christmas. It's now what he did. By the way, if anyone wants to get into iPhone development or has an app, send me an email, I know a lot of tricks I can tell you that I don't want to make public yet.