My First Year in the App Store

I was actually really excited by the "...you can get the next 9 posts delivered to your email by signing up here:" at the bottom. I like it. I like email, because I can read it anywhere and filter it any way I want. I dislike unsubscribing from email updates about as much as I dislike getting updates I'll never read. By making it easy to get emailed only about a story I've already demonstrated interest in (by reading all the way through), you've made sure I'll come back for your next 9 posts.<p>I'd like to see more people use something like this.<p>Or, if I've misunderstood how this works...well, the concept was exciting.

Whenever anyone complains to me that its hard to make money on software, and/or the App Store is rigged, I always tell them I think anyone can make a living by making a bible app. You don't even have to be the best one, just pretty good, and iterate - it's the canonical product that you know has a big audience, willing buyers, and poor competition on the low end of the market.<p>Case proven by this guy! The next time you think to yourself that there is anything needed to make money on software besides persistence, thoughtfulness, and picking something you know people want, you're in a trap of your own creation.<p>People who don't make money on their apps typically fail because they try to be too novel, try to make the app too good, or they don't stick in there long enough.

I'd be interested to hear how you marketed the app. Just building an app seems to be only half (or less) of the battle these days, as far as App Store success goes.<p>I've got seven apps on the App Store, and combined they usually don't even bring in $200/mo. Discouraging.

Thanks for writing this. It's very insightful.<p>One question - do you have any interest in spanish and/or the bible, or is this purely a business exercise?

It's a good reminder to me, as a developer, that people simply buy (or use) what they want, not what <i>I</i> think they want.

I'm curious what translation you used (I signed up for the rest of the posts but haven't got through them).<p>Most modern English translations of the Bible are copyrighted and often you can only quote/print a limited number of verses without paying licensing. (I think the best public domain version is probably the ASV from 1901).<p>Did you license a spanish version of the Bible? Pay someone to translate a modern one? If so, were there legal hurdles to translating a copyrighted version?

I thought the App Store had a rule that you couldn't submit an app that was essentially a 'book or a film' how did you get around that?

Fascinating example of finding and successfully filling an under-served niche. I would have never thought of creating this kind of app.<p>It makes me contemplate - how can you break out of your filter bubble to come up with and test product ideas for markets you can't even imagine exist because they are so far from your experience?

The coolest part of this post, IMO, is that by finding that niche you freed yourself up to work on whatever you want to work on. Legitimate residual income.

Religious products are big sellers. Specially anything that has to do with the bible or prayers. I used to sell bibles as a teenager. Made more money than drug dealers. It was funny. But then I went ad turned atheist. I could no longer sell itwith a clean conscience.

Is there a link to the app on the app store? Or did I miss it?

My server is struggling, here's a cached version for the interested:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-year-in-the-app-store/" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...</a>

This sounds very interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more.<p>How much time did you spend researching potential app categories?<p>Was your category decision driven by any hard data, other than anecdotal knowledge that Spanish bibles were a category that was selling and had search volume?

Great idea, did it cost much to record the Bible as an audiobook?

trevmckendrick - good to see the app do well! If you remember I (Sleepyhead) helped with the email forms. We pleasantly surprised to see the post here :)

Nice work for sure.<p>One thing that rang true, $73k isn't the sort of money that gets VCs going but that's full time salary for a lot of people. Making money on the app store is definitely possible, but we're no longer seeing the half a million in sales in one month figures we did at the start. Does that mean you can't make living from the App Store? No, it just means being realistic.

Very surprised by that type of revenue. What kind of marketing did you put into it?<p>Without marketing, my first app on the store went as follows:<p>&#62; The next morning (and literally every day since) I woke up and first thing checked my email for that magical message from AppFigures. My total day one net sales? $0.70. Admittedly not very much.

Congrats on the success! Can you share a link to your app?<p>Also, do you think the only way to get discovered (for indie devs) is to pick app ideas that will match nicely to keywords that users search for? If you don't have a marketing budget, is there any other way to get discovered?

Is that a scroll bar down the right side? Seems poorly placed if you expect people to touch on the right side to advance a page.

Nicely done! I'd love to hear more about the marketing efforts that went into promoting the app.

I'm sure you'll make it clear in later posts, but are you a developer?

Great first article in the series. Can't wait for the rest.

Nice! Even the most frugal of people will shell out some money when it comes to religion.