Who are the indie iOS developers?

    Hi,

    I was inspired to write this short essay by the article iOS development as a lottery: 59% do not beat back the costs .

    The main conclusions that I learned from reading it: “iOS-development is a lottery, the profitability of an application practically does not depend on quality, promotion is essential for success.”

    I can only agree with the last thesis about promotion. The payback statistics presented in the article are completely useless and demonstrate the classic “average temperature in a hospital”. And that's why.

    Those same iOS developers, which operates in statisticsApp Promo is a completely different people. The fact is that most of them never considered development for iOS as a business or simply never took it seriously.


    To demonstrate this, just go to the iPhoneDevSDK website and look at the work of most developers, they speak for themselves. One example illustrating the situation: many people want to make money, but the vast majority of indie developers are not at all ready to pay for the design:


    Survey on iPhoneDevSDK Facebook


    voting for Indie App & Game Developers

    As can be seen from both illustrations - many want to earn money, while not investing anything other than their time. If the first schedule is still not so bad (since there are people who opened their own studios on iPhoneDevSDK), then on the second we have a picture where, out of 27 people, 21 said that they do not spend money on design and do everything themselves, two There is a design partner, and only 4 people pay for the design.
    The exact same thing happens with application localization. Very rarely, an application is localized, trying to save on this.
    Promotion is usually the last thing they put off. Although I know a couple of developers with a zero budget for a designer and a small budget for promotion. As I understand it, this approach works, but very rarely. In my opinion, it is better to spend this money on a quality icon and / or UI.

    Moreover, all these people are called in one word - indie developer, although there are quite large differences. I would highlight 3 types of “indie”:
    1. Small companies (yes, they also call themselves indie!)
    2. Independent Jedi developers who do this seriously (most often full time)
    3. People With iOS Dev Hobbies


    Companies

    With the first category, everything is clear. These are either real companies or simply established teams of independent developers, designers, marketers, etc.

    Jedi

    The second category is people who earn money for their existence (or at least try) with iOS development. They have a serious approach, they have budgets for design, promotion, etc. According to my observations in Dublin, such developers in 1-2 years will either start their companies themselves, or together with other developers. Actually, of those whom I knew 2 years ago in the second category, 100% of the people moved to category 1.

    Lovers

    The third category is the most massive. I do not have accurate statistics, but I'm more than sure that the figure is close to 90% or even exceeds this figure. Everything is very colorful here. Someone decided to try it "for themselves" and put out a free application, someone succumbed to the "gold rush", someone decided to earn some "pocket" money. Actually, this category “spoils” the statistics of the first two in terms of payback applications. There are not so many success stories here, much less than all sorts of businessmen following the principle of “20 clones of 5 bucks a week give 100 bucks a week” :)

    Instead of a conclusion

    Naturally, like any other business, iOS development does not guarantee profit. There is no “silver bullet” that makes iOS business not only payback, but also profitable, and you are a millionaire. But, in my opinion, this is still a pretty attractive niche. And the problem is no longer in the huge number of applications and poor “visibility” (there are still not so many really high-quality applications), but in the fact that the flow of applications of various quality has fallen off prices. If 2 years ago the iPhone app for $ 4.99 or $ 7.99 was quite normal, now it is more an exception to the rule.

    A quote from the original article on ArsTechnica with which I completely agree:
    Developers would be better served by investing more strongly in fewer, better apps, trying to build a real business,
    Developers would make better money by investing more money and effort in creating fewer, better applications and trying to build a real business on it.
    Brent Simmons , former NetNewsWire developer

    The author, and who are you?

    I belong at the moment to the 3rd category of developers. My application paid back the direct costs of design, website and the purchase of a test iPad for a month and a half. For almost a year, it has brought a small profit, which is called "for beer." I already described the creation process in an article on Habr . At the moment, I have almost finished the second version of the application, which, I hope, will increase sales by a couple of times. I already described the creation process in an article on Habr .
    Not so long ago, I decided to take a chance - quit, move back to Ireland and open a small application development company. Let's see what happens :)

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