• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reefwing Software

  • Home
  • Apps
  • Blog
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Archives for sales

sales

May 6, 2014 by David Such Leave a Comment

How much money will my app make?

For many people the whole point of writing applications is to see them published in the App store and available for download from iTunes. Before you quit your job and go out and buy matching Porsche 911’s you would be wise to get a few months of sales data under your belt. Like most endeavours, there is a bell curve of app sales. Everyone hears about Angry Birds developers making $70m, but there is a lot less media coverage at the other end of the bell curve.

In a recent survey of more than 1,500 developers in 83 countries, it was found that the average per-app revenue is roughly $1,200 to $3,900 depending on the platform. Additionally, the survey noted that an app has roughly a 35% chance of generating between $1 to $500. This obviously means that most developers cannot rely on app development as their main source of income. However, it does mean that if you put the effort in you can make enough to fund your development habit.

Our own experience is that you can never tell which Apps are going to be regular sellers (LifeGoals) and which will sink like a stone (LifeMovie). The Reefwing stable of Apps currently nets us around AUD$10k per annum, which is sufficient to purchase a MacBook Air, a new iPad, external development costs (Apple Developers Licence, App Sales Analytics, web-site and forum costs, etc.) plus a bit of change for the highly caffeinated beverages which programmers run on. Working mainly on on our contracted 3rd party apps we only work on these on the odd night and weekend so with more application we imagine the rewards would be better. The thing that we are no where near recovering is the time spent developing. The average App takes us about 3 months from start to finish and while the proceeds roll in for some years to come, it isn’t really passive income because sales quickly decline if you aren’t frequently updating your app.

However, lets face it – we would code if we didn’t get paid anything so anything we do get is a very pleasant upside. There is also something addictive about tracking the daily “sales” of you app (even if it is free).

The other thing that most developers don’t realise, is that the apps which are successful in the App store, have as much time and money spent on marketing their Apps as they do on developing them. There is the odd exception but these are an exception. Books have been written on this subject and we will provide our thoughts on the best approaches to marketing in another blog post.

Filed Under: App Development, Marketing Tagged With: app, development, marketing, profit, sales

Primary Sidebar

Email Newsletter

Sign up to the Reefwing Software mailing list to hear about new app releases and other company updates. We won't share your details with others.

Reefwing on Twitter

  • Loading tweets...

Follow @reefwing

Recent Posts

  • How to write your own flight controller software – Part 1. November 21, 2020
  • Interviews November 1, 2020
  • MineSweeper HD reviewed by GameKeys October 27, 2020
  • Arduino Servo/ESC Tester – adding the DShot ESC Protocol. May 28, 2020
  • Creating Custom SF Symbols May 13, 2020

Featured Posts

How to write your own flight controller software – Part 1.

November 21, 2020 By David Such Leave a Comment

We recently published a new article about writing your own flight controller software. Why would You? It is a reasonable question. There are a number of Open Source and proprietary quadcopter flight controllers with firmware available. The problem is we want to use an Arduino board, to fit in with our other training programs. As […]

Archives

  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • May 2014
  • April 2014

Search

Copyright © 2021 · Executive Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in