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.
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.
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.
Patio11 has argued forcefully that developers systematically neglect women and underserve that large market; I wonder if we can add to that 'and developers also ignore religious markets too'?
Some markets are hard to serve if you are not in the market segment yourself. I'm not sure that an atheist developer "serving the religious market" with a Bible app is necessarily going to be successful. It helps to read the Bible on a regular basis yourself (on your device and off) so that you know what people want. For example, it is often slower for me to find a specific passage in the iPhone Bibles than in the physical book, which is problematic if I am trying to follow along the sermon, since the passage is often finished by the time I locate it in the app. This might not be something that an atheist developer would discover.
Likewise, if I tried to develop a Qur'an app, it might not work so well, because I have no idea how a Muslim uses the Qur'an. Of course, I could go talk to a bunch and write an ok version, but I'm sure it wouldn't be as good as an app that a Muslim would write (given a developer of equivalent skills).
Really, developers ignore every demographic that they aren't a part of. There's a reason "suits" are often at the head of large creative focused corporations and compromise artistic integrity to make things more palatable to their target markets. Market research and knowledge is a very real thing that product focused developers often completely ignore or rely on instincts of unknown quality.
> Really, developers ignore every demographic that they aren't a part of.
Unfortunately, that is not really a meaningful thing to say as a guide to behavior: it's like suggesting that someone sell non-apples - meaningful, not wrong, and useless advice. You need to know what demographics developers aren't before that can be useful; you need to know, say, that developers tend to be male, white/Asian, First Worlders, before you can say 'ah, females may be underserved!'
And you need to think of the categories in the first place, like this religion example shows. If someone asks you if developers might tend to not be fans of religion than the general population, it might seem obvious, but 'being atheists' is not the most salient feature of developers.
The book "design is how it works" has some great examples of how successful companies started, and got their design right. It is often a case of: scratching your own itch.
Developers should become part of other demographics, so they start to feel other people's itches. Understanding the itch is the best way to create the right product.
I think this is a condition of most humans, not just developers.
When you pitch a product idea to someone many will come back with "but who would buy that?" when it turns out, there's TONS of stuff me, you, and my mom would never buy... that literally thousands of other people would.
I agree with everything except your last clause. :)
Most people do over think. But it really depends on your goals. If you're only looking for a small side income there's no reason to try something 100% new.
Sticking it out too long on these small projects can be dangerous though. We probably agree here more than not, but the trick is knowing when to drop something. If it's not selling and there's nothing fatally wrong with it, I say stop and move on.
When to give up is certainly one of the most interesting questions in start-up land, and side projects are certainly easier to give up on than businesses that involve other people.
Maybe it's the persistence of business that makes so much invention come from commerce. People in their garage get bored, people at work get paid to keep trying.
Yes, but what about those "lucky" developers who live in countries where selling apps is not available in both - apple appstore and google play markets?
Are there any other channels for selling apps?
I "Ask HN"-ed this but didn't get much attention...
For Apple app store, that list seems to correspond more to where App store is available to users. It might not correspond to the same list for developers.
Got your point, but web app is a different story. I want to simply put the paid app on the app store.
The thing is, it is not only for the submission, but one needs to have, for instance, address, bank account... So you would have to ask your friend quite often, which is not comfortable and scalable.
EDIT:
@ambiate - Sorry, didn't get your question, could you please clarify.
> 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.
Well you do also need money to actually put the app up ;)
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.
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.