$80k a month in ad revenue by making the following apps for $2k a pop on Elance?
Record Video for Free
911 Police Radio Free!
Battery Box 3-in-1
Find Sex Offenders Free!
Dash of Color FREE
MovieFX for Free
Convert Units for Free
FilterFX HDR Fisheye in 1
Fisheye for Free
FilterFX for Free
Flash for Free
HDR for Free
Convert Units Free HD
I know people are saying the gold rush is over, but that is ridiculous.
For me, this interview wasn't about creating another "iPhone gold rush" story. It was about understanding how they could build an app business without coding or designing. They even hire someone to write their descriptions for a few hundred bucks.
And they weren't afraid to make a slutty business. For every startupy person trying to 'change the world' and 'make a dent in the universe' with a me-too social network, there's five with a slutty free app business banking it each month.
This is a great point. Looking at these apps, they're certainly not anything like ConvertBot or Instagram. As an app developer myself, I think I could have easily made most of these apps in my spare time without a ton of design skill, yet they're really successful. Definitely food for though.
What food for thought? Choose to throw your life away on meaningless shit so you can say you made some money, or do something you care about?
Most of us here could easily make a $200k consulting a year.
Does it make you happy?
No.
Would making shite apps and essentially scamming people make most of the people here happy?
No.
You gotta remember that the kind of person who does this kind of shit is basically a bit of a social pariah, a social retard. They're no different from the internet 'marketers' or the online pharmacies or any of that crap.
They don't care a bit about supplying shit and calling it gold.
To me there's not even a moment's thought about this kind of stuff, I have no respect for people making crap like this, only pity. To waste your life conning other people is a tragedy, not a triumph.
I think making massive money on crap that enables you to spend time on things you actually do value - be they other apps, a family, hobby or passion to save the world - is a perfectly valid way to live life.
Your post sounds like nothing more than sour grapes.
Well, have fun doing your human exploitation startups. It's not for me, I can't do it.
It's just not in me. It's not sour grapes, it's just utter incomprehension on why anyone would spend their life exploiting others. I just don't understand the motivation behind it.
I actually do not think it's a perfectly valid way of life, I think it's evil and sociopathic. But that's my opinion and you have yours.
Depends... making money on crap (that the market and people want) is OK as long as you use it to spend time on things that you think would be useful for people, the society. Spending this time (i.e. money) on yourself (family, hobby, whatnot) is not ethical.
Photo cropping, unit conversion, and medical dictionary apps were some the examples mentioned. They don't misrepresent their offerings, they fulfill a legitimate need, they aren't spamming -- you have to search out and install it -- and the apps are free. If you aren't happy with the product you can readily delete it. I have a hard time seeing how anyone is being 'conned' here. Clearly it's not a huge contribution to society, but what's the injustice that has got you so riled up?
There's a wide yawning gulf of difference between $17000 a month and $80000 a month. One is the average for a senior SW rockstar in the Valley and can afford you a nice 3BR/2BA "meh" house in SF that may very well be on the border of Sketchytown; the other (if consistent and/or repeatable) is Burj al-Arab 3000 square foot suite on holiday, owning condo a short walk to the Marina and the Palace of Fine Arts, FU money.
And, what makes you think they aren't doing something they care about? They are attacking niches within the app store with extreme prejudice. And, that in itself is allowing them to do whatever they feel like doing. The ultimate goal of building a business is to gain the resources to help you manage your _time_ the way you see fit, whether that is through philanthropic causes, building lasting businesses in other areas, self-actualization, focusing on the family, or examining the finer things in life. The #1 goal on DHH's and Zuck's and Ballmer's mind-- the double super secret final endzone fat lady singing goal-- is money. Let's _never_ forget that.
And, how is making derivative apps and giving it away to make ad revenue "shite"? It's simply another avenue to success. I guess patio11 should just hang his head in shame for working on "yet another work scheduler app". This line of thinking is just lazy and supremely pompous.
Moreover, how does conducting a very public and financially candid interview merit being called "a social retard?" That's just such a vicious and insulting attack that I can't even begin to see why anyone would upvote it. Pathetic. And, the envy in you is so deep and bile-ridden as to be wading in it.
With all due respect, I think you need to step off of your high horse and realize that there is value created, even in crappy apps that spam. Sure it's not as "beautiful" as a well done app that took many man hours of creation/polishing, etc. but it gets the job done and gives access to some people who may not otherwise have it.
Also, making cash in order to buy the freedom to do the things that make you happy I believe is righteous.
Further, I fail to see how their actions are "scamming people"? They are creating FREE apps. If the user doesn't like it, they can delete it. It is not as though they are SELLING subpar apps and then giving people the finger when they as for a refund. There is no scam in a value for value transaction and, by downloading a free app, it seems to me they ought to expect them not to be of the highest quality and/or to have ads.
As a college student juggling far too many small contracting jobs, a 15 hour/ week part time job, and a relatively intense courseload, I find myself saying similar things. I could drop out, quit my part time job, and probably make significant money consulting/contracting. Yet something inside me says that would be meaningless.
Have you tried the apps? Clearly, a lot of people found them useful. So, on what basis are you calling it crap? Just because they outsourced the development and a made a lot of money?
I think they are more likely to be scamming advertisers than people. I get what you mean, many many people around here could make these kind of apps if they were so motivated to.
It's the same with online ads, should I just fill my site with mobile phone charging ads because they give me the best CPM or should I put ads there that actually may benefit a user?
At a glance, for sure- there's a few where they didn't, but for the most part they did a solid job of it.
For the ones where they didn't, I'd guess (based on nothing but a glance) that they depended on cross-selling to get rank traffic, instead of search to get rank traffic.
Yeah, the most interesting takeaway for me is how far these guys got with a relatively small amount of effort by picking the right apps to work on. For example, there are literally hundreds of unit converters in the App Store right now, and they shipped another one anyway to great success, because the demand for such apps are still so high.
It does illustrate that there is still tons of money to be made in the App Store for building the right apps.
FWIW, I have the myConvert iPhone app and am very pleased with it. I've looked at the free unit conversion that go by, but haven't found one that shows multiple conversions on a single screen like myConvert does.
It is. One of the reasons I posted this interview is that on top of doing $80k in monthly revenue, the founders are big Tim Ferriss fans and only spend an average of five hours per week on this project - one of the founders still works a full time job.
Doesn't matter if I like my job or not, if I am making 80k/month from my side business, I am definitely going to quit my day job and concentrate on my full business.
These guys struck me more like frat boys than SW Devs. They both said they are SW Eng but they totally shied away from going into any details about that. They didn't know any of their stats. Andrew had to walk them through their profitability numbers, wtf?
Used to be SW devs. I used to do .NET programming for a big DOD contractor, then worked for a local internet startup for while, but why talk about my old career? That would have been boring. Plus as we tried to explain, at some point you have to let go and not micro manage every individual stat and app. I'm sure if we did that we could make some more money by optimizing, but that's not what our business approach was about. We wanted simple, stress free which gives us time to do other things. We're not experts, we don't have a degree in business or anything like that. Just 2 27 year old guys from San Diego who wanted to make a couple iphone apps.
I've actually been doing development since senior year high school. Started with ASP then PHP, .net, c#, java with gwt. I don't know if I'll ever do any of my own development again though. I do enjoy programming, but I enjoy doing other things more honestly =).
