[HN Gopher] My first attempt at iOS app development
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My first attempt at iOS app development
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 36 points
Date : 2025-06-05 04:02 UTC (3 days ago)
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| earthnail wrote:
| The author will learn the hard way that their proposed, fair
| pricing model won't even pay a solo dev.
|
| Making reasonable money on iOS is hard, like, really hard, and
| just having a good product is definitely not enough.
|
| Sorry to sound so pessimistic; I just want to emphasise that
| monetisation and marketing is at least as important on iOS as
| product development.
| Spivak wrote:
| But it might buy you a nice vacation on top of your $dayjob for
| an app that's probably very low maintenance.
|
| Certainly not bad for three days work.
| amelius wrote:
| How do you know what they make? Maybe it's only $100? For
| three days work, that's terrible.
| neepi wrote:
| I had an idea years ago for an app but came to the same
| conclusion after some market research and a risk assessment so
| didn't bother. I do not regret that decision for a moment.
|
| I either have to put enough time into the idea to do it full
| time or do a shitty job. I can't win either way without
| incurring massive risks so I will continue to part time two
| jobs and invest the earnings from those wisely instead.
| heliographe wrote:
| Yes, making money on iOS is an uphill climb, many times more so
| if you're not playing the TikTok ads and subscription model.
|
| I've been making iOS software independently for almost 2 years
| now (https://heliographe.studio) and am about ramen profitable.
|
| A few notes in case OP (or anyone interested in making some
| money in the App Store) is reading:
|
| - you have to make the app free to download, and quickly
| demonstrate value then show a paywall if you want any
| purchases. Paid upfront just does not work unless you're an
| already recognized product.
|
| I had some apps that were paid upfront, and would mostly get $0
| days. Switching to free to download immediately brought me to a
| slow but steady trickle of daily downloads, and from there you
| just have to work on your conversion rate.
|
| - but that's still going to be pretty low, if you want any
| meaningful user acquisition, you're going to have to go look
| for the kind of people who might be interested in your product.
| The broader your potential audience is, the harder that's going
| to be (but that's why TikTok ads can work so well). In my case,
| choosing to focus on a somewhat niche area (tools for
| photography) is helpful; there's a strong photography community
| going on Threads and regularly posting on there yields good
| results (for now...)
|
| - $2.99 is dramatically underselling yourself, especially if
| you offer a quality product that you put time to craft to your
| standards and has no tracking, no subscription, no ads, etc.
| You should play with pricing to see what the sweet spot in
| terms of conversion is, but in my experience it's always worth
| it to start at least at $4.99/$7.99 for these sort of utility
| apps. Of course, the design of your funnel/paywall will make a
| huge difference (ie you'll likely sell more of an app marked as
| $4.99 at 50% off, than just $4.99)
|
| - learn about what makes for good App Store screenshots,
| descriptions, how keywords work, etc. Ariel from App Figures
| has some good videos on YouTube about what they see and what
| seems to work based on their data.
|
| The days where you could make a little app, chuck it on the App
| Store for $.99, and have it just blow up are well over. If you
| want to make any money on the App Store (even if to just pay
| back for your Apple Developer membership), you have to put as
| much effort, if not more, in the marketing and promotion of
| your product than you put in the design & development of it.
| It's a grind for sure -- and don't count on Apple to help you
| in any way (by and large they seemed more interested to promote
| games and dating apps with $49.99/mo subscriptions than small
| indies doing interesting things).
|
| Good luck! Eager to try your app :)
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| With the recent Expo SDK 53 update that introduced a slew of
| breaking changes, I've been contemplating switching my app to
| native. I could perhaps vibe code features on both android and
| iOS and ship features as fast as crossplatform react native devs.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Could you share which issues you had with the upgrade to 53? I
| just recently migrated my employer's app to sdk 52. We are
| still on legacy arch for now. I'd love to know more about what
| I'm in for when it comes to upgrading to 53.
| RASBR89 wrote:
| The Photos app has a delicates option - not that I want to piss
| on your parade but the functionality is already present? Or am I
| missing something?
| tabarnacle wrote:
| Didn't realize this existed, nice.
| sebasvisser wrote:
| Funny how the same desire got both of us into building more or
| less the same app:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/xyz-photo/id6602894199
|
| Yours looks sleeker though. One thing I learned quickly after
| having friends use it..other people want different things and
| catering to more than just myself takes soooo much time.
|
| So I stick to building what I want and releasing it for free.
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