Ask HN: Any indie mobile app developers doing consistently well?

[coryl]

So I'm having a bit of a hard time keeping my income stream up. I have a couple of kids iOS apps that were once making me around $100/day near launch but fall to $30/day or less and continue falling each week.

App distribution is so dependent on app store rankings. In terms of marketing, I don't know of any cost effective ways to promote my apps. The way apps are found and downloaded is just so segregated from the outside world, its not like web marketing at all.

Anyone have advice or experience to share? Thanks

[aerique]

Assuming you aren't:

- Shouldn't you just be making more apps?

- Are you updating your existing apps regularly?

- Do you have web / flash versions online?

- Android versions supported by ads? (currently not very viable but might funnel people to the iOS versions)

Also, would you mind showing me the apps (e-mail is in profile). I'm curious what kind of kids apps would make $100/day at one point.

[coryl → aerique]

- I could be making more apps, but then I'd just be stuck in a cycle of replacing unoptimized income with newer apps. It seems horribly inefficient.

- I'm not updating them regularly. What would that do for me?

- No flash/web versions.

- I suppose I could do Android, however I'd probably outsource or partner with an android dev, there's no way I'd put up with the headache of supporting android devices.

- The apps are just kid's puzzle games, drag and drop the pieces to complete the picture. You can find tons of them on the app store. It's free to download and a $1.99 in app purchase to unlock the remaining puzzles.

[aerique → coryl]

Updating your apps keeps them on people's radar, allows you to add more features and to put out a press release (or blog post :-) ) in case of a big update.

My daughter's favourite on iOS has been Pocket God for a looong time mostly because of the updates they do regularly (which are essentially more of the same). You could just add more puzzles to your app, perhaps themed to Christmas, etc.

You could use (possibly limited) Flash / web versions to make people aware of the iOS apps.

[coryl → aerique]

Thanks for the ideas. In my experience, press releases don't do anything. There's just a million of them, and the only ones that get picked up by the mainstream are probably ones with lots of novelty value.

I could add a couple more puzzles in an update, but in terms of reach, I can't monetize people who have already purchased an unlock, and if they haven't already purchased the app, they probably won't despite the update (just a guess). I might get some sort of app ranking boost from the people that update, so I suppose that might be worth it.

In the case of building flash / web assets, I'd have to go out and build those and then promote them as well. An incredible amount of work where my goal was just trying to drive app downloads + unlock upgrades. I don't think such an indirect path is feasible when I make only $1.99 on a purchase. Like I said, app marketing is goofy :(

[aerique → coryl]

Wrt to building new apps: are these apps your main income or is it something you do on the side?

[coryl → aerique]

I'm trying to do this full time

[brudgers → coryl]

>"It seems horribly inefficient."

It is until you hit a home run.

[debacle → brudgers]

If you hit a home run. And it's not so much hitting a home run as winning the lotto.