
The Financial Side of Building Mac Apps - milen
http://tyler.io/2014/07/a-candid-look-at-the-financial-side-of-building-mac-apps-on-your-own/
======
mrsteveman1
I've got 2 modestly successful Mac apps, Mi-Fi Monitor[1], and Codepoints[2].

Mi-Fi Monitor for Mac (there's an older iOS version[3]) alone has been much
more successful than I ever imagined, despite being a simple little utility,
doing no advertising, and having an automatically limited market of potential
users (people who own a Novatel Mi-Fi).

At the time the original iOS version was written, it was just something I
myself needed, not something I intended to publish anywhere. But as I
discovered after putting it up for sale, a lot of other people _needed it_
too. Novatel's own executives were using it, I talked to one of them on the
phone for quite a while, 2 others emailed me about it, I reported some API
bugs to them, etc. Very satisfying experience for me.

And then when I put up Mi-Fi Monitor for Mac on the MAS, it got featured on
TUAW[4], which caused sales to skyrocket far beyond the iOS version and far
beyond what I expected from something that was originally a "scratch my own
itch" thing.

I'd love to build something larger for Mac and go down the indie path, but I'm
primarily working as a consultant now on both platforms. I do absolutely love
when Mac projects come my way though, I like building for that platform a lot
more than iOS.

[1] [http://infincia.com/apps/mi-fi-monitor-mac](http://infincia.com/apps/mi-
fi-monitor-mac)

[2] [http://infincia.com/apps/codepoints](http://infincia.com/apps/codepoints)

[3] [http://infincia.com/apps/mi-fi-monitor-ios](http://infincia.com/apps/mi-
fi-monitor-ios)

[4] [http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/13/daily-mac-app-mi-fi-
monitor/](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/13/daily-mac-app-mi-fi-monitor/)

------
wowzer
Tyler, as someone who constantly thinks about different avenues of working on
my own, it's really informative to hear stories such as yours. Plus, your
story is usually the one people gloss over. We usually hear about the two
projects a year that make billions and the ones that completely fail. It's
refreshing to hear about an app that made money and gave you the financial
stability to take a couple more risks. Thanks for sharing!

~~~
tylerhall
Thanks! My original goal was extremely simple. Earn $X to do Y home
improvement project. But as the app took off I've readjusted my goals. I've
never thought about becoming "rich", instead, I see it as a wholly possible
way to earn just enough to support my family and be happy.

------
patio11
Congrats on the success.

Most of this post tracks my experience and is roughly, true for cross platform
or Windows development. Shareware predates app stores.

(Though most shareware authors don't call themselves shareware authors
anymore, since distribution techniques have changed and the word never helped
sell software.)

~~~
pkorzeniewski
Do you know any desktop applications, be it cross-platform or single OS, that
were made independently (not by a company), bootstrapped and are now
profitable? As far as I know Paint.net was made by one person and it's now his
full-time job, but it's dependant on donations and I'm more interested in a
"traditional" business model.

~~~
patio11
I know a few dozen apps that fit that bill. Bingo Card Creator started as a
cross-platform desktop app (that was my only product from 2006 through 2009,
when I released the online version). It was bootstrapped and was/is
profitable.

A few others off the top of my head: Perfect Table Plan, Poker CoPilot, Mixed
In Key, Balsamiq Mockups (though that eventually turned into "a company"),
etc. You'll note that BCC doesn't belong in the same league with any of the
above.

------
milen
I've been talking to iOS / OS X indies over the past few weeks and with very
few exceptions, all I hear is "revenue down X% over the last Y years". We've
seen this first hand, too.

Luc Vandal wrote a good article [1] about it. I'm very interested in hearing
about other people's thoughts and experiences - contact details can be found
on my HN profile.

[1]
[http://lucvandal.com/2014/07/03/theindielife/](http://lucvandal.com/2014/07/03/theindielife/)

~~~
megablast
> may lose traction because a VC funded company is offering a free alternative
> and has near to unlimited funds for market it while they figure out how to
> monetize it.

This is what got me. If you are doing well, startups are going to look at
getting into your market. And you can't compete against free.

------
hemancuso
I've been doing indie Mac dev for about ten years now
[[http://www.expandrive.com](http://www.expandrive.com)] and I keep arguing
that we could be in a golden age for being an indie Mac dev if it weren't for
everyone having fled off to do mobile development. Apple keeps selling more
and more macs and now has an easy distribution channel built right into the
machine for you. Make something useful. Sell it for $20-60 bucks. It's
sustainable.

~~~
milen
I generally agree with you. One of the interesting bits of information from
the article is the financial boost from paid updates. You can sort-of
approximate this on the MAS but none of the options are ideal.

In my opinion, you absolutely must give people the chance to try your product.
This means having a trial build on your website, which most Mac indies do but
it's a bit problematic for paid apps, as I presume a lot of people on the MAS
itself are unaware. It's in the best interest of everyone to have trials - for
customers, so that they don't feel duped and actually buy a product they're
happy with and for developers, so that they acquire real customers, not play a
game of "can we convince people to fork over money without trying".

Moreover, it's in the best interest of customers to actually provide paid
updates - they can vote with their wallet whether a business should survive.
But without the proper availability of paid updates, customers are left with
no choice, even if they did want to support developers. Unfortunately, the
voice of a vocal minority instils fear in developers to try and charge for
such updates.

Given the current climate, our plan for the future is to lower our initial
price and offer major versions as paid updates. Instead of, say, charging $40
for the current version + $20 for an update, we'll just always charge $30 for
the current version. As a side effect, it lowers the entry for everyone and
your real customers can still vote with their wallets and support your
efforts, if they choose to do so. One of the downsides is the introduction of
a new SKU which is not that much of a problem (before the MAS, you had to do
the same anyhow). It's usually wise to provide a way for customers to stay in
touch with you and hear about updates but only if they want to (don't smack
dialogs repeatedly in their face, that's just not nice).

~~~
tylerhall
Do you think the exposure the Mac App Store offers is worth Apple's 30% cut
along with the lack of upgrade options for customers? Why not also (or in
place of) sell your software directly through your website?

I'm the author of the article in question, and with my current sales
infrastructure, I'm able to spin up and sell a new product (SKU) in a matter
of hours. Since I've been doing this for seven years, am I now overestimating
the amount of work it takes to setup and sell your app independently?

~~~
milen
I don't know about your jurisdiction but in most EU countries, the sale
proceeds from Apple lie outside the scope of VAT. Thus, you need to subtract
your effective VAT rate and the net effective rate that you end up paying on
the MAS is about 10-15%. Which is very close to what you would pay for, say,
FastSpring ("You have the option to pay either 8.9% flat or 5.9% plus $.95 per
transaction" [1]). The biggest advantage of the MAS is that it's a
distribution channel preinstalled on every single Mac - that's extremely
valuable.

As you say, you would ideally sell on both the MAS and outside. In terms of
selling outside the MAS, it does come with some overhead, mostly related to
VAT. Even worse, the EU is changing the VAT rules starting from 2015 (the rule
change itself is designed to remove the competitive advantage of big companies
to be based in EU states with low VAT and sell products in countries with
high(er) rates):

> Currently, the place of taxation for digital services supplies is determined
> by your location as the supplier of the services. However, from 1 January
> 2015, the place of taxation will be determined by the location of the
> consumer.

It's not a big deal since you can just sign up for the VAT MOSS but it's still
more hassle than just putting up an app on the MAS. Note that all of this
applies after your exceed the VAT threshold, which is different in different
EU member states.

[1]
[http://www.fastspring.com/pricing.php](http://www.fastspring.com/pricing.php)
[2] [http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/posmoss/](http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/posmoss/)

------
phatbyte
Couldn't agree more.

I'm also a Mac Developer, my app is Codebug
([http://codebugapp.com/](http://codebugapp.com/)) an Xdebug client for Mac. I
created this app in 2012 while I was learning Objective-C/Cocoa, and it's been
a very cool steady growing since day one.

Specially the increase your price part. I actually added a bunch of new
features and increased the price. Guess what ? The sales didn't drop at all,
matter of fact they increased. I get a lot more top-quality users and people
who actually engage with the app and are prone to spread the word. Also, I'm
selling it from my own website, not from App Store. Sorry Apple, I already pay
you $99 dollars a year for your dev program. Not going to share 30% of my
profits with you :P

iOS or Mobile app doesn't appeal me at all from an indie dev perspective.
Everything pretty much has been done, and there's this stigma of not charging
your app of what it's really worth. Everyone is doing Free, In-app or 0.99
cents apps. Screw that, I need to put food on the table.

TL;DR: Make a good product, keep improving it, price it right and you will
succeed in the long run.

~~~
stephenr
I’m always interested when mac app developers either don’t ever support, or
support and then abandon the Mac App Store.

I can understand wanting to minimise overheads as much as possible - I just
wonder what the total cost difference is for a 3rd party payment system,
hosting the files, handling refunds etc (plus potentially lost sales), vs the
30% cut Apple take..?

Also, I find myself much more likely to purchase an app if I can do so via the
Mac App Store. It’s so ridiculously easy to purchase/install and re-install
when required; I already trust Apple with my credit card; and I don’t have to
worry about whether the store front in question is secure.

The last part in particular is a big issue to me - your site is not available
over https, so I have no way to know if the link from your site to FastSpring
is the one you intended or if I’m being MITM’d and getting a link to send $60
to some russian hacker, as the destination page is on a completely different
domain, bares very little resemblance to your site, and is also not hosted via
https. When I tried to access the initial order page over HTTPS I was given a
ridiculous message telling me "Secure Connection Not Allowed”.

The “technical infrastructure” page for FastSpring touts “hardware accelerated
SSL” - so I can rest assured that the message telling me I can’t use their
store front over SSL was encrypted with great efficiency.

The only part of FastSpring that seems to be accessible over SSL is the final
order page - but I’ve already followed multiple links and form submissions
from non-secure pages, so I could be looking at _anything_ by this stage.

That FastSpring put a big “Norton Secured” badge on the top of their http only
initial order page is both ridiculous and dangerous.

All of this makes me wonder how much extra value that 30% cut can give back to
the developer...

------
billiam
I guess I would point out that if it wasn't clear before it is clear now that
iOS spps in a mature market behave much more like content than applications
when it comes to getting news users, retaining them, and all the other pirate
metrics, me hearties. Think music or ringtone store rather then desktop apps.
The mobile experience is just not that sticky in most cases, and Apple has
absolutely no interest in helping you build a long-term relationship with
them.

------
jkestner
Tyler, you kick ass. From the way you build up to the numbers, you seem almost
apologetic for your app's success. You don't have to apologize for making
money on software, even if it is unfashionable.

I think you're able to charge $49 where an RSS reader can't because your
audience is more professional. I'm one of thousands of other webmasters who
have ...started GUI frontends for Apache, so I know what this is worth. Now,
you going to add support for Nginx? :)

~~~
tylerhall
Nginx is high on mine and my users' wish lists. I'm still trying to figure out
if it's even possible to integrate with VirtualHostX (which is Apache focused)
given the UI differences Nginx support would dictate or if it would be best to
break Nginx support out into a new, standalone product. Some users might see a
separate product as a money-grab, but I'm really at a loss as to how I'd
combine Apache + Nginx support into a single product.

~~~
machinshin_
considering you'd be targetting two different webservers, i don't think so.
you'd also be expanding the potential userbase. Besides, I haven't heard of
anyone who uses both nginx & apache.

~~~
moepstar
eh?

Then make me a first, i reverse proxy from Apache to NGINX, having NGINX as a
caching layer for static assets etc..

That's not too uncommon imho...

------
chillacy
Thanks for sharing. I also do mac development, and I have one app today +
another in the pipeline. My current App, Maxel
([http://maxelapp.com/](http://maxelapp.com/)) sells at a 8 bucks (for a
download accelerator, pretty busy market), which I don't think I could pull
that off on mobile.

Now that's just a utility. Business type apps can command $40+ if they're
good, and the top sellers are often high-priced.

------
marcosscriven
Tyler - thanks for that really detailed account. Aside from the financials,
I'm curious how you manage working alone? Did you ever consider finding a
business partner? Do you work at home alone, or do you find some kind of
shared space? I know from a brief period working on my own thing at home that
it starts to feel like an echo chamber.

~~~
tylerhall
For the first five years, it was myself, alone in my home office at night and
on weekends. My wife went to bed early and I'd have 10pm - 1am every night to
hack around - plus random times on the weekend. After I went full time with
it, I toured a few co-working spaces in Nashville, but most of them were
either geared at MBAs who co-work for less than eight hours a week, or too
expensive. So, even after going full time, it was still just me in my home
office. But my working hours changed to a normal 9-5 routine. My wife also
works from home, so I never went crazy from lack of human interaction.

As for business partners - never really considered one. I don't think there's
enough work to go around. But I do partner with two designers, when needed,
and have a few close friends who also do Mac development I can bounce ideas
off of throughout the day.

~~~
larrys
What about angel investors? With some money what do you think you could might
be able to do that you can't do now?

~~~
kjksf
This is not the kind of business that angel investors are interested in.

An investor (be it an angel or, at a later stage, a VC fund) is interested in
an exit at some point.

There's just no way a simple utility like VirtualHostX will ever generate
profits that would warrant an exit event (which are limited to a sale to
someone else or an IPO).

If there's no exit event, an investor doesn't get his money back. He might own
a chunk of profitable business but it's paper money.

~~~
larrys
"Angel investors" and "angel investors in the valley" are not necessarily the
same thing. Also the idea was not to invest in the particular product but in
the entrepreneur and his capabilities.

------
jasonlotito
Can anyone recommend some good books/resources to pick up Mac App development
over iOS? So much is focused on iOS, and would like to get some personal
recommendations.

~~~
tylerhall
Aaron Hillegass's "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" is how I got started.
Likely, his new books only focus on iOS development. But this book pre-dates
the iPhone. I learned Mac dev from it in 2005. Highly recommended for the
basics.

~~~
jasonlotito
Thanks. Just for those curious, his latest book is from 2011:

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) [http://smile.amazon.com/Cocoa-
Programming-Mac-OS-4th/dp/0321...](http://smile.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-
Mac-
OS-4th/dp/0321774086/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406581529&sr=1-1&keywords=cocoa+programming+for+mac+os+x+5th+edition)

And apparently there is an update coming in October:

More Cocoa Programming for OS X: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (Big Nerd Ranch
Guides) [http://smile.amazon.com/More-Cocoa-Programming-OS-
Guides/dp/...](http://smile.amazon.com/More-Cocoa-Programming-OS-
Guides/dp/0321706269/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406581529&sr=1-3&keywords=cocoa+programming+for+mac+os+x+5th+edition)

~~~
bradshaw1965
The More Cocoa Programming for OS X: book has been in O'Reilly Rough Cuts beta
for several years and the tech is pretty old at this point. Not sure if it
ever will see the light of day. The Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is updated
regularly and the training program is ongoing so I imagine it will continue to
be updated.

