
How I Made $19,000 on the App Store While Learning to Code - nathanbarry
http://nathanbarry.com/how-i-made-19000-on-the-app-store-while-learning-to-code/
======
newobj
Reminds me, I should write my own story of how I made $190 on the App Store
while exercising 15 years of coding experience.

~~~
kirubakaran
He made something people want. That trumps programming excellence.

~~~
nupark2
Keep in mind -- $20k over 10 months is a pretty low return on the investment
involved in an application.

Perhaps the revenue will trend upwards ... but if we put our team on an
application like this and only saw $20k in revenue in _10 months_ , we'd be
out of business.

~~~
MichaelApproved
You're mixing up development time with sales time. Your team would probably
bang this out in a few weeks and then move on to another app. In the meantime,
the app would be selling in the store not costing you developer resources.

~~~
nupark2
I'm not mixing them up. $20k over 10 months would barely cover the development
and support costs.

------
Breefield
Whoa, Nathan Barry was my first boss. He was 19 and designing websites—I was
14-15 writing PHP CMSs. We worked in an incredibly hot 2nd story office above
a bike shop in Boise Idaho. Good times.

Glad to see you've found success in the iOS realm, while helping improve
people's lives in a real tangible way.

~~~
nathanbarry
Dustin, those were good times. Glad to see you frequent HN. Hope everything is
going well for you now.

~~~
Valien
Nathan,

Great story and way to find a niche that was unserved. There are so many out
there (niches that is) with archaic products/services that are begging for
right person to come along and improve them.

Good luck with the dedicated venture!

~~~
zackmorris
Cool to see other developers who were/are in Boise. I wish we had a way to
find each other besides linkedin (and not get sucked into pitching/getting
pitched a job)

~~~
nathanbarry
Email me (nathan@thinklegend.com). I know quite a few developers in Boise.

------
rokhayakebe
I want to see you _super_ -succeed, and in a lot of ways you already have
succeeded.

The most important part is not that you made $19,000 while teaching yourself
how to code, but that you are actually making the world a better place. I
would angel fund this idea (if I had the money) the minute I would read _gives
a voice to anyone who cannot speak_. I would venture fund your product that
minute I would read _replaces a $7,000+ medical device that is bulky and
difficult to use_.

~~~
nathanbarry
Thanks. It really has been a huge success. I haven't given funding much
thought since the product is already developed, but it would definitely help
with marketing.

------
inuhj
Amazing. I'm so glad someone coded this. The price is a bit high for our
institution(a struggling community hospital with 10 ICU beds) but hopefully I
can get IT to consider it in our budget. The machine we use is a one-off and
rarely works properly. I'm embarrassed to say that most of the time we avoid
communicating with patients that are intubated. Coding a replacement has been
on my to-do list for the last 2 months and I'm happy to strike it off.

~~~
nathanbarry
Please get in touch with me (nathan@thinklegend.com).

~~~
inuhj
Will do.

------
dangero
Good job. I think one of the most important things you did is you knew who
your customer was before you started your application. It seems obvious, but
most apps in the app store have no target customer.

~~~
nathanbarry
Yes, it was very targeted development.

------
codesink
A good designer can score on the Appstore even if he is a novice programmer.

Unfortunately that's not true for good programmers that suck at design.

~~~
nathanbarry
Maybe. Though Apple gives you a lot of tools to help you make good (though
simple) looking applications. UIKit is pretty detailed.

Here is my simple design advice if you don't know how to design:

* Use the provided UI elements, they look great.

* Choose a primary color and an accent color, don't get carried away.

* Make sure everything lines up. Choose a number (10 pts) and align everything off of that. Aligning your UI elements will go a very long ways to make everything look good.

* If you have paragraphs of text set the line height to around 1.5 (depending on the font).

* The only thing provided by Apple that is Ugly is the UIButtons. Draw a simple, clean button or ask someone to make one for you.

If you follow these simple ideas you can make a pretty good looking
application without knowing how to design.

~~~
nathanbarry
Also, a programmer who can't design is able to release an ugly, but functional
application. A designer who can't program will only make a beautiful but
useless design. In this case I think the programmer has the advantage.

Though my philosophy is to learn both.

~~~
wallflower
> Though my philosophy is to learn both.

How many of your friends are designers or artists?

~~~
nathanbarry
I have a couple friends who are designers. But many more who are programmers.

------
Torn
What made you decide on the $199 price point?

Additionally, do you think the $199 price point might it out of reach for a
lot of people who would benefit from the app but who have tights budgets?

~~~
lizzard
That was my first thought as well. People with disabilities aren't exactly
rolling in cash. I think it's great you're not exploiting desperate people to
the same extent the people entrenched in the medical-industrial complex are,
but imagine... what if you released it much, much cheaper? How many people
would you help then? Or even did it as a kickstarter and open-sourced it and
put it out for free. Then people with disabilities and their families could
contribute. My other reaction is that you mention talking with speech
pathologists. It might be a good idea to get input from people actually using
AAC, i.e. people with disabilities.

I totally appreciate your awesome effort and am glad you make a living. I just
would suggest if you want to take it further, learn more of the landscape and
think about it politically and where you want to make your profits from.

~~~
nathanbarry
I've struggled with this a lot. But ultimately I decided I want to create the
best product possible, and charging more helps me do that. If I gave it away
for free I wouldn't have the financial ability to focus on it and put in the
time to make it better.

Thanks for the feedback.

------
erikb
This kind of story always reads like a financial fail. He should pay himself a
normal programmers salary (something around 50k/year for a beginner might be
fine, also he is not a beginner, because he knows a lot about presentation and
UX design) and THEN calculate his profits. Probably this App is way in the
minus. Also you must consider that he just has around 1k customers and all of
them on the same plattform. Also these customers only paid him once and not
regularily. That are 4 big risks: low number of customers, no guaranty to get
any dollar next month and a high dependence on one plattform and high
dependence on the success of this one app. Another risk, I nearly forgot
about, is that the core feature of his app, the speach engine, is not even his
own. What if Acapela decides they make their own App in this direction.

Concluding everything I think he has a low income, unprofitable, high risk
business. Not the position I want to be in, when I quit my dayjob.

 _edit_ I just now see that you posted the link yourself, Nathan. Please read
all "he"s as "you". ;-)

~~~
nathanbarry
You are right in a so many ways. From a business perspective it isn't the best
model (I am looking for ways to add recurring revenue), I probably made
minimum wage if you break down my time, and I don't have many customers.

But here's what I do have: emails from customers every single week saying how
what I built is changing the lives of their child. Does anything else matter
beyond that?

I'm working on something I care deeply about and am able to still provide for
my family while doing it. That's the position I want to be in.

~~~
marknutter
And there really is nothing to fear. You can supplement that income by
building apps for other people in their spare time now that you have a
valuable skill. There's no reason you can't have it both ways.

~~~
erikb
Also a valid argument. I think it's the first time in my whole life that I got
valuable content from 2 counterarguments in the same thread. HN is awesome!

------
markazevedo
Money aside, it's great you've created an awesome product for a group that
really could use more assistance. Thanks for building something to better the
human condition, and showing others they don't need to sacrifice everything to
do it!

~~~
nathanbarry
Thanks for the kind words! You really can build a lot in your spare time.

------
JoeAltmaier
This storey shows its not necessary to sell a million to make an app
worthwhile.

How many other niche apps are out there? Anything where you carry a computer
or clipboard around is eligible. Specific to a task, or a general fill-in-a-
spreadsheet-and-email-it app would fit the bill.

~~~
nathanbarry
Exactly. Not a huge amount of money or customers, but a few people find what I
made very valuable which makes it worth my time to create.

I'm sure plenty of people have a moderate success story like mine.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My buddy did a basketball scoring app. Much nicer than what was there,
certainly better than the NCAA DOS-based crap. Makes a little money. Had a
ball writing it.

------
larrys
Here's what I would do.

1) Get a copy of it in the hands of special ed departments at schools (for
free). And the people who oversee the IEP's, counselors etc. You will then get
referrals to sell the full priced product after people see a demo.

2) Lower the price of your product so it's a no brainer for parents.

Having the price so high is going to invite competition that will sell the
same app at a lower price. While that can still happen with a lower price it
is more likely at the price point you are at because people will be more
motivated to compete (and anyway you will sell more at the lower price..)

3) Come up with a different name or buy onevoice.com. If the product is
recommended you need people to be able to easily find your website. Not only
don't you own the domain name onevoice.com but you don't come up (now) in any
search results.

Edit: "search results" - as in when someone hears about it and they google it
not the app store.

~~~
yesbabyyes
He has <http://onevoiceapp.com/> redirecting to his homepage. I agree that it
would probably be a good idea to use the domain instead.

------
martinshen
This is fantastic. I hadn't heard of many apps that target this niche
specifically. What are you planning in terms of marketing?

PS. I love the UI I see in the screens... and would love to play with it. I
wonder what type of animations you're using etc. Also, beautiful and simple
website.

------
cantbecool
Nathan, that's a great market to develop applications in. There's a general
need for your application, and you're helping society at the same time.

I recently saw a short segment on 60 minutes, "Apps for Autism", which
demonstrated and explained applications in your applications field, autistic
children. Here's the video URL:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n&tag=cont...](http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox)

------
phil
Cool. I've been noticing more of these apps (that virtualize an expensive
custom device) lately.

Here's another example, an app that replaces whatever gadget piano tuners used
to carry: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunelab-piano-
tuner/id3355683...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunelab-piano-
tuner/id335568329?mt=8)

------
orky56
I have a similar non-technical background (UX/design) and was curious how you
were able to not get frustrated and outsource the development work rather than
doing it yourself. If I was in the same position, I would get too restless and
want it built right away.

Any advice on how you got through that situation? Thanks.

~~~
cwbrandsma
From experience...it also helps to have some patient programmer friends around
to help (I'm one of the developers that helped Nathan build the app). :)

~~~
nathanbarry
So true. I recommend every get themselves some smart, patient friends. Makes
all the difference.

------
zeratul
Thank you, Nathan. I'm glad to see an application for pediatric patients.
Hopefully, the price will go down in a future. You could try to advertise it
among neurologists:

<http://www.neurology.org/>

------
kschua
Very impressive Nathan.

I like that it is not just another one of those app products that is targeted
at the masses.

Instead, you found a niche, talk to customers and found a nice selling price,
which from the user's perspective is a bargain.

Congrats

------
rythie
He's actually disrupting the market for the $7000+ device, I wonder how many
the $7000+ people sell, presumably he could take most/all of their sales + a
load on top who couldn't afford it in the first place.

I assume at this point the $7000+ device people think they have some better
features that make it worthwhile and are reluctant to do their own iPad app.
(Innovators Dilemma).

~~~
daemin
I think that the price paid for a $7000+ device is that they're buying the
whole package, hardware, software, AND support as a whole package. So that
when there's a problem there's one person that they need to contact to get it
resolved (in the ideal case).

I'm sure the author could go that way, buying iPads or other Android tablets
(if the software gets ported), package up they software, make it auto boot,
etc and form it into a complete package. The price then wouldn't be just the
app, but the tablet, installation costs, and future support as well.

It would be cheaper, but not by the same order of magnitude that the app is
cheaper than the $7000+ device.

------
gawker
Congratulations Nathan! I'm extremely encouraged to hear about your success -
especially since it's an application that addresses a real need and helps
create value in society. I'm really inspired that you can do good in this
world and make some money at the same time. Thanks so much!

------
eliben
This is a really great and inspiring story, IMO. Shows how modern technology
can truly change people's lives. Sure, this kicks some speciality device
companies out of the market (like I'm sure was done many times now by
smartphone & tablet apps), but who cares about that?

------
nivertech
Please give us list of companies making these overpriced $7K+ devices. Any of
them public?

~~~
nathanbarry
Dynavox is the largest of the companies. Just search for augmentative and
alternative communication devices.

------
code_duck
Great story, and nice work! This happened because you decided to push ahead
and make something you saw the need for clearly.

Sometime soon I might share the story of how I made $100,000 on the (... what
to call it?) browser while learning to code.

------
ajb
So, why is it better than Proloqu2go? (My relatives have already bought that
for their nonverbal son, so this we are unlikely to be a sale unless you're
_really_ convincing).

~~~
nathanbarry
Ease of use is the big difference. OneVoice is very user friendly compared to
all the other applications. Also it uses realistic looking icons rather than
stick figure / cartoon drawings.

------
evoltix
Great job.

Although, I'm particularly interested in how you made the decision to quit
your full-time job and create a startup based on one-time sales? Is there a
service behind this startup?

~~~
nathanbarry
There isn't a service behind the startup. You're right that one-time sales is
the ideal model, but I haven't thought of a great way to do recurring revenue.

~~~
jawngee
In app picture pack/vocabulary expansion purchases? "New voices"?

------
pkamb
Very inspiring. Do you use AdWords or any other forms of advertising? What
percentage of your sales are to people you contact personally?

~~~
nathanbarry
I contact Speech Language Pathologists personally, and it is their clients
that purchase the application. Maybe 20% come from personal contacts in some
way.

No, I haven't used AdWords yet.

~~~
pkamb
The rest primarily coming in from natural Google ranking + the app store pages
then?

~~~
nathanbarry
A lot from reviews that have been written on different industry sites and
blogs. Also the Facebook page has 500+ fans.

------
16s
Great story. You might market some to colleges and universities that have
speech pathology areas. They would love this sort of app.

------
postscapes1
Does this work well for people who have suffered strokes as well?

~~~
nathanbarry
Yes, it does.

------
ohhmaar
Seems very inspiring. Thanks.

------
yonasb
Amazing!

------
billpatrianakos
A lot of people will focus on the money and come away wondering if they can
make a quick buck too. Hopefully people don't miss the point. You made a cool
app for a really niche market that had a huge need for this inexpensive tool.
And you helped some people really needed it. Kudos, man.

You learned to code for iOS, helped people in need, and made a buck off it.
Awesome.

