
Ask HN: Anyone making a living from just 1 app? - SomeoneAtHN
If you have a desktop/mobile/web application that is sustainable and you can be able to live on its profit, list them here. Thanks!
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luckydude
I don't know if www.bitkeeper.com qualifies or not (it's the inspiration for
git / mercurial / bzr / etc), but it's happily supporting a bunch of people in
the US and Canada. Turns out people are willing to pay for this sort of stuff
if you do a good job.

Speaking of which, we're looking for a really good web / designer type. If you
can stand getting paid for non-open source send me a message. Thanks.

Forgot to say, email in my profile.

~~~
hasenj
ah, nice to finally find you :)

I was wondering how bitkeeper was doing, good to know it's doing alright :)

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woid
<http://binaryage.com>

my first commercial app TotalFinder seems to be covering my living expenses
soon (launched a week ago)

~~~
makeramen
woah, you made visor too? I love that thing. totalfinder looks awesome too,
will be check it out later today.

~~~
itistoday
I think Visor was created by Blacktree (the guy behind QuickSilver), but woid
is the new maintainer (if I'm not mistaken).

~~~
woid
Yes, you are right. I picked up that project because I needed to fix
applescript bug in Visor. And the rest is the history.

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bignoggins
<http://www.fantasymonsterapp.com/> I'm making a living based off of my iphone
app Fantasy Monster, which I did as a Master's class project and released on
the app store 4 months ago. It is currently earning more per month than my
wife and I are at our full time jobs combined (I'm a s/w engineer she is in
HR)

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bakachu
Not quite able to live of its profit, but means my wife doesn't have to work
part time any more :)

Android Mind Mapping app Thinking Space: <http://www.thinkingspace.net>

~~~
aw3c2
Take some dollars to get a good website. This one is the default Drupal(?)
looks, you want something more unique. And make the screenshots full
resolution available at least when clicking on them. I would highly suggest
making a full resolution image the default, maybe crop it, because it just
looks nicer.

~~~
bakachu
Thanks, hearing this said out loud (so to speak) is good motivation to get the
web site sorted with something proper.

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jordo
Although i don't 'live' of it's profit, I have been making more from it the
last two months than my 'real' job... 'Stick Golf', - iPhone/iPad game.
<http://noodlecake.com>

~~~
rickharrison
I just want to say great job man. I have been doing a lot of traveling lately
(for iOS development) and I play this a lot on the plane. As a fellow iOS
developer, good job.

~~~
jordo
Thanks man! It's great to hear that kind of stuff from other developers.

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dangrover
I was living off of my app ShoveBox (wonderwarp.com/shovebox) for most of last
year until I made another app.

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2_ghosts
My fiancee is a jewelry designer, making a living selling her work on the
website I built for her (<http://www.ghostlove.com>). Not exactly an _app_ as
such, but what the heck :)

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rbritton
I make more from my iPad app Portfolio (<http://ipadportfolioapp.com/>) than
my other source of income. I could definitely live on just the app sales alone
if it keeps up.

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qixxiq
A game I wrote for iPhone (Spit a.k.a Speed) has been covering my living
expenses for about eighteen months now but it looks like its coming to an end
:(

It seems like its also mostly due to a bug I'm unable to fix (mainly since I
can't reproduce it). If anyone wants to give it a shot maybe we can work out a
deal?

~~~
lanstein
If you're making your living expenses off it, why not just buy an iPhone that
exhibits the behavior?

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hello_moto
Looks like most of the apps are either OSX desktop app or iPhone/iPad.

There's one Android app and one web-app.

Is there any of you who makes a living in Windows desktop app? just curious.

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jng
<http://www.viemu.com>, and it now supports a second full-time developer too.
It's never going to grow much more but that's ok.

There are many, many apps that generate more than enough to sustain one or one
hundred people.

~~~
iamnafets
Fantastic app. Didn't think I'd make the outlay (it's pricey), but for any
tedious tasks I can turn them into a challenge with Regexes and Macros. I
really love it, thanks for putting it together and for charging so it is still
around today.

~~~
jng
Thanks! Indeed $99 is a bit pricey, but many think it's well worth it, and
it's a niche. ViEmu had its 5th anniversary this year, and I'm hoping for the
next five, still better years (both for ViEmu and Codekana,
<http://www.codekana.com>).

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joeld42
I'm nowhere near making a living, but my "Brainstormer" app
(<http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer>) is making enough to pay for my apple
gadgets, so it's kind of a self-sustaining hobby at this point.

I just released a free, iAd supported game called "Still Pond" (video review:
<http://www.appspy.com/still-pond-review>) which is only making pocket change,
but I haven't done any promotion on it.

------
inovica
Our first app - SourceGuardian - protects PHP source code and we've been
running it for 8 years. We used to make a living off just the one app, but
broadened out into other areas. The freedom that the income from
SourceGuardian provided allowed us to take risks and create other products -
some that have worked out well and others that haven't. Its been thoroughly
enjoyable though!

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zumbojo
During a talk [1] at Stanford, Loren Brichter mentioned that he was living off
income from Tweetie (this was before Twitter's acquisition of Atebits and the
rebranding of Tweetie to be Twitter for iPhone).

[1]
[http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunes...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewiTunesUCollection?id=384233222)

~~~
flyosity
He was doing a lot more than just living off it, Tweetie was the #1 Paid App
for a long time and was in the Top 10 for all Paid Apps for months. He was
selling thousands of copies per day for $2.99.

~~~
SomeoneAtHN
Yeah, I think if your app is listed on top 10 of all paid apps, you can make a
lot of income very quickly.

Just some math: $2.99 * 2500 copies/day * 30 days * 70% to LB = That is a
whopping $156975 a month!

------
vrikhter
Clockspot.com

Jason, the founder, was profitable within 10 months of building the product
(he spent money on adwords). Was running it all by himself for nearly 3 years
and is now building out a bigger team to get to the next level. That's when he
hired me :)

------
jaredbrown
www.codemonkeysatwork.com - We have a pay-for iPhone app called QuickShot that
I make my money from. I also just launched <http://www.talentopoly.com> as
another source of income.

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EGreg
Dude, Total Finder owns ... except when Chrome downloads something and I click
to open the finder window. Then it pops out in the middle of nowhere and no
chrome around it. I have to click on the tab to get it back whereit belongs --
Fix that please! :)

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sfalbo
I'm still working my day job but my most recent iPad app, iJuror, has been
doing almost as well for the last 3 months.

<http://www.front9technologies.com/ijuror.html>

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janj
Ship Mate for the iPhone is making me enough to pay all my bills and then
some. I still have my full time job though, I don't know what I'm waiting for
to just dive in and take it to the next level.

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p01nd3xt3r
socialadmanager.com is a social ad server that i developed. It allows
advertisers, ad agencies etc... to incorporate user generated content and
other social elements in their display ads.

My main (and only) client right now is a ad agency that I used to work for but
that covers all my bills + some.

see: /ads /campaigns /dashboard for demo of agency white label.

right now im working on making the entire social ad server turnkey so that
people can productize their influence in the form of a social ad (endorse x to
audience y) setup affiliate payout etc... much quicker.

see: /

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jzting
The iAd revenue from my flashlight app has continued to do quite well.

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jasonlbaptiste
PadPressed.com is ramen profitable off of V1. Ironically, it started as a side
project and may be the full time project over the next month.

~~~
SomeoneAtHN
Just curious, how did you find your initial paid customers?

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hboon
I'm living on earnings from SimplyTweet, my iPhone app. Look into some other
stuff at the moment though.

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ssamuli
I'd love to, but I need idea(s), motivation and a lot more time to work on
them.

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rfugger
Mark Zuckerberg.

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itistoday
I worked for a couple years in college to come up with way to intuitively
encrypt application data without resorting to full-disk encryption, the result
(<http://www.espionageapp.com>), has been keeping me alive and self-
sufficient. My advice isn't anything remarkable: find something both you and
other people really need that doesn't exist and focus on it.

~~~
Dobbs
I love Espionage. Thanks for making such a great application.

~~~
itistoday
Thanks! Glad you like it! :-)

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ahoyhere
<http://letsfreckle.com> is totally livable for two people right now (about
$150k/yr and growing), but since I want to be rich, we're rolling all that
money back into expanding it.

~~~
_pius
Very cool. Didn't Freckle start as a Rails Rumble? IIRC it was actually a
wedding planning or some other event planning app at first ...

~~~
mortenjorck
Wow, this actually looks better than Harvest. I love threads like this!

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napierzaza
I too am supporting my Apple Gadget fix (<http://logicpretzel.com>). Working
on some new apps and hoping they'll make a bit more money though. Small
contracts for development help too.

Fingers crossed that it will afford me to go to WWDC, but being one the east
coast and in Canada makes it a little iffy.

