

Ask HN: App Store Devs, Are you guys still motivated? - diminium

We now know that the vast majority of apps make a large loss.  They are part of the long tail.  Only a very small portion of apps make any sort of money and most of those investing in them still don't make enough money to quit their day job.  If you count in opportunity loss, you might even say most of the winners still lost money.<p>Are you guys still motivated?  If so, where does your motivation come from?<p>Edit: Minor corrections.
======
DenisM
I seem to have lost my motivation a while ago, partly due to personal life
problems, partly due to there being free competitors now, and partly due to
being stuck for a long time making a very complex feature which ended up
bringing nothing in return (a fancy billing system for
subscriptions/trials/etc, which customers don't seem to fancy).

On the other hand while working on these apps I came up with a number of great
technical ideas, which I would like to flesh out before moving on, so that I
can at least have a sense of technical accomplishment. That sort of keeps me
going, but not really fast...

I'm tempted to do some work for hire now, just to take a break and recharge.

------
itsme995
Well, for me, I love developing for iOS. The development tools are just
awesome. They've made real effort to make it simple and fun (compare that with
other Environments).

Regarding making money, I do make some money from the apps (not enough to
replace my day job), but that's the case for any other thing you pick up.
There will be competition everywhere.

------
duiker101
I am motivated because i know that one day i will make it. But i try not to
focus on one thing. i have 3 websites 3 android apps and 5 iphone apps. If
required one day i will alsp learn something else. My objective i trying to
make something so i can focus on many things not only one. Even if you can
make it with one app chances are that it will not last.

------
aaronbrethorst
Having high-quality products in the App Store is a great way to convince
prospective contracts that I'm legit. [http://cdixon.org/2011/02/05/selling-
pickaxes-during-a-gold-...](http://cdixon.org/2011/02/05/selling-pickaxes-
during-a-gold-rush/)

~~~
monsto
and "high quality" doesn't necessarily mean "successful". There's plenty of
good apps (and cars and restaurants) that never make a dime, and plenty of
absolute shit that can't seem to die fast enough.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Right, totally. If it looks and feels good, it doesn't matter if it never
turns a profit for me. It'd be great, mind you, but it's more important to me
as a demonstration of what I can do rather than a means to generate income.

------
tstegart
I make myself remember the job and life I had before I started my start-up and
it keeps me motivated. I don't want to go back to that. Ever.

------
vamsikv
There is a lot of opportunity for good apps to shine

------
bmelton
Installed, and am using this now. I haven't had time yet to see how it handles
notifications and the like, but it is quite frankly a _dead sexy_ Twitter
client, and I do like it.

The introductory tutorial is also gorgeous.

It still has some work to be done, as I've hit a couple placeholders, but I'm
looking forward to that.

One questionable UI detail though (at least to me) is using the account
context menu instead of having a 'settings hardware button' menu. I get using
the account context (at the top) for account management, but for things like
refresh interval and all that jazz, I expect it to be available on the
hardware button. Even if you bound the hardware button to the same thing (such
that if you click the hardware button, the account context menu expands) it
would probably work... just as it is now, the hardware button does a
noticeable nothing.

Will definitely be using this though. Very nice.

~~~
JoeCortopassi
Think you meant to post that here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4210062>

------
vamsikv
....

