

How Jessica Abroms Made Thousands from an $800 iPhone App - MichaelApproved
http://www.yappler.com/news/article/10061/How-Jessica-Abroms-Made-Thousands-iPhone-App.aspx

======
tedunangst
Except by $800, they mean 99c. She paid people a total of $800 to finish an
app she'd already started.

Not sure why this is surprising/new. Margins on software have always been
high.

------
jcl
Caveat: "Thousands" in this case means "$2,903.39 so far".

That's after paying Apple's 30% share and $800 to outside contractors, but
ignoring any time and money she spent herself, including hardware and the dev
program costs.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Dev program costs $99 and she didn't spend much time on the app before she
decided to outsource the project. She estimates that the whole project could
have been outsourced/billed for $2,000 which would still give her a profit of
almost 100%.

Another thing to remember is that, although the month over month growth has
stopped, it's still a hasn't fallen by a significant percentage. That means
this app could still generate a few thousand dollars over it's lifetime.

(I run yappler.com and posted this article)

------
mcantor
I'm confused by the bar graph. In the final month, it looks like her gross
income was ~$1,200 with net Apple fees of $800. That's a 2/3rds cut, not the
30% mentioned elsewhere. What gives?

~~~
jcl
The red bar is "net Apple fees", or "the amount of money left after you take
away Apple fees". "Net _of_ Apple fees" might have been a better description.
([http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_really_meant_by_net_of_fee...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_really_meant_by_net_of_fees))

------
z8000
The real way to make good money in the iPhone market is not selling apps
themselves but consulting -- charge other people to make apps for them.

