
Is a web app earning $100/month a failure? - joshuacc
http://tbbuck.com/is-a-web-app-earning-100-dollars-month-still-a-failure/
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eggbrain
To me, it is only a failure if the time you put into it can make you more
money or fulfill you in a greater way if you put it elsewhere.

$100 may not be much, but if you are constantly churning out $100/month side
projects and working very little to keep them up and running, that turns into
big money fast.

On a side note, I must admit that at $19.99, I would not buy an app with the
sole purpose of cleaning out my Twitter inbox -- maybe I'm not the target
audience, but that seems like a lot of money for something that does a very
specific task -- one that could be easily implemented by Twitter at a later
time.

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n9com
It's not a lot, but on the upside, it's more than how much many VC backed
startups earn :)

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aculver
Sometimes I wish I could burn karma to up vote something more than once. :)

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Bobby_Tables
Depends on your intent. If you quit your day job to work on it and were hoping
to make a living, then it's absolutely a failure. If it was a side project you
were working on in your spare time, and you made it to learn and/or have fun,
maybe not. I'm working on a project of the latter sort...it's not the kind of
thing that can generate a significant revenue stream. But it was fun to write,
it will be fun to use, and if it can pay its own hosting costs, that's an
added bonus...

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wccrawford
If you put more than an hour a month into it, then yeah, it probably is. Your
time could probably be better spend elsewhere.

Of course, that assumes the main goal of the app was to earn money. The
knowledge gained from creating it could very well be worth it.

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mootothemax
_If you put more than an hour a month into it_

Thankfully, the support costs are, err, maybe an email every few months?
Basically, extremely low. Combined with sharing the hosting with
TweetingMachine, it is essentially all profit at this point :)

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Sukotto

      it is essentially all profit at this point
    

Then, no. If it's on autopilot and making money it's a success.

Now it's time to build another $100/mo success until you get enough of them to
buy that private island you're always wanted...

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midnightmonster
The way I figure it is, if it consistently clears $100/month __more than the
value of the time you put into it each month __, hey, you've got a new macbook
every year.

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rheide
I've got a webapp that makes $0 a month but I don't consider it a failure.
Just tell yourself it's a hobby ;)

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acangiano
Twitter, is that you? :-P

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pbreit
No. Twitter makes boatloads of cash.

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dejv
I would consider it success.

$100/month is not a lot of money, but creating app that makes $100/month from
nothing is much much more harder than polishing this app to bring $200 (or
even $500) per month.

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switch
Yes and No.

You have the wrong approach. You can't predict success and you can't predict
what markets will work and you can't prredict what the perfect product for a
market is. You have to release products and track ALL possible metrics and
tweak consistently.

Basically, even the really big companies have hits and misses. And more misses
than hits.

So, firstly, you should be releasing 5 or 10 high quality web apps and seeing
which stick and focusing on the ones that do.

That's the first step - finding a market demand.

Second is hitting the value for money/quality/perfect market fit.

That's the second step - after you have found market demand, making the most
of it.

An inbox cleaner for $20 is just too expensive. Too much friction - especially
for a new product from an unknown developer. You have to minimize regret for
users - or rather, potential regret.

Instead of thinking in terms of what you want to make think in terms of what
people want to get in terms of value for money. 5 people is too small of a
data point. So you have to lower the price anyways - to get enough customers
to find out whether there is market demand or not and what things people want
and what they are willing to pay for.

So play around with the price a bit. Plus release 4-5 other products and see
if you find a market with huge demand - one where even lower value for money
sells well.

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mootothemax
_So play around with the price a bit_

Previously, I have charged $4.99/year, $19.99/year, $1/month, $4.99/month, and
$19.99/one-time is the latest price. You're right that the sample is too small
to make much of... on the other hand, it _is_ double what the tool usually
makes per month.

I'm happy to experiment, my main question is: am I missing out on the bigger
picture by charging for this app instead of using it to promote
TweetingMachine? I'm not convinced that the target audiences are the same...
but guess I'm going to have to do another experiment ;)

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switch
It's not a good idea to turn a product into a free product to support another
one unless that other product is something like Google's Search Engine.

Even then, you could argue it's better to build multiple streams of income and
not depend on one product.

An offer of Buy 1 product and get the other free - that's fine. But giving
away inbox cleaner doesn't make sense unless you get a really high conversion
rate for Tweeting Machine.

You have also asked a completely different question in your blog post. To sell
more tweeing machine subscriptions - perhaps a longer trial (1 or 2 months
instead of 10 days) or a lite version would make sense.

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Zarathust
Success is the difference between expectations and results. I'm pretty sure
the guy didn't expect to get millionaire with his app but according to his
other posts he learned a great deal. I think it is not possible to consider
these projects on financial success alone.

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TheOnly92
If earning $100/month is a failure, mine will be an epic failure. I'm totally
not earning anything, plus it's still running totally based off my own wallet.

A way to indicate whether it is a failure or not is whether or not it
continues to grow, if you're targeting a very specific market it is very
unlikely that you will earn a lot of money (I personally don't have that much
amount of email that I need InboxCleaner to do some job for me...).

If however it is an awesome thing, people will get to know it and start using
it, then it won't be a failure.

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mootothemax
Hi everyone, blog post author here, and I'd like to apologise if this reads
like a bit of a grumpy whine, despite the fact that the tool's making money :)

I'm currently experimenting with various marketing efforts), and they do
sometimes seem like an uphill effort, with very few definite answers other
than "Experiment and see!"

I'm trying to work out how far to experiment with this one, and will keep on
writing updates as they happen :)

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Paymo
Think about it this way, a ton of startups that get funded with huge amounts
of money end up making $0/month :) On the other hand, pricing is a real
problem. I don't see many people paying $19.99 for it. If you believe many
people have this problem i'd suggest a very low monthly fee - although it will
make less in the begining it could make more in the long run (as long as
twitter doesn't implement a feature like this).

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mootothemax
_i'd suggest a very low monthly fee_

I was previously charging $4.99/month, and before that $19.99/year. So far,
the one-time fee is winning, although I'll be interested to see if that
continues next month ;)

Quick edit: Right in the early days, I experimented with charging $1/month and
$4.99/year, just to see what'd happen. End result: a lot of nothing. Still not
sure what to make of that, other than people don't want to pay for the service
;)

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blackboxxx
Depends on how much time and mental cpu cycles you spend making that $100. If
it's only a few minutes to a couple of hours a month, it's a keeper.

Assuming that's the case, scale your app so it brings in more (it's already
proven itself) ~or~ put it on the backburner as a "passive income generator"
and go hard on something that will bring in real money.

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larrik
The app is still new. After a while, it may make more. Or it may not. Who
knows? I wouldn't call it a failure.

For instance, I haven't updated one of my iPhone apps in a few months, but in
the past week or two my sales for it have been better than I normally get in a
month. Sometimes it gets better, and you just have to let it grow.

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mootothemax
_The app is still new_

To be fair, it's not _that_ new - it's well over seven months old at this
point :)

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robjohnson
Absolutely not a failure. You almost surely gained knowledge through the
process of developing the app and that knowledge is an intangible asset that
will contribute to every future project you work on.

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201studio
Depends on how much time/resources/money is spent each month. Cost to benefit
ratio.

I myself not having a profitable app on the store would see it as a success.

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npaquin
There is no failure when creation and learning has occurred.

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jeromeparadis
If you break even and make profits, then yes, it's a success.

Granted, you would need quite a few apps at that level a earnings to make a
living.

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knubie
I think the price is way too high. Apps like this generally sell for <$5 I
don't see too many people paying $20 to clear their inbox.

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peregrine
Put the $100 into a savings account and use it for a rainy day. I see no
reason to stop running something that makes money.

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politician
Drop the price, study the market. Otherwise, I agree with the general
sentiment that it's not a failure.

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binarycheese
You can use this app as a learning experience (education) for creating a
bigger and more profitable app

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tszming
You can try to wrap your webapps into an iOS app (via webview) and charge it
19.99 per download.

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grimen
If you wrote it in 1-2 days, not really (or you learned something on the way).
Otherwise: yes.

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jivejones
Thats enough to buy coffee for a month, in my books that success :D

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zeit_geist
yes, it is a failure.

