Noel Hartshorn (left in the picture) is a 37 year old Wales (UK) based iPhone developer, working in partnership with illustrator Dennis Harrison (on the right). Formerly a contract technical writer, Noel became one of the many casualties of the global economic crisis. With the IT contract market in decline, and with a lot more time on his hands than anticipated, Noel decided to take the plunge into iPhone development. This is his story.
(Editor’s note: the app they developed is called i-Doodz. Noel decided not to include the name of, nor the link to the app in this piece, but we add it because it deserves some credit at least)
It is now 4 months and 24 days since my contract as a Senior Technical Writer with a large PC manufacturer was terminated; a result of “streamlining”, “resource rationalization” or whatever the currently favored term for “axe wielding” is.
4 months and 24 days of energy sapping job hunting, wondering when the next significant income will present itself, and doing everything possible to avoid being a statistic and a burden to the welfare system.
It is 2 months and 6 days since, over a few bottles of budget beer, illustrator Dennis Harrison and I had an idea for an iPhone application that would surely leave other developers in awe, and the global iPhone community screaming for more. This was it – the solution to our financial woes – we’re going to make millions! All we need is a little bit of money and a good iPhone developer.
It seems the world is full of iPhone developers offering their services, and they cost a lot more than our budget would stretch to. When the quotes came in, realization dawned – we’d have to do it ourselves. The fact that I hadn’t programmed anything more than a website in over 15 years was only briefly considered, and I invested the profits from selling a beloved surfboard on eBay in a few iPhone development books. Dennis in the meantime got to work on the illustrations that would be the focus of our app – a slightly off the wall character designer and e-card sender.
At this point we had read a few App Store Cinderella stories, and decided to file them under “unachievable”. In the “possibly achievable” file were the accounts of a plethora of developers who are making a little pocket money from their efforts, maybe even a modest income. With expectations lowered, if that is all we would end up with, it was still worth doing. Slightly more income than nothing is, undeniably, more than nothing.
The development process was relatively straightforward. My rusty skills quickly caught up with modern programming concepts, or at least enough to achieve our goal.
Within 5 weeks our app was complete, and we began the process of enrolling in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program in order to get our app listed in iTunes for the world to see and, hopefully, buy. At this point, many iPhone developers would expect to read a tale of misery and woe, but for us the process was, in all honesty, a walk in the park. Our app went on sale on January 16th 2009. Then the real hard work began.
The iTunes App Store is a weird, wonderful and ever-changing beast. If a developer launches an app and leaves it alone expecting it to earn money, it won’t. Making money is an ongoing and often demoralizing effort, largely involving trial and error. First of all, how much should an app cost? Should it be free? (Not if we want to feed ourselves). Should it go for the cheapest price point of 59p? Such a tiny amount belittled our efforts, and grouped our software with the “pull-my-finger” apps that are the scourge of iTunes, but which are, for now at least, remarkably (although spectacularly disappointingly) successful. After spending 25 minutes developing our own pull-my-finger app to fit into that particular market, we eventually settled on £2.39 for our main app, which to us seemed a snip whilst also reflecting our hard work and maybe, just maybe, allow us to consider ordering curry sauce with our chips. Playing with the price of the app was interesting – changing it made little difference to daily revenues. The trade-off was the number of daily downloads.
Next, the tried and trusted Lite version strategy. Tried and trusted?! Despite the description of our no-cost Lite version stating its inadequacies, it received the apparently to-be-expected “needs more!”, “is that it?!” and “it should have….” comments. It seems all apps should be free and make you cups of tea whilst implementing global peace and eradicating Third World debt. Our Lite version does none of that. It simply provides a taster of the paid version. Apparently, this was naïve.
Updates. This is proving to be an important aspect of promotion. Every time an app is updated, it goes back to the top of the “list”. We’ve just launched our third update. Some developers have released 20 updates to their app in the same space of time. Note to self – make sure there are more typographical errors in the next app.
Final strategy – market, market, market…with neither marketing experience nor budget. The Internet is awash with iPhone app “review” sites, none of which bear any resemblance to an iPhone app review site; merely providing data extracted directly from iTunes, presented in a less friendly manner. Many long days of blogging, emailing, pleading and gazing at the screen wondering who to contact next have, however, resulted in a handful of good reviews. Whether these have any effect on sales or not is impossible to tell.
All this effort to promote our software is having two effects; I am no longer aware of what is going on in the world, and people are slowly starting to buy our app. Whilst we’re not mentioned in the Top 100 apps in our chosen category, we are starting to make money – almost enough to provide us with a basic salary each. With the continued effort, the gradually increasing number of good reviews, and a new themed version launching imminently, we’re looking through rose tinted spectacles at the possibility that we can soon stop searching job sites for a 9 to 5. Moonlighting, however, may be required.
Our experience has shown that jumping on the App Store bandwagon is relatively easy. Staying on it, sticking with it and reaping the benefits are a whole different ball game. There are at least 15,000 iPhone apps listed in iTunes. For every big winner there are hundreds of underdogs. For every little gem there is a wall of “fart apps” obscuring the view. For every single app there is at least one developer hoping they have guessed this week’s gimmick correctly.
http://code.goo...rence/aidl.html
How are you doing service applications, ie business services on the iPhone. I managed to use a server app/front end to emulate it in my schema.
So how are you guys getting around the lack of BroadcastReceiver?
IPhone->NoInterface();
I am way more adept on Android than with the iPhone SDK, so please explain this to us?
So do you still need to moonlight?
Yes!
whats the name of the app?
did I miss something or ???
It’s i-doodz, look at the embedded pic. We didn’t edit anything by the way, the guest author obviously thought it was more important telling the story of his experiences than profiling his own app.
I added a link to the article, I think it’s only fair
There is a video about i-Doodz here:
http://www.tweetube.com/rJ
Thanks for sharing this story. Very good read!
Small correction to your last paragraph: We’re past 20,000 apps (http://www.macw...l?lsrc=rss_main). Yep, the speed is intense!
Surely this guy has missed a trick — he talks about how expensive contract iPhone developers are, then becomes a perfectly good iPhone develper, then worries about where his next meal will come from…?
Why not just offer your services to others to build their apps? I’m all for making new apps of your own, and good luck to you, but it might be worth heading to elance and offering your services two days a week to avoid the dole queue.
Just a thought
Best of luck!
Brendan.
PS if you missed the subtle reference in the pic and want to help this guy out, it seems that the app is at http://www.i-doodz.com/
A real software developer can go straight in and build applications according to specs instead of poking around.
A real software dev can debug things that would take hobbyists 2-3 days of poking around in 5 minutes.
That’s why they cost money and earn massive benefits and 401ks.
…and why their value is in large + high risk projects.
Although when I look at products like SAP and their miriad of poor implementations I wonder if you’re right…
Enterprises like SAP don’t hire good programmers. They hire the cheapest possible programmers and hire them out for the highest possible price. And good developers don’t want to work for them anyway.
@Brendan: It is a possibility I’m looking at. I still have an awful lot to learn about iPhone development and am currently using my spare time to develop these skills.
@Chris: Agree. My points about iPhone devs was more of an explanation as to why we had to do it ourselves.
Thank you for that Article. It was nearly as I suspected.
A few days ago a old fried called, who had “an Amazing idea that shouldn’t be too much work”. I briefly thought into getting onto that train, but my gut told me not to. Now I know why
Thanks again.
I admire him for his determination in striking out on his own to start his own business
Curious whether they are also playing with android, or even considered that rising tide?
Anyone who isn’t “playing with Android” right now is living on an Apple IIc in a soon oncoming PCDOS world.
The HTC phone isn’t as nice as the iPhone, but wait until other manufacturers jump in. Apple has the dual touch patent holding Google back, but that’s their only ace. They had TONS of IP holding Microsoft back on Windows 1.0 and it didn’t stop them from selling to the PC clones.
Apple might have had TONS of IP, but Microsoft also had this thing called a LICENSE. You should look into that.
Thanks for posting this! As a gen Y-er in the digital media scene and long time iPhone user, I’ve been thinking about the kind of application I’d want. I haven’t taken the next step re: speaking to developers but your experience has definitely confirmed what I suspected – high barriers to entry!
Best of luck with future apps!
An executive summary of the article on the top will be nice for people who are in a hurry.
Sigh.
If you’re making comments, you’re not in a hurry.
So if you need a summary, it’s not time that you’re lacking…
LOL
Why? It probably took longer for you to post your whine than it would have taken to read the article.
Learn to read faster.
Ya, c’mon. What’s with all the words? And sentences and (oh god no) paragraphs?!
Why didn’t you just Twitter it? sheesh. ;P
My comment was neither a personal comment nor a personal attack to the writer. It is a suggestion how to improve the article using a reverse pyramid model.
I do not reply to any silly personal attacks.
Pwnd!
you just did
I think that I can relate entirely to how you’re having to struggle to practically convince people that what you’ve built is worth using, or buying.
When I built FreeVoiceLine.com, I was almost 100% positive that the service would practically shoot off and that I would have a major growth issue from the start… but the reality is that people are having difficulty believing my service is “real”. Once they try it, then they start to freak out, but until then, it really takes them time to actually trust that my service is actually something worth using.
These days, the old adage “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is” has been somewhat obscured… especially with FreeVoiceLine.com. What do you folks think?
@Cash, Your service works fine, although the initial commercial is too long and boring…
Also, please consider making a very small change for the system to accept the phone number format as plain digits, such as “1235551212″ besides the traditional (123) 555-1212.
Please note that the example number you offer has an extra “)” at the end [(example: (123) 555-1212)] which is confusing. Thanx
Understood, and well received – I’ll definitely look into that. Thanks
Cash, you clearly built this with security in mind!!!
I was checking over your API page
freevoiceline.com/developer.html
you mean to tell me that simply by clicking on this link
http://www.free...dest=4186223336
I can connect a dominos guy from Los Angeles, to a Dominos guy in Quebec City that only speaks the poutine language?
Is there any way to tape record this on API also for the ensuing laughter??
You should try and read what’s on the site. You can talk with folks in Canada and the US.
You’re right Cash, I’m downright illiterate.
Thanks for the heads up.
@Cash Coleman. I visited your site and it occurred to me, in part because comments here on TC, that your company is likely to gather thousands, even millions of telephone numbers –even unlisted ones… Now, what would keep you/your company from selling these phone numbers to *telemarketers*?
I could not find any type of disclaimer on your site. Because of this very important issue, I would not use your service…
Would you care to comment about this?
@Daniel – absolutely. I’m creating a terms of usage policy now that will state that the service will not give, sell, or allow access to any telemarketing firms whatsoever. It’ll be up shortly.
@Daniel – privacy statement has been updated.
I liked the article. No whining about lack of VC’s understanding or obtuse social apps business models comments. Ah, I beleive them guys are not from the Valley of Death.
I don’t think have VCs in Wales
But they have a prince no?…:-)
I’m VERY impressed that they took the initiative to stir up their ingenuity to do something about their situation. As far as the app goes, it’s a little too childish for me.
Have you ever noticed how “it’s a little too childish for me” is a phrase for people trying too hard to sound mature?
Thanks this article was a big help we had been looking for I phone developers to build games for our site woldme.com but think I will try to build our own
Again thanks this article really helped
I think techcrunch should have more of these types of articles.
Great article!
It’s not only about the struggle of developing the App, but the challenges of starting a business the old fashioned “sell some stuff for seed capital” way.
Good luck.
you know those chat monitors that parents put on kids computers when they suspect that their teenage daughter is having sex?
http://code.goo..._OUTGOING_CALLS
Imagine if they could install silent Android software on a phone that *records*.
Money making ideas to no end with mobile. We’ve only hit the very tip of the iceberg.
I would never make an app like this simply because I don’t need to and am working on more interesting mobile apps, but other people could certainly make some cash with it.
you’re cool chris.
Oh oh oh man. I kinda felt sad reading it but I loved the article.
1. The guy didn’t mention about his app anywhere in his version of the article. That’s so very modest.
2. Techcrunch willingly has mentioned the name. I am expecting a spike in the revenue of these guys. That was so good of Techcrunch to do that.
As somebody said, yeah, Techcrunch should have similar articles in the future.
Man, I used to have the same attitude – give me free coffee all the time. Now it makes sense.
@Madiator and Chris below – thanks. Don’t feel sad/bad though – as I said in the article people are starting to buy it, so I was hoping there’d be a positive message there, that whilst a developer may not earn millions out of their apps, there is a hope of making *some* money. I’m pretty positive about it all really.
Yeah, great stuff. Good luck guys. Hopefully you’ll make enough to at least convince yourselves to make another (+greater) app.
I work in the music industry.. This article so reminded me about what songwriters / artists go through.
Interesting to read an update in six months..
Good luck with your app..
I would like an update as well. I feel bad for the guy too.
If I had to live in the UK with a monarchy and $16 a gallon gas, and a severely tiered class system where some people are truly considered peasants in the honest sense of the term, I would literally off myself, no lie. I wouldn’t be able to handle that.
You’re brave Noel and Dennis. Some day you will break into the industry.
What the hell does living in a country with a monarchy have to do with anything? You do know we have an democratically elected government too don’t you?
so much ifart hate by developers. dont hate the creator who was smart enough to tapped a market that like stupid apps that are viral in nature. so much hate but the guy that has created that is laughing/farting all the way to the bank.
idood, how stupid
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s a good story to read… it is true, iPhone App Store is a hage fad right now. So many reasons to everyone why it is too. The fad will go away and there will still be a great platform and a large market; with the fad dying it’ll hopefully end the “whats the newest gimick of the week” challenge.
story from the top people. inspiring. its nice to know they dont have to depend on so much money to run their own brick and mortar.
My first instinct as a developer is to try and create applications that are extremely useful, innovative and well designed. Something that is truly an asset in the daily life of today’s connected individual.
But I have since changed my mind.
Anyone interested in purchasing my new Plastic Finger attachment designed exclusively for the i phone please feel free to contact me.
Thanks for sharing your story. just curious if there was one book you thought was the best resource for beginner iPhone programmers? Thanks!
Thanks – Apple’s primers are the only place to start! Then Mark & LaMarche’s book.
Have you noticed how Microsoft is completely missing from this space????
Windows Mobile is a complete farce compared to Android, and even iPhone to a lesser extent.
Virginia said “definitely confirmed what I suspected – high barriers to entry!”
What barriers to entry? if it were any easier there would be 15 million iPhone devs instead of 15,000!
If you had to spend $10k on development tools, that would be a barrier to entry.
Don’t confuse ‘barrier to entry” with the simple fact that marketing is such a massive (and often decisive) factor in the success of a product.
great read thanks for sharing.
After reading that entire article and a whole bunch of comments, I don’t see a single mention of Twitter. What is going on here????
Great read. Been pondering an application that would fit well for iPhone and my own dev skills are pretty rusty. Unfortunately, I don’t have the weeks of time necessary to get back into it, so I’ll have to go the other route — hire a programmer.
Al – thanks for all the feedback on my story! I’ll get round to replying to some individually later.
Also thanks for all the email messages – again will reply to all later (there’s quite a few!).
And thanks to Robin for considering it newsworthy.
Noel
Great read. Thanks for sharing this experience.
I’m at the “hey, I’ve got a great idea for an iPhone app” stage at the moment. I’ve had a little dabble with XCode and ObjectiveC, which constanty befuddles me.
You’ve given me some hope though.
Could you say what books it was you learned from?
My idea combines a little bit of the inane ‘pullmyfinger’ type app with something genuinely useful and entertaining (imho) – I have the PMF side of it done, now I’m trying to wire together the rest of the ideas, which conceptually are like litlte apps in their own right – but all tied together in one ’seamless’ system/concept/network app.
This feeling reminds me of how I felt years ago when I first started looking at Actionscript and Javascript, which scared the hell out of me. Now I can do it easily after a LOT of trial and error – an following a LOT of tutorials online!
So, any pointers to the best books or online resources you used would be very much appreciated.
Thanks
[ps: I'll be sure to quote this comment one day in my Sunday TImes Top 100 richest people profile ;p ]
My first experience with Objective-C and Cocoa was ….OMG! WTF!
Decided I needed to know a lot more about it before I tried swimming around in iPhone land, picked up a great book by Hillegass (Cocoa Programming on Mac OS X).
Although some of my friends who have launched into iPhone dev directly are calling me out as insane, I find it extremely helpful to understand XCode, the Cocoa framework, and Objective-C as a foundation, most of which I’ll be able to use when I get back into the iPhone.
It also helps that I’ve spent the last 15 years as a web developer on server- (PHP/Perl/Python) and client-side (mostly HTML/CSS, some Ajax, blah blah blah). It’s been mostly good for knowledge transfer, but there have been a bit of learning curve (compiled vs. scripted, etc).
Good to hear that things are going well. I’m looking for help in developing an iPhone app so will be getting in touch.
@Noel: Twittered the URL to your article 5 minutes ago – and it already has 26 hits (in Germany).
It is good to know, that there are others who are experiencing the same when it comes to sales & marketing. Doesn’t make it easier, but less painful, I guess…
So…what good is this app? It lets you make a cartoon, and send it? woo hoo
Fair play – some people will like it, some will not. But the article isn’t really supposed to be about the app itself, it’s about the whole experience.
Thanks. Many of us realize this. So thanks for sharing your experience.
Glad to hear you jumping out there and getting started. I do think this down economy is probably the best thing for a lot of people.
I’ve seen countless stories on people getting into business for themselves after losing a job. It’s about time that people realize a 9-5 isn’t job security, when you’re not the one in charge.
I think a true change that will occur is going to be from people becoming more innovative and self-reliant, not from some bloated debt riddled stimulus package.
But enough politics…congrats!
Congratulations on your success. Even I had been thinking on the lines of launching an app for iPhone, but I don’t have mac (can’t afford to buy one) and enough time.
Anyways, you guys really deserved it. Best of luck.
try winChain_1.0.1.zip
http://tkhere.b...ive-iphone.html
Great article…i’ve pondered the iPhone as a route for my next game/app, but reading this I realized I don’t have the time needed for it to really be successful.
Hey,
I just checked out your web site, i-doodz.com, and was surprised that you don’t have a blog or at the least that your on twitter?
“For every little gem there is a wall of “fart apps” obscuring the view”
Love that line – mind if I nick that for my sig?
Sounds pretty much the same as trying to build traffic to a new website.
It is, but the problem with the AppStore, is that no matter how much marketing you do, there is a higher chance for someone to shop around as soon as they hit the store.
Without the ability to sell directly on your site, you run that risk. Almost like telling someone to go to Target to buy one thing, and not have them look around at similar or competing products. When they do find something similar, it turns into a price war.
True, about the price comparisons. But at least you know everyone that is in the store is a qualified buyer and the barrier to purchase is very, very low.
It’s unlikely that anyone would be able to build such a seamless purchase pipeline into a stand-alone site. And, as anyone that’s worked in ecommerce knows, that is key.
Yeah, this is precisely why building a good loyalty program (blogging & twitter, facebook presence, etc etc etc) and a strong brand (should be a natural for this app) will help stem the erosion.
Great article – if anything more detail (don’t listen to that muppet who wanted an exec summary… what is he saying “i want to learn about iphone dev but don’t want to read anything more than 200 words? Or more likely, my boss will kick my ass if they catch me reading TC when i’m supposed to be de-fragging someones drive…)
Anyway – i think your experience is exactly as i would have guessed – it’s relatively easy to build and app (like it is a website) but to make any money you gotta figure out the marketing (i.e. build something that people want, and get it in front of them somehow – it’s not easy). I kinda hope your app will build an audience and snowball over time (i like the updates trick to get it in people’s faces) so if it looks like it will – surely time to build another app! In 1 years time have 3, 4 or 5 all fighting their corner in the store. You should be able to lever your existing app base to promote your new ones inside the app itself, helping grow the overall audience. With a few apps in the world maybe you can do that for a full time job (plus each time you’ll get better an figuring out what works). Eventually making the oldest apps free to help promote the new ones etc. etc. Soon you will have a software house, then you can get some other muppet to do the programming
Good work though.
@James – we’d tried a few things…Twitter (I still really don’t get it!), Facebook group, blog, but it’s a case of time vs. results. As our user base grows we certainly will look again at it to try and get a good connection between developer and customer.
@Critter42 – go for it
@Robin G: That’s our current way of thinking.
@Everyone: again thanks for all the feedback. All these comments and 100s of emails today, 99% of which were very positive.
Someone mentioned expecting to see a spike in sales for i-Doodz. Indications are that it isn’t, and I wouldn’t expect it to as a result of this particular forum…that’s not why I wrote the article (although I’m still trying to figure out why I did!).
Through the responses, however, what it has done is give us lots of encouragement, and that’s made it worthwhile.
Apple owns the world.
http://www.feed...epigs.com/?p=44
IMO, iTunes is a virus that only Microsoft could love.
Great little article, and gives a fairly realistic view on an avenue of development that lots of people are looking at right now. (Including myself, naturally…) I’ve got one app/game up in the store now, for about a week, and trying to figure out how to market it effectively without coming across as a jerk… Very curious to see how you guys do!
A whole article without copy/paste criticism? Nice!
The App market is becoming extremely saturated to the point that making money is much harder than it seems. The barrier to enter is low enough where any one with an idea can have it developed and posted relatively cheap. I regularly purchase apps for my iPhone, but never pay for apps costing more than $2.
p.s. – Check out my website if you need a place to vacation on the beach in San Diego, CA.
@Noel say if you have a new program or new release..whatever…how would you communicate that?
Twitter could easily be used for that. Just a thought.
BTW..I am 36 (turning 37 in Sept) and just started learning Objective C and once done I am going to dive into the iPhone book I picked up.