We've bootstrapped our company since August of 08, so I can absolutely relate to the desire of wanting a healthy, low maintenance revenue stream; sometimes I'm awoken at night by nightmares of raising money. One of the reasons we are bootstrapping this is because 1) we generate cash immediately, and 2) the upside is a VERY NICE revenue stream (no dilution) if we can manage to make, maintain, and keep our place as a premium app developer.
This is something that takes time to build and structure for true sustainability, period. You have to plan for more than a years worth of work if you're really interested in having that type of stream from the AppStore as it matures and pollutes. There will be cases of one-hit wonders for indie shops (especially in video games) and the major blogs will cover it, but make no mistake about it — it takes work.
The developer who was making $10k a month is likely no longer making that amount. He also has a reputation of producing 'junk' applications by his former and future customers (star ratings mostly 1-2), and will have an extremely difficult challenge in the coming months IMHO. So in a sense, his greed and desire to cut corners has poisoned his long term sustainability.
My company and partners are looking at the upside of our product revenue across 3-5 years, not 3-5 months. We're maintaining 4 premium apps (+ 1 junk app), and have roughly 4 new apps we'd like to introduce this year. Our existing products have features that will take over a year to build in and mature, but we're in this for the long haul. This seems to be in line with the thought and actions of the companies that inspire us such as TapTapTap, AppCubby, Polar Bear Farm, Tapbots, Tapulous, and Smule to name a few.
It's two different approaches to building a revenue stream, I know our approach will last longer once it's well established.
This is something that takes time to build and structure for true sustainability, period. You have to plan for more than a years worth of work if you're really interested in having that type of stream from the AppStore as it matures and pollutes. There will be cases of one-hit wonders for indie shops (especially in video games) and the major blogs will cover it, but make no mistake about it — it takes work.
The developer who was making $10k a month is likely no longer making that amount. He also has a reputation of producing 'junk' applications by his former and future customers (star ratings mostly 1-2), and will have an extremely difficult challenge in the coming months IMHO. So in a sense, his greed and desire to cut corners has poisoned his long term sustainability.
My company and partners are looking at the upside of our product revenue across 3-5 years, not 3-5 months. We're maintaining 4 premium apps (+ 1 junk app), and have roughly 4 new apps we'd like to introduce this year. Our existing products have features that will take over a year to build in and mature, but we're in this for the long haul. This seems to be in line with the thought and actions of the companies that inspire us such as TapTapTap, AppCubby, Polar Bear Farm, Tapbots, Tapulous, and Smule to name a few.
It's two different approaches to building a revenue stream, I know our approach will last longer once it's well established.