Road To Riches Doesn't Run Through the App Store

Etienne Steward writes "Turns out that while a few fortunes can be made with Apple, Steve Demeter made most of his money by buying Palm (of all companies) at $1.76 and selling at $12. Apparently, there aren't as many iPhone App millionaires as we would like to be believe. From the article: 'In almost a dozen interviews conducted by NEWSWEEK, Apple consultants and programmers jettison the idea that the App Store is a world of easy opportunity, or a fast track to quitting the rat race. Instead they describe an anxiety-wracked marketplace full of bewildering rules, long odds, and little sense of control over one's success or failure. "It's kind of a crapshoot," says Demeter, who spent the last two weekends partying in Las Vegas and New York. "I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this."'"

Comments

Perhaps

[Rei]

Perhaps if he wants to be successful, he shouldn't spend his weekends "partying in Las Vegas and New York" and instead spend it on development and marketing. I've heard a wacky rumor that can help.

Re:Perhaps

[statusbar]

Now you are just crazy rumor mongering...

--jeffk++

Re:Perhaps

[Neofluffybunny]

He made his money buying Palm low and selling it high. So he's an investor. Personally, I'd spend my time partying in Las Vegas or New York than programming any day. Except Sunday, I've got to rest and play DnD that day...

Re:Perhaps

[sopssa]

And well, he was quite successful (like the article says in right the beginning)

Two years ago, the 30-year-old computer programmer became one of the first people to sell his product—a puzzle game called Trism—through Apple's App Store, a virtual marketplace where third-party software developers connect with customers wanting downloads for their iPhones. He pulled in $250,000 in just two months and quit his job writing code for ATMs. Demeter's success caught the eye of Apple's public-relations team, which profiled him in an inspirational video at Apple.com and gave him a shout out at its June 2009 World Wide Developers' Conference (WWDC). Media hailed the San Francisco resident an "App Store Millionaire" who would never have to work again—a happy financial reality that Demeter confirms. "Nine-to-five is no longer a concept for me," he tells NEWSWEEK.

Which seems quite successful for me. He then used the income to buy Palm stocks at low price and selling at high. He didn't specify how much he got out of it, but I guess it's enough to spend a few weekends partying in Las Vegas and New York.

And the app is over two years old.

Re:Perhaps

[Draek]

Perhaps he's already successful and prefers to *spend* the money he's already got rather than making even more for e-peen purposes. That'd explain why he's being cited in Slashdot and Apple's website, too.

Hell, as much as I dislike the concept of "partying", I believe the world would be a much better place if successful enterpreneurs were as him, rather than succumbing to their greed and small dicks.

Re:Perhaps

[SerpentMage]

No he is not an investor... HE GOT LUCKY!

I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I work at a hedge fund. Want to know my return? I have made on average 25% per anum for the past 5 years.

How am I doing this year? As of 22:00 CET today, I am up 29% from Jan 2008! So in other words with the S&P at 1367 on Jan 2008, you would be at 1763, or out performing the S&P market by 60%! Don't even ask how much I am making this year.

Personally this guy is going to loose his money because anybody can get lucky in the market, it takes skill to make money in a market year after year after year!

Re:Perhaps

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The trick is to recognize that and stick a large chunk of change in something like JNJ or KO so you're guaranteed a nice return even if you screw up later.

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

And perhaps you might give your posts a better subject next time. Is that so hard? Or are you so self-important that you feel everyone should read your posts, even with empty subjects like "Perhaps"?

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're only considering one of the may reasons why people save. Some others:

- They want to get rid of their mortgage as quickly as possible
- They have a family to provide for
- They want to retire early

Etc. In between being a party animal and a miser, you have people who save because they want to be able to spend the money on more important things as the need arises.

Re:Perhaps

[Dahamma]

To be precise:

He WAS an investor, but he sold his investment, made a ton of money, and now he's semi-retired.

You ARE an investor, because you haven't.

When investing, like many other things in this world, it's better to be lucky than smart...

Re:Perhaps

[Red Flayer]

No he is not an investor... HE GOT LUCKY!

I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I work at a hedge fund. Want to know my return? I have made on average 25% per anum for the past 5 years.

Easy claim to make. I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I sit in a lounge chair on the beach. I have averaged over 5000% return per anum for the past 5 years.

Seriously, though... break it down by years for us. There has not been a single fund that has returned 200% over the last five years (which is what you are claiming -- 1.25^5 == 3.05). If that's really the return you've made over the last five years, then I know some people who will want to talk with you about opportunities. Especially considering hedge funds averaged losses in the teens last year, with young funds having a stdev of about 6.5% (from an category-leading loss of only 11%).

Your numbers are too good to be true, quite honestly, unless you are taking the same kind of single-asset high-risk positions that you are complaining about.

blockquote>How am I doing this year? As of 22:00 CET today, I am up 29% from Jan 2008! So in other words with the S&P at 1367 on Jan 2008, you would be at 1763, or out performing the S&P market by 60%! Don't even ask how much I am making this year.

This is a banner year for hedge funds, best in over a decade. And your "how am I doing this year" starts in Jan 08? Huh? Should start in Jan 09.

At any rate, I really doubt your numbers. No one has had consistent returns like that over the past five years. Are you weighting by amount invested, by chance? Because then your losses appear smaller, due to the hemmorhaging of cash from hedge funds last year.

Re:Perhaps

[ciaohound]

as much as I dislike the concept of "partying"

As much as I occasionally feel like slashdot sucks or isn't what it used to be, when I see a post like this one, I fondly remember why I spend so many hours reading here.

Re:Perhaps

[LordKronos]

No he is not an investor... HE GOT LUCKY!

I am somebody who invests and trades the market. These days I work at a hedge fund. Want to know my return?

Let me stop you right there.....NO! I don't want to know. Any insight you might have on the subject was completely lost on me the second you turned it into a penis measuring contest.

Re:Perhaps

[LordKronos]

There has not been a single fund that has returned 200% over the last five years (which is what you are claiming -- 1.25^5 == 3.05). If that's really the return you've made over the last five years, then I know some people who will want to talk with you about opportunities. Especially considering hedge funds averaged losses in the teens last year, with young funds having a stdev of about 6.5% (from an category-leading loss of only 11%).

Not that I want to help the guy in his penis measuring competition, but there are some funds that have done just that. They are all invested invested in either Latin America or in Metals/Minerals. You can see them all here:
http://screen.morningstar.com/FundSearch/FundRank.html?fundCategory=all&screen=tr5yr

Note, although that page says "5 year total return", that is inaccurate. It is listing a 5 year annualized return. To confirm, look up the #1 on google finance
http://www.google.com/finance?q=MUTF:PRLAX

See on the right of the graph, it shows a 5 year annualized return of +31.12%. Loot at the 5 year graph. You can see that Oct 15, 2004 it traded at 13.44, and todays price is 47.24

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

Daniel, the FCC is going to mandate that you disclose when you get paid to blog or make posts on sites like Slashdot.

When can we expect a breakdown of the money you earn from shilling for Apple? Not revealing your (only) source of income -- since being an Apple 'technician' can't earn you money (they 'just work', right?) -- , especially not the amount that you'd need to churn out a steady steam of slander like you currently do.

I'm breathlessly awaiting your full disclosure (that's 'sarcasm', Dan. I know you're not so good at writing, so take a second to look it up in the dictionary. No, not the OS X dictionary -- a real one). This should be entertaining.

I hope you have a good lawyer.

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

My penis is bigger than yours, and that's not `'"sarcasm"''`.

A full disclosure would make you bleed.

Re:Perhaps

[ToasterMonkey]

Daniel, the FCC is going to mandate that you disclose when you get paid to blog or make posts on sites like Slashdot.

When can we expect a breakdown of the money you earn from shilling for Apple? Not revealing your (only) source of income -- since being an Apple 'technician' can't earn you money (they 'just work', right?) -- , especially not the amount that you'd need to churn out a steady steam of slander like you currently do.

I'm breathlessly awaiting your full disclosure (that's 'sarcasm', Dan. I know you're not so good at writing, so take a second to look it up in the dictionary. No, not the OS X dictionary -- a real one). This should be entertaining.

I hope you have a good lawyer.

lol, someone takes the Internet vewy sewiouswy.

Re:Perhaps

[tyrione]

Perhaps if he wants to be successful, he shouldn't spend his weekends "partying in Las Vegas and New York" and instead spend it on development and marketing. I've heard a wacky rumor that can help.

Or define success as less than 7 figures and enjoying a fulfilling life. Some people need to be b**ch slapped into reality.

Re:Perhaps

[daveime]

Seriously, though... break it down by years for us

Year 1 - fund grows by 25%
Year 2 - fund grows by 25%
Year 3 - fund grows by 25%
Year 4 - fund grows by 25%
Year 5 - fund grows by 25%

End result ... he has made an average of 25% per annum for the past 5 years.

I don't know where you get 1.25 ^ 5 ? You probably meant 0.25 ^ 5. That's why *he* makes the money and you post on Slashdot, probably.

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh...

So succumbing to another "sin" is better than being greedy?

Being greedy can be helpful to society. He could invest money in some business that improves the quality of life of other people. He could do it entirely for the wealth he would make off it. It would be better for society than him blowing money partying that I suppose benefits night clubs, companies that produce alcoholic beverages, and strippers.

Re:Perhaps

[Assembler]

Re: You probably meant 0.25 ^ 5.

So according to you, if he makes 25% over 5 years, then he makes 0.09765625%... and then when he keeps the same pace up for 5 more years, he makes 0.25^10, which is 0.000095367431640625%.. riiiight

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's not going to go through the process of trying being successful in the market, perhaps he shouldn't comment on it. He was successful in a different market, good for him, but that doesn't translate to him being some sort of business god.

Re:Perhaps

[VolciMaster]

don't know where you get 1.25 ^ 5 ? You probably meant 0.25 ^ 5. That's why *he* makes the money and you post on Slashdot, probably.

1.25^5 - that's 125% times itself for five years. 25% gain plus the original 100% is 125%, or 1.25.

You list a loss of 75% per year (.25 of the total times itself for five years). Remind me not to invest with you.

Re:Perhaps

[colourmyeyes]

Being greedy can be helpful to society.

Gordon Gekko approves.

Re:Perhaps

[dontmakemethink]

Who said he spent anything? I've been through Las Vegas about 8 times, partied my ass off, never spent a cent, and that's just from being a musician/promoter for one tour. Never had such luck with New York, but I bet Steve's a little more plugged in that I am.

Re:Perhaps

[quadrox]

The first part of your post is valid enough (or at least seems to be), but the second part seems to be either astroturfing or fanboism taken to extremes.

Misrepresenting what you *personally* think *might* happen to androids marketplace sometime in the future as something that is a problem right now is not very honest at least. Linking to your own blog as if it was some expert testimony without disclosing that you are the author and with which authority you speak is not very honest either.

Ignoring androids security precautions completely just so you can say it is insecure is just utterly in comtempt of any form of decency. One of the features I'm talking about is goddamn pictured on the top of the blog, the marketplace tells you exactly what behavior you can expect from an app.

Of course android is not 100% secure, but it is a design choice to shift *some* of the responisbility on the user which in turn gives the user more freedom. Misrepresenting this as something completely bad is just silly.

You sir are a troll, and I fell I have just been trolled.

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

It is much easier for a small investor to make a huge return than a hedge fund. The hedge fund has to find a way to double billions of dollars. The small guy is working with thousands or maybe a few million.

Re:Perhaps

[jedidiah]

Let's see... the publisher seems to be making a lot of money but the "talent" isn't really.

It's almost as if we've stumbled upon a different variation of the music industry from whence all of the iTunes content comes from.

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think musicians don't make much money, maybe you need to break away from the sterotypical notions maintained by a population of nerds who think they understand the world.

Also, the general public doesn't give a rats ass about open source. The only way Android will turn into the "Windows of smartphones" is if, like Windows, is can offer a much cheaper alternative to finished products that are better. There's little room in the smartphone market for this kind of discounting.

But don't take my word for it, check back in a year or two. I'm not wrong very often.

Re:Perhaps

[Hurricane78]

Not if you get payed for it! :D

Yes, you just have to find someone, willing to pay you for it. There's always someone. Even if it means just entertaining those around you. Like being a DJ, a gogo dancer, a stripper, a bartender, or just a player. :)

And common sense prevailed!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this." - DUH!?

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[geekmansworld]

Surprise surprise: programming for the iPhone is as lucrative as programming for any other platform.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[cmiller173]

"Programming --- An activity similar to banging ones head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward." --- Annon.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise surprise: programming for the iPhone is as lucrative as programming for any other platform.

True, the easiest way to make money is to find a gig writing boring-ass vertical market iPhone software. The hardest way is hoping your "casual game" catches on.

The most interesting part is that the iPhone market has expanded beyond casual games into the more corporate stuff.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[nmb3000]

Surprise surprise: programming for the iPhone is as lucrative as programming for any other platform.

At least with most other platforms you know in advance if your target audience will even be able to run your program. And then, even if your program is accepted, every day is another day that Apple can revoke your program for any reason they care to make up -- essentially rendering it meaningless.

Windows Mobile may be an inferior platform, but at least it can run whatever you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want. For real software companies, this is the kind of stability they require before investing real capital in development. Serious Company A isn't going to allow itself to be held at the whim of another (potentially rival) company, in this case Apple.

To be honest, this is one of the reasons I refuse to purchase an iPod Touch. As a software developer, I find Apple's practices so anti-developer I want nothing to do with the platform. I understand the need for control of the application store, but the locked nature of the device itself (which includes a remote kill-switch) is just going too far.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Counterpoint: Microsoft Pink Danger - at least apple has a somewhat coherent strategy.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even... You can't charge even remotely close to what software apps really cost in the app store.
It's a race to $.99, and the number of apps that even cost $10 is miniscule.

The *Paper* version of the idea I've had for the app store costs $15.
The apps that get close to that are less then $3, if they have a price at all.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[mdwh2]

Hear hear.

The "app (sic) store" is yet another Mythical Apple First - the media are hyping it as if selling or offering applications via the web is somehow new.

Well, welcome to the early 1990s.

Anyone one can offer or sell via the web, on any platform. There are vast numbers of "app stores", for both desktop and mobile platforms.

The only thing notable about Apple's is that they have made their platform such that you can only run applications installed from their store, giving them complete control over who can release software for it.

And people think that's a good thing? Right.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[recharged95]

Huh?

• $99/yr for standard access to the store.
• $20+/yr for OSX upgrades (Apple forcing you to upgrade)
• $1200 for a Macbook (sorry, I'm a Linux person, so I need a MacBook, etc...)
• $199 for a iPod touch (before the 3G S came out and I have a G1 phone already!)
• $75/mo for the best internet access (SDK updates are 2.7GB since it includes XCode!!!, also, my apps are media heavy at 100MB per app)--and the app uploader tool sucks.
• (and $120 for a data plan if you need it)

That about $2K to get my 1.99 apps out the door, not to mind:

• development time (can take months for a polished professional app)
• slower development time (and learning curve for most) using Obj-C. It's a PITA, like Symbian... Compared to WebOS or Android development.
• 2week wait for any approval
• illogical hassles and contract bureaucracy with app-store that will stress you out.

• Hence in all, if I used my typical developer rate, I think I spent $25K in niche apps (meditation apps) with a creative partner and so far have made my last 3 months' developer fees. It took Apple about a month to review as well.
  
  I'd say it's less lucrative than other platforms! In WebOS and Android, my dev experience was much easier in creating the same app... at 1/2 the cost. Sure, every ecosystem has appstore hassles, but they are either more predictable or respond faster.
  
  Conclusion: it is a crap shoot, Apple gives consumers what they want at expense of devs and I would have had more fun in Vegas spending $5K--at least some touching and nudity would have been involved compared to building these apps.

Re:And common sense prevailed!

[tyrione]

Huh?

• $99/yr for standard access to the store.
• $20+/yr for OSX upgrades (Apple forcing you to upgrade)
• $1200 for a Macbook (sorry, I'm a Linux person, so I need a MacBook, etc...)
• $199 for a iPod touch (before the 3G S came out and I have a G1 phone already!)
• $75/mo for the best internet access (SDK updates are 2.7GB since it includes XCode!!!, also, my apps are media heavy at 100MB per app)--and the app uploader tool sucks.
• (and $120 for a data plan if you need it)

That about $2K to get my 1.99 apps out the door, not to mind:

• development time (can take months for a polished professional app)
• slower development time (and learning curve for most) using Obj-C. It's a PITA, like Symbian... Compared to WebOS or Android development.
• 2week wait for any approval
• illogical hassles and contract bureaucracy with app-store that will stress you out.

• Hence in all, if I used my typical developer rate, I think I spent $25K in niche apps (meditation apps) with a creative partner and so far have made my last 3 months' developer fees. It took Apple about a month to review as well. I'd say it's less lucrative than other platforms! In WebOS and Android, my dev experience was much easier in creating the same app... at 1/2 the cost. Sure, every ecosystem has appstore hassles, but they are either more predictable or respond faster. Conclusion: it is a crap shoot, Apple gives consumers what they want at expense of devs and I would have had more fun in Vegas spending $5K--at least some touching and nudity would have been involved compared to building these apps.

What a crock of shit. You assume every Tom, Dick and Harry is either a C++ Head or a Java Head. Guess what? Talent doesn't get delayed by learning syntax and the most common MVC pattern in history--now being adopted as somehow revolutionary by the Java, .NET and C++ heads.

Imagination, Vision and artistic talent are from your child hood. You either have it or you do not.

The cost of not having talent for coming up with creative products dwarfs any of this `I need a Macbook, I need to pay for a dirt cheap license fee, I need to spend dirt for an OS upgrade and god! My time is precious!''

You shouldn't be programming solo if you can't keep your head above water financially, in any occupation.

Stop pissing time down the drain at bars, sporting events, nerd conferences, game hours that turn into all nighters and if you can't come up with something worth developing then get a job in Corporate America.

Another shocker

[moogied]

Whats next? My money tree won't grow?? Come on people, there are very very few "easy ways to get rich", and the few ways that do exist typically involve f'n over everyone else, and you ending up in jail at some point.

Re:Another shocker

[nine-times]

True. Most get-rich-quick schemes won't get you rich.

Just think about the economics of the thing. When there's some get-rich-quick bandwagon that everyone is jumping on, it's going to quickly turn into a highly competitive situation due to everyone jumping on the bandwagon, and opportunities will become limited. Or if it doesn't becomes competitive and opportunities don't become limited, that means your in the middle of an economic bubble. Sell what you can while the bubble is big, and you might not lose your shirt when it bursts.

Re:Another shocker

[sopssa]

the few ways that do exist typically involve f'n over everyone else, and you ending up in jail at some point.

So who did Bill Gates fuck over?

(he has been arrested tho)

Re:Another shocker

[moogied]

He didn't get rich quick. Research his shit, he spent a LOT of time and energy on his company.

Re:Another shocker

[QuoteMstr]

So who did Bill Gates fuck over?

No more than Andrew Carnegie, or John Rockefeller. These weren't great or particularly cutthroat men, but instead lucky men. Thousands of people could have been in their places and done the same thing, and the same principle applies to most famous people throughout history. The problem is that we imagine there's some reason to it: that if we just think harder, network more, or spend a few more hours in the lab, we'll be successful too. That's bullshit. It's luck. (And increasingly these days, the luck of having been born into the correct socioeconomic stratum.) The best we can do is to pursue opportunities to the utmost when they do appear and make the most of the luck we get in life.

Re:Another shocker

[jellomizer]

Or once one finds the way. It won't work again... Especially once the word gets out. Oddly enough most rich people actually deserved to be rich.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

And most of the people who used computers running other stuff, or wanted to use them.

Though my original answer would be "IBM, for starters". Not that they got where they were at the time by being the most friendly company in the world.

Re:Another shocker

[bnenning]

These weren't great or particularly cutthroat men, but instead lucky men. Thousands of people could have been in their places and done the same thing

I agree with that: out of millions of people, thousands could have done what they did. In other words, you need to be both lucky and good.

Re:Another shocker

[dargon]

Who did Bill Gates screw over/ Just ask Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products. Bill purchased MSDOS (was originally called QDOS) from them for a meager $50000. Tim later went on to work for Microsoft, but I bet he'd much rather have made the deal with IBM himself and kept Bill completely out of the loop.

Re:Another shocker

[metamatic]

Maybe you're the one who should research Bill Gates. He may have spent a lot of time on Microsoft, but he was rich before he started--he had a million dollar a year trust fund when he went to Harvard. He was born into money.

Re:Another shocker

[kipin]

That's bullshit. It's luck. (And increasingly these days, the luck of having been born into the correct socioeconomic stratum.) The best we can do is to pursue opportunities to the utmost when they do appear and make the most of the luck we get in life.

Your statement reminded me of one of my favorite quotes.

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. -- Thomas Jefferson

Re:Another shocker

[strength_of_10_men]

Instead they describe an anxiety-wracked marketplace full of bewildering rules, long odds, and little sense of control over one's success or failure. "It's kind of a crapshoot," says Demeter ...

So basically, it's like starting up a company. Odd how that works.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

His customers.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how Thomas Jefferson's slaves would feel about that.

Re:Another shocker

[Devout_IPUite]

Because they own a lot of land and have a trust fund manager who keeps them from losing it all?

Re:Another shocker

[AHuxley]

IBM was facing monopoly problems.
The future of personal computing was gifted to one of their own.
A rich young man, connected to the US establishment.
IBM helped sort Europe during ww2 and Bills father helped sort the US via Planned Parenthood.
The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has the same aims.
Its not luck or hard work, its birthright.

Re:Another shocker

[shmlco]

"...but instead lucky men. Thousands of people could have been in their places and done the same thing..."

And thousands WERE in their place, and did not. How many people were in the homebrew computer scene at the time? How many dinked around and wrote their own versions of BASIC? How many started their own companies? How many succeeded? How many had the same exact background and opportunities... and did nothing?

Attributing such to "luck" translates into refusing to take responsibility for your own actions and your own choices. "It's not me, it's luck." "Joe got the promotion and not me, the lucky bastard." And so on, and so on.

Many people have been at the helm of Apple, and only one has driven it to success. Twice. Is that luck? Would just anyone have made the same choices? Would just anyone have had the same insights? Would just anyone have the same vision and commitment and drive?

"...if we just think harder, network more, or spend a few more hours in the lab, we'll be successful too. That's bullshit."

Really? Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Edison? Who definitely made a success out of spending just a "few more hours in the lab".

"The best we can do is to pursue opportunities to the utmost when they do appear and make the most of the luck we get in life."

No, the best you can do is to create your own opportunities, and leave luck, chance, and the vagarities of fate out of the equation altogether.

But you're not capable of believing that, are you? So go home after work, why don't you? Go home and sit on the couch, or go down to the corner bar. Have a beer, and bitch and moan and complain about how "unlucky" you are. And definitely don't try to "do" anything about it. That's too hard, and with your luck, why bother?

Actually, you're half right. For you, it is luck, because in this case the prophecy is definitely self-fullfilling.

Re:Another shocker

[iamhassi]

"Maybe you're the one who should research Bill Gates. He may have spent a lot of time on Microsoft, but he was rich before he started--he had a million dollar a year trust fund when he went to Harvard. He was born into money."***

***citation required

bill gates bio:
"According to the 1992 biography Hard Drive, Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates the year he was born. Gates commented on this claim in a 1994 interview with Playboy:

PLAYBOY: Did you have a million-dollar trust fund while you were at Harvard?

GATES: Not true. . . . . My parents are very successful, and I went to the nicest private school in the Seattle area. I was lucky. But I never had any trust funds of any kind, though my dad did pay my tuition at Harvard, which was quite expensive."

there you have it from the horses mouth: no trust fund.

Re:Another shocker

[jeremyp]

I disagree, at least in the case of Bill Gates, I don't know anything much about how the other guys got their fortune.

Yes, Bill Gates got lucky, but there was an enormous amount of effort required on his part to get the opportunity of being in the lucky situation and there was a lot of courage and intelligence required to recognise and take advantage of the lucky break.

If we take the most famous episode of luck affecting Bill Gates, you have to remember that he must have built up a pretty good software business for IBM to visit him at all and then to take advantage of the unprofessional way IBM were treated by Digital Research took balls (and ruthlessness). I'm sure most of us would have just said "yeah, I'm sure they'll sort out something. Now what about our BASIC interpreter?"

Re:Another shocker

[modmans2ndcoming]

you are right.... it takes balls to go through with the necessary ruthlessness that Gates engaged in.

He knew how to play dumb when he needed to. He knew how to say the right things to people to get them to listen. He knew the price points at which people would sell their mothers.

Digital pissing IBM off: Luck
gates learning about it: Luck
Gates going to IBM and selling them a product they didn't have: Balls
Gates buying Dos for next to nothing, knowing what he would get from IBM: Ruthlessness and Balls
IBM being stupid enough to agree to a non-exclusive license for Dos: Luck.

Re:Another shocker

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And thousands WERE in their place, and did not. How many people were in the homebrew computer scene at the time? How many dinked around and wrote their own versions of BASIC? How many started their own companies? How many succeeded? How many had the same exact background and opportunities... and did nothing?

Ask Woz. He was there and figured out how to sell a $500 computer that cost $250 to make.

Many people have been at the helm of Apple, and only one has driven it to success. Twice. Is that luck? Would just anyone have made the same choices? Would just anyone have had the same insights? Would just anyone have the same vision and commitment and drive?

Steve is just a freak - the sort of guy who can sell anything to anyone. Watch the video above. It's really long, but there's a whole lot about what launched apple.

Re:Another shocker

[8ball629]

That's the most depressing thing I've read on /. and I've read a lot of depressing things on /. and now that I think about it, that is somewhat depressing as well.

Re:Another shocker

[Sir_Lewk]

A million people could had the idea of mass producing cars, figured out a^2+b^2=c^2, or thought up special relativity. Innovation and insight always seems obvious after the fact but, as much as many people don't want to admit it, rarely can you really describe these events as just "luck".

A few years ago, when describing special relativity my physics professor said something to the effect of "This is really simple, the basic premise of this is not hard to grasp and thousands of people could have done this. However none of them did except one man. Brillance is being able to figure out the seemingly obvious stuff that nobody else can."

Re:Another shocker

[Fulcrum of Evil]

you have to remember that he must have built up a pretty good software business for IBM to visit him at all

It helps if your mother can put a kind word in the right ear, but yeah, you still have to deliver.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

"...but instead lucky men. Thousands of people could have been in their places and done the same thing..."

And thousands WERE in their place, and did not. How many people were in the homebrew computer scene at the time? How many dinked around and wrote their own versions of BASIC? How many started their own companies? How many succeeded? How many had the same exact background and opportunities... and did nothing?

That's his point, there were thousands of people who could have done it, yet there was only the opportunity for 1 to do it. Someone had to get lucky and be the 1. Had Bill Gates been born 5 years later, someone else would have been there doing what Bill did and would have become the billionaire. You need the skill & drive to succeed. You also need luck. You can't succeed on luck alone, nor can you succeed on skill & drive alone.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think that came from the other end of the horse...

Re:Another shocker

[martas]

you've got some nerve, calling Billie a horse. i get it that trash-talking about MS and apple, and their respective Gods - gates and jobs - is a normal thing, but come on, there are limits to trash-talking too, man... let's stay civilized here, people!

Re:Another shocker

[CharlyFoxtrot]

William Henry "Bill" Gates III "his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president."

He might not have had the money in a trust fund but there's someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth if ever I saw one.

Re:Another shocker

[martas]

i agree with everything you said except the part about "these days" - there's nothing about "these days" that makes succeeding from a crappy starting point any harder than it used to be any other days, IMHO.

Re:Another shocker

[demachina]

"Come on people, there are very very few "easy ways to get rich"

Well.... Apple and their shareholders seems to have found one.... let everyone else write their apps for them and make them sell them for next to nothing on their app store. Apple takes a cut on them all with almost no risk. They don't care which apps succeed since they take a cut off all of them that aren't free. With the free apps they get free apps to sell their phones for them.

Pretty similar situation with iTunes. Everyone else takes the risk producing a hit song and Apple takes a cut off all of them so they can't lose.

Not to belittle their genius in creating iPod, iPhone and their app store but at this point they have achieved something resembling the Microsoft tax on PC's. They take a cut out of everything in these two markets and they have almost no risk since they've acquired a near monopoly with iTunes, iPod and iPhone.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gate [...] had a million dollar a year trust fund

So you're one of those guys who picks up myth-proving trash talk and passes it along as fact. Don't kid yourself into believing this doesn't deeply reflect the quality of your truth...it very likely does. It would have been so easy for you to have disproved this myth, and yet, that little bit of effort appears to exceed that which you are willing to expend in being correct.

Wait...could it be that you're one of those guys whose truth transcends fact?

Trash talk. Trash thought. Trash.

Re:Another shocker

[Red Flayer]

These weren't great or particularly cutthroat men, but instead lucky men.

I disagree 100%. I'm not as familiar with Rockefeller as I am with Carnegie, but Carnegie's business savvy, work ethic, and disregard for others were the three things that enabled him to become extremely wealthy (I assume you mean Andrew). See the Frick incident in Braddock PA (Carnegie's man Frick had armed guards bust a strike that was in protest of a wage reduction. 12 were killed in the process). See also the issue of pollution in Pittsburgh and Carnegie's acknowledgment and dismissal of the health problems caused by it.

What separates men like Carnegie from others who you might refer to as "unlucky" is that Carnegie took a hard line, and stuck to it, damage to others be damned.

As for Rockefeller, I think you're way off base there, too. Ida Tarbell's "The History of the Standard Oil Company" would be a good read for you. Of course, after that was published, Rockefeller engaged in a "Public Relations" effort to unsully his name -- no really -- the man Rockefeller hired to do it coined the phrase we all know and love.

What separates men like Rockefeller and Carnegie from the less-successful tycoons is indefatigable attention to money, and indefatigable disconcern with the plight of those they needed to trample over in order to amass their wealth. Luck played very little part.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, heven if we don't simply assume that he was lucky not being born Bill Gateskowsky from Brooklyn - just assume his well-off parents hadn't send him to one of the very few schools with access to a computer in 1970. He would have lost years of experience programming and more importantly the head-start over almost everyone in the scene. Are you actually telling us Bill Gates would be the richest man on earth today if his first computer would have been a Apple II?

Re:Another shocker

[mdwh2]

Apple takes a cut on them all with almost no risk.

Is this true? *googles* God, you're right. I had no idea - combined with the fact that you have no choice but to host with Apple, it dismays me that any developer touches them with a bargepole.

Any other platform, you host where you like, for how much you like. And plenty of websites offer hosting for free.

And it's not like it's a small cut - according to this, it's a whopping 30%.

Re:Another shocker

[mdwh2]

Many people have been at the helm of Apple, and only one has driven it to success. Twice. Is that luck? Would just anyone have made the same choices? Would just anyone have had the same insights? Would just anyone have the same vision and commitment and drive?

If you've got fans and the media giving free advertising to your products (but not your larger competitors), and spinning myths to pretend that you were first in a whole load of areas. Yeah, I think one could make a success with that head start.

I mean just look at this article - another day, another Apple article (or ten).

Re:Another shocker

[IntlHarvester]

The original deal with IBM was only worth $50,000 IIRC, so at the time it probably didn't seem like a screwjob. Microsoft also already had the sales and OEM customer base required to make a product like this successful.

SCP retained rights to MS-DOS, BTW, they just never did anything with it, and eventually sold them back to Microsoft.

Re:Another shocker

[Eskarel]

Certainly Bill Gates made the most of his opportunities and there was certainly a very large element of hard work and personal ambition there.

That said, if he'd been born a few years later or probably even a few years earlier, or done almost anything differently in his life he wouldn't have been there to have the opportunities he took advantage of. Hard work is definitely important. Being able to see your opportunities and take advantage of them is important. A certain degree of ruthlessness is also important, and you are very unlikely to succeed in any major way without them.

That said, the way to get rich beyond your wildest dreams is to be in the right place at the right time. All the hard work in the world will not get you there without that. It'll keep you from starving, it'll probably get you a decent living(if you're smart(not necessarily intelligent) enough to work hard at the right things. Bill Gates is Bill Gates because he was there when opportunity knocked and grabbed it with both hands.

Re:Another shocker

[Machtyn]

Just because you have a silver spoon doesn't automatically make you smart. Bill Gates was intelligent to jump at opportunities when they presented themselves. He was intelligent enough to continue on previous successes. He was very intelligent in getting the right marketing people.

My point is that there are a lot of kids with silver spoons. But that doesn't mean they will become the richest person in the world.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Success can be persued, and with enough work the bright and motivated can become fairly weathly.

Uberbillionaire secondary movers tend to be created by society (and luck) rather than out of their own personal ability. Had Gates not been there, someone else would have been to fill that void.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how Thomas Jefferson's slaves would feel about that.

Not much, they are all dead.

Re:Another shocker

[LordKronos]

He might not have had the money in a trust fund but there's someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth if ever I saw one.

Possibley, but in terms of the original question of how he got to where he is, the question is still just as valid. Relatively speaking, compared to where he is now he was dirt poor when he was 18. Plenty of people were born into the same level of wealth he was who don't go on to accumulate significantly more they start with, much less become the richest man in the world. So the question of what did he do to get "rich" is still relevant (though the question also suggested he got rich quick, which wasn't really the case).

Re:Another shocker

[witherstaff]

Another tried and true way to get rich - or richer - is to gather up a handful of war mongering CEOs of military industrial companies and get your bunch elected president. No bid contracts, that's the way to go!

Re:Another shocker

[ajlisows]

Luck is probably always involved in some degree, I agree with you there. However, in order to even get lucky you need to put yourself in a position to reap the benefits. You'll never get that promotion at work if you show up late and do a shitty job. You'll never be the one that develops the next "Killer App" if you never develop any software.

I hear people complain about their bad luck all the time. "That cop is NEVER there at 3 AM. The one time I am driving drunk and blow that stop sign he happens to be there and I get a DUI. I have the worst luck." "Look at that guy with his awesome wife and children. I wish I could be that lucky. Never mind that I had this really great woman that loved me until I decided I just had to poke my cock into that mush for brains, herpes infested slut. If she hadn't had herpes my girlfriend would have never known. What bad luck." "So I was at work late one night and laid out a line of blow on the bathroom counter. I thought nobody else was working. Who walks in? The President of the company. Can you believe that bad luck?"

I think that you will find if you work hard, treat people decent, obey the law, and avoid situations that can get you in trouble whenever possible that you will find yourself to be more "Lucky" than most people.

Re:Another shocker

[styrotech]

Why do you think it is an either/or thing?

Obviously nobody is going to succeed on that level without talent, hardwork and insight etc.

But you'd still need plenty of luck as well. There would've been many 50/50 line calls Bill Gates made early on that only in hindsight turned out to be right or if they were wrong not big enough to sink him. There also could've been many other events or factors outside his control that could've sunk him in those early days too.

Re:Another shocker

[syousef]

And thousands WERE in their place, and did not. How many people were in the homebrew computer scene at the time? How many dinked around and wrote their own versions of BASIC? How many started their own companies? How many succeeded? How many had the same exact background and opportunities... and did nothing?

None. No two people have the same experiences and opportunities.

There are things beyond your control that have to fall into place for you to become wildly successful. That is what people call luck. Yeah hard work is usually also required, at least at the start.

Attributing such to "luck" translates into refusing to take responsibility for your own actions and your own choices. "It's not me, it's luck." "Joe got the promotion and not me, the lucky bastard." And so on, and so on.

It just may be that Joe has a quality or did something that you could not have. That's called being a realist, not refusing to take responsibility. Using such circumstances as an excuse not to make an effort to try make the most of the opportunities that come your way is refusing to take responsibility.

Many people have been at the helm of Apple, and only one has driven it to success. Twice. Is that luck?

No it's marketing.

Would just anyone have made the same choices? Would just anyone have had the same insights? Would just anyone have the same vision and commitment and drive?

Now you're just playing hero worshiper. If you think it was raw "vision and commitment and drive" with no fortunate circumstance that made Jobs rich you're living in a fantasy world.

Really? Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Edison? Who definitely made a success out of spending just a "few more hours in the lab".

Lots of people spend all their lives working in a lab or at a computer and don't make it. It's not JUST the time and effort that got Edison anywhere. He had aptitude in a number of areas that most people don't.

But you're not capable of believing that, are you? So go home after work, why don't you? Go home and sit on the couch, or go down to the corner bar. Have a beer, and bitch and moan and complain about how "unlucky" you are. And definitely don't try to "do" anything about it. That's too hard, and with your luck, why bother?

Do you know anything at all about what the GP does in his spare time? Or indeed if he even has any? Do you have a family? Children? Spending all your time at work and neglecting them while persuing some foolish dream of fame and fortune isn't the way to go.

Actually, you're half right. For you, it is luck, because in this case the prophecy is definitely self-fullfilling.

When someone wants to insult you they call it "self-fulfilling prophecy". When they want to praise you they call it "foresight" or "being a realist"

You keep on telling yourself there's no such thing as luck. Keep working yourself into the ground doing things that aren't likely to make you rich or famous. It changes nothing. Certainly not your wealth.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. In Australia, everyone expects to get rich from borrowing lots of money and buying houses.

I don't know how well that's been working for you Americans, but over here we have 1/10th the population density and a median house price over double yours, so we must be doing something right! Onwards and upwards, and we'll all get rich from changing the price tags of houses with borrowed money!

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Edison? Who definitely made a success out of spending just a "few more hours in the lab".

Edison was a brilliant inventor, but his financial success owed at least as much, if not more, to legal intimidation (e.g. patent wars with Westinghouse), illegal intimidation (e.g. harassment of film production on the east coast), exploitation (e.g. promising and reneging on payments to Tesla), and out-and-out theft (e.g. bankrupting Melies by stealing his movie and showing it himself.)

A brilliant inventor, yes, but let's not canonize the man as a scientist who struck it rich through hard labor in pure research. The man's ruthlessness dwarfed the worst thoughts Slashdotters have about Gates.

Re:Another shocker

[daveime]

It's not JUST the time and effort that got Edison anywhere

Leeching off the genius of Tesla and then refusing to pay him also helped.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Gate's mom being friends of the then CEO of IBM... luck as well

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital pissing IBM off: Luck
gates learning about it: Luck
Gates going to IBM and selling them a product they didn't have: Balls
Gates buying Dos for next to nothing, knowing what he would get from IBM: Ruthlessness and Balls

You obviously got your "facts" from the cheesy made-for-tv movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley. Believe me, that's not how it happened. Shit, Google and Wikipedia will show you how wrong you are.

Re:Another shocker

[cameldrv]

Bill Gates is Very Very Smart, Very Very driven, and had parents who had the resources and motivation to help him be as successful as possible. Therefore he is one of the richest people in the world.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably felt REAL LUCKY ;)

Re:Another shocker

[shmlco]

"None. No two people have the same experiences and opportunities."

Which invalidates the GP's original argument, in that "thousands of people" in the same position could do the same thing. Thanks.

"It just may be that Joe has a quality or did something that you could not have."

True. It may also be that Joe did in fact work harder or smarter, or studied longer, and as such earned the promotion.

"Edison ... had aptitude in a number of areas that most people don't."

Fine. What's yours?

"No it's marketing."

Just marketing. Right. They didn't actually make products people wanted. They didn't integrate new technologies into cool new devices. They didn't design and create products that featured award-winning industrial design. Nope. "Just marketing." Sorry, but "just" marketing and $5 will get you a latte at Starbucks, and even then they're going to want the cash up front. Plenty of companies have tried to get by on "just" marketing.

"Spending all your time at work and neglecting them while persuing some foolish dream of fame and fortune isn't the way to go."

Nice straw man, but I wasn't advocating that. But sitting around and waiting for some mystical magical opportunity to walk up and knock on your front door isn't the way to go either.

"Keep working yourself into the ground doing things that aren't likely to make you rich or famous."

Duh. Work simply for the sake of work isn't a panacea. Never said it was.

And of course there's some luck involved in practically any endeavor. But time and again it's been shown that certain people tend to create their own luck.

And to insist, as did the GP, that it's ALL luck and that nothing else matters... well, you might as well hand over all your money to the nice man sitting at the poker table and not bother even sitting down, because you've already lost the game.

Re:Another shocker

[master_p]

Regarding Microsoft and Bill Gates, they were born at the right time, where computers were much less ubiquitous than today (as in almost non-existent). There were lots of opportunities in the 70s and the 80s. Nowadays, it's very difficult, because most of the time, someone will already have thought the idea you just came up with.

Success is also not only about hard work, it's also about cheating: they bought the DOS system from a professor near Redmond for small change (50,000 $ I think?), then went on and sold that to IBM as PC-DOS, agreeing not to sell PC-DOS to other manufacturers. Then they modified PC-DOS to make MS-DOS (essentially both systems were the same with very few minor differences) and sell it to other manufacturers.

Re:Another shocker

[intheshelter]

Easy there Mister Low Hanging Fruit. You might want to do a little research on the topic before taking such a simplistic viewpoint. While slavery was wrong, there were other factors in play at the time. Actually Jefferson hated slavery and wanted to free his slaves, but he was very concerned about their safety if he freed them. A freed slave did not exactly have better options in life at that time. I'm not making him out to be a saint, but our simplistic view of the topic from 200 years later does not really take into account some of the realities of the time.

Re:Another shocker

[operagost]

This.

Re:Another shocker

[operagost]

$666, if I recall correctly!

Re:Another shocker

[operagost]

You're right. A lot of the people who lament their bad luck in the ways you listed forget all the other times they were doing the wrong thing and "got lucky" that it worked out. They just ran out of "good luck".

Re:Another shocker

[Gilmoure]

My money tree won't grow?

I tried that. Grew ok but then birds came and stripped it bare one day.

*sigh*

Re:Another shocker

[Gilmoure]

Part of his luck was that his mom was on the same United Way board as the VP from IBM in charge of their personal computer division. When she heard IBM needed computer software, she told him to contact her son; he was in to computers.

Another bit of luck was that his dad was a big intellectual property lawyer so when it came time to write up a contract with IBM, he advised Bill on only licensing DOS to them, not selling outright like the QDOS guys did to Bill, and to also have a clause allowing MicroSoft to license it to others as well.

After that, y'all know the rest.

So, yeah, he was lucky. Lucky to have the parents he has and that they were in the right place at the right time.

Re:Another shocker

[Gilmoure]

Tim's mom was not on the United Way board with the IBM vp in charge of their personal computer project.

Also, Tim's dad was not an lawyer specializing in intellectual property issues and didn't advise him against selling his software out right and instead, just licensing it to IBM and retaining the rights to license it to other companies as well.

Re:Another shocker

[jedidiah]

The trust fund is a red herring as the guy is still old money.

And the guy isn't so much smart as he is ruthless. He blackmailed
and then betrayed his first business partner. With Microsoft you
can't stop worrying about them simply because they are your
"partner" now (like Novell).

Being their friend just means you will be less likely to see the poison dagger when it's that time.

Re:Another shocker

[recharged95]

But I never had any trust funds of any kind, though my dad did pay my tuition at Harvard, which was quite expensive."
BUT who got you into Harvard?

If you don't has a trust fund, but have connections, it's pretty much the same thing nowadays. It's just in the latter, you can't piss everyone off.

Re:Another shocker

[firewood]

Really? Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Edison? Who definitely made a success out of spending just a "few more hours in the lab".

If you were objective about this instead of religious, you would present evidence on the correlation between hours spent in the lab and getting really rich (I know lots of people who spent years of their lives in labs, and are barely getting by.) Then compare that correlation with correlations against being born into an advantaged family, hours golfing with people with the right connections, etc. etc. And then determine whether more hours in the lab, or more hours doing something else (finding someone from a rich family to marry, buying a lotto ticket, etc.) actually has better odds.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you flip a coin 30 heads in a row? No? Consider everyone on the planet competing in a "coin toss tournament", and guess what, eventually you'll get a "winner", and in order to win against everyone on the planet, that person would've flipped the coin 30 times in row (or more).

They're the winner. Does it mean they weren't "lucky" to win? Does it mean everyone else are suckers who lost? Does it imply anything about the winner's ability to win such tournaments? (or even the next throw?).

Most business folks are the same way. They're in competition. There has to be a winner. But just 'cause someone is a winner doesn't mean the outcome wasn't pure chance, or that they'd succeed again if situation was repeated (heck, for all you know, they'd get hit by a bus if life were to replay again).

BillG is a smart dude (I even read one of his books). But superhuman he's not. He's just an average dude who was in the right place at the right time, and enough sense to not make major blunders. It could've been anyone else---someone has to win the tournament.

Re:Another shocker

[iamhassi]

"He might not have had the money in a trust fund but there's someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth if ever I saw one."

Sure, but I'm sure you know someone with parents that have money yet they're still nothing.

Besides the point was there was no trust fund. Having rich parents vs having a million dollar trust fund are very different things. Parents $$$ != Your $$$

Re:Another shocker

[iamhassi]

"If you don't has a trust fund, but have connections, it's pretty much the same thing nowadays." **

**citation needed

How is that even close to the same thing? Knowing someone vs having a million dollar trust fund aren't even on the same level. Since they're the same, I'm guessing if given the option of million dollar trust fund vs knowing (NAME ANYONE YOU LIKE) you'd have no problem turning down the fund? I'm thinking once you have the million dollars you are the connection that people want to know. "My buddy has a million dollar trust fund" is better than "My buddy knows _________"

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCKED!

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

The original deal with IBM was only worth $50,000 IIRC, so at the time it probably didn't seem like a screwjob.

Let me get this straight: you claim that Microsoft bought QDOS for $50,000 from SCP and then sold it to IBM for $50,000? Sure sounds like a screw-yourself-job.

Re:Another shocker

[IntlHarvester]

Yeah, but small businesses do this kinda thing all the time to "get in the door" with a big customer. You can't disagree that it paid off for MS in the long term.

Re:Another shocker

[bvankuik]

Dunno about his slaves but Jefferson was someone who raised the bar for himself and others. He'd get up on the crack of noon, 7 days in a row.

Re:Another shocker

[the_womble]

Having a mother who could introduce him to people in senior positions at IBM: Luck

Re:Another shocker

[syousef]

"Edison ... had aptitude in a number of areas that most people don't."

Fine. What's yours?

There are 6 billion people on the planet. Not all of them are going to be some kind of genius.

Just marketing. Right. They didn't actually make products people wanted. They didn't integrate new technologies into cool new devices. They didn't design and create products that featured award-winning industrial design. Nope. "Just marketing." Sorry, but "just" marketing and $5 will get you a latte at Starbucks, and even then they're going to want the cash up front. Plenty of companies have tried to get by on "just" marketing.

Apple products are lame. They aren't more capable. They aren't more stylish. They do have bugs. They don't just work. They often lock you out of doing what you want with your own device. They are sold on marketing rather than fuctionality.

You can win a design by convincing other idiots that it's new. It doesn't mean it is.

Plenty of companies do get by on just marketing. Do you think Nike and Reebok are genuinely better shoes? What about that garbage they sell on late night television? How about fortune telling? Fantastic marketing and no substance, but fools and their money...

Nice straw man, but I wasn't advocating that. But sitting around and waiting for some mystical magical opportunity to walk up and knock on your front door isn't the way to go either.

You was no straw man. YOU asserted that people make their own luck, which is complete nonsense. I didn't see anyone suggest you should sit on your backside and wait for opportunity to come to you. So if anyone can be accused of setting up straw men it's you. Suggesting that anyone can become rich and famous just by "making their own luck" is the position YOU put forward. Then you accused some people you don't know of being lazy and sitting on their backside watching TV.

And of course there's some luck involved in practically any endeavor. But time and again it's been shown that certain people tend to create their own luck.

No one creates their own luck. Luck is by defintion the set of circumstances which you have no control over.

And to insist, as did the GP, that it's ALL luck and that nothing else matters... well, you might as well hand over all your money to the nice man sitting at the poker table and not bother even sitting down, because you've already lost the game.

The GP did no such thing. Making money - enough to be comfortable - requires some luck. Becoming rich and famous requires a lot more. In both cases you still usually have to work for it, and work hard. The difference between rich and mega-rich has a lot to do with luck. The difference between poor loser and making a decent living requires a lot less. In all cases you can improve your situation through working hard and wisely, but in all cases yuo have to be given the opportunity in the first place. If you're born to a starving family in a 3rd world war torn hell hole, not getting shot or starving to death before you're 3 probably has a lot more to do with luck than hard work. I don't see too many people rise above such circumstances and those that do often acknowledge they were lucky.

Re:Another shocker

[jawahar]

You may invest in BRIC.

Re:Another shocker

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how Thomas Jefferson's slaves would feel about that.

Who fucking cares? Ass.

The market is unfair!

[eln]

My iPhone farting application is way better than all the other farting applications, and yet I've only had 3 downloads so far! Sure, my application costs 2 bucks more than anyone else's, but it has the largest selection of flatulence noises in the business, and the ads are very unobtrusive. I really don't understand why I'm not a bazillionaire by now. Seriously, this thing took me 3 hours to write, and I want my damn money!

Re:The market is unfair!

[Neofluffybunny]

It may have only taken a few hours to write, but can you digitaly remix new farts into the system, use auto-tune and create a #1 summer jam? Theres an app for that.

Re:The market is unfair!

[palegray.net]

Somebody please mod the parent up.

Re:The market is unfair!

[Philip K Dickhead]

Fart mashups! They are a real gas!

Re:The market is unfair!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you and your puns, you little stinker!

Re:The market is unfair!

[Philip K Dickhead]

Well, everytime I don this old windbreaker, I just crack up. The lines are cheesey, but I cut 'em anyway.

Re:The market is unfair!

[geekoid]

you know, that would be a funny commercial they could do, while playing the Jumping Jack flash in the background.

Re:The market is unfair!

[modmans2ndcoming]

The fart app pisses me off the most... the first guy to market required the skills that a 16 year old could learn over a summer to write it and it was bought millions of times.... WTF...

Re:The market is unfair!

[Philip K Dickhead]

"It's a gas, gas, gas!"

Re:The market is unfair!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh you and your puns, you little stinker!

That was only 2/3rds of a pun. P.U.

Is not surprise...

[omgarthas]

Turn on your iPhone, access the app store, sort top 25 by income, see any indie dev.? there is your answer, now go get a real job

Re:Is not surprise...

[geekoid]

Yes, get a job working for some one else, don't bother trying to make it on your own~

Is that what you are saying? Really? really?

Re:Is not surprise...

[omgarthas]

No, I meant "You won't make a living with the #187456798 Arkanoid rip-off"

Re:Is not surprise...

[LordAndrewSama]

Need sleep badly, but gotta reply. I thought you meant that just having an idea isn't enough, it's a lot harder to be your own boss than to be someone elses bitch, and that a small team of talented programmers will almost always produce something of higher quality than a single person. Of course, people eat mcdonalds, so It could all be in the advertising. Way I see it, if that arkanoid rip-off is competitively priced, with the right advertising, a spiffier interface and generally way better than any other arhanoid rip-off, it should still make some returns? Something innovative would be even better, but we can't all be creative...

Re:Is not surprise...

[geekoid]

That didn't come across at all in your post.

In this case, I agree with you.

Re:Is not surprise...

[s1lverl0rd]

Does the app store allow sorting by income? Really? Isn't that information... you know... secret?

Re:Is not surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it really does

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely not easy to even earn a little money on the App Store with just a good game, much less get rich. I am the developer of a game on the App Store and have not been paid a single cent from Apple yet. The game is highly polished and has great written reviews and even good reviews from professional sites. It's only $0.99 to $1.99 (depending on sales). We've had a few hundred sales since the beginning of the year. Apple only pays if you break $250 for each region, not for all regions combined, so they keep what little we've earned indefinitely unless we make more sales. I'm not going to whore the product out by mentioning it here; I just want to get the message out that this is what's up with the App Store to other potential developers. I logged over 500 hours developing that game and haven't received anything for it. So not only is it entirely possible you won't achieve success, but you might waste a lot of time and resources in the process. The process of getting any information from Apple was miserable, and they treat developers like shit. I used to have a lot of faith in Apple's good will and have been a long-time Mac head, but after this experience, I'll still buy Macs, but I will NEVER do any other kinds of business with them again.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[chromatic]

I'll still buy Macs, but I will NEVER do any other kinds of business with them again.

Why would you still buy Macs, if you feel that strongly about Apple?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[truthsearch]

I feel your pain, but to be fair, even if you hit the minimum and were paid $250, that's still not worth 500 hours of work. Apple may not do enough to promote newer or less popular apps, but it's not completely their fault if the app doesn't sell.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[vertinox]

I logged over 500 hours developing that game and haven't received anything for it.

Well... What's it called?

I mean obviously if you don't name drop exactly what the game everywhere no one will buy it ;)

Re:Anonymous Coward

[edxwelch]

I'm not surprised. 500 hours is only 12 weeks. You're never going to write a decient game in that amount of time. For instance, fieldrunners or air tycoon certainly took more than 500 hours, and really that's the quality you need to be aiming for before you are guaranteed profits.
Simple puzzle games won't cut it anymore.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[LDAPMAN]

"I'm not going to whore the product out by mentioning it here"

There's your problem right there. Thats the difference between being an entrepreneur and and being just a programmer. If your not going to bother to mention your app...why should Apple.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the alternative is Windows (or Linux, I suppose). No, I'll stick to the Mac for now, as I'm most familiar with it. Honestly though, if Windows 7 turns me on, I'm ready to jump ship.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention that buying a Mac is doing business with them.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

SECONDED!

I go further, I have several blogs and techie forums going, and I ban folks browsing to the sites using Safari.

Apple is a miserable company with superficially flashy products run by complete assholes. Everytime you buy a mac, you support evil.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Itninja]

I was going to sat the same thing. Of course it entirely possible the anonymous coward was really a Microsoft developer trying to astroturf some hate for Apple. In the absence of anything to motivate me otherwise, I always assume the role of jaded cynic.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[91degrees]

It makes sense if it's a simple business decision rather than a boycott.

If a partner business makes your business unprofitable, then it makes sense not to do business with them.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called "iPhone Flashlight"

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tylersoze]

Actually they've lowered it to $150 per region now. I'm still waiting on my first pay out too. Although if they make the revenue cutoff too low, you'll get killed by bank wire transfer fees (hello bank, why in the #$!@ are you charging me when people put money *in* my account!)

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tylersoze]

Well I'll whore mine then. ;) http://www.rickb.com/iphone

I think my apps are well programmed but suffer from my lack of art skills, which I am attempting to rectify. :) I have a day job as a game programmer, so my iPhone diversions are merely a fun hobby, I'm not really looking to get rich from it.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[rjolley]

I would have bought his app if he mentioned it, instead he posted as AC so I can't even PM him for it.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[MarkPNeyer]

Maybe your problem is your unwillingness to 'whore the product out' - advertising is supposedly the number one indicator of whether a small business succeeds or fails. If nobody's heard of your app, why would they buy it?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[OakDragon]

I'm not going to whore the product out by mentioning it here

There's your problem right there. Thats the difference between being an entrepreneur and and being just a programmer. If your not going to bother to mention your app...why should Apple.

Given the context of the conversation, I think it would be OK to mention the app... or at least make a signature pointing to it.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Tibor the Hun]

Well... What's it called?

"500 iFarts"

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tomhudson]

Its called "iPhone Flashlight"

See, THERE's the problem ... it it were called "iPhone FLESH-light" it would be selling lik, well, like fleshlights.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has *ALWAYS* treated their 3rd party devs like this. They have done this since the Lisa. Mid 90s it cost 20k+ for a dev kit plus 2-3k more for a dev box. I could setup 10 MS devs for the same amount of money. Its better now (closer to free) but it will take awhile to recover from that.

iPhone devs are just the latest gen to figure out something. If you are a consumer of Apple and Apple only you get a pretty sweet experience. If you are a dev for their platform you feel like you just had someone rip you off.

I gave up around os7. Haven't looked back.

Apple and good will are words I would *NEVER* put together. Ask anyone who has had their iPod battery die or HD die.

You pay for the 'cool' you buy from them. Unfortunately they really do not like to share the cool.

The last real open platform they had was the AppleII and then they went into crazy lockdown mode since.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tomhudson]

Well, the alternative is Windows (or Linux, I suppose). No, I'll stick to the Mac for now, as I'm most familiar with it. Honestly though, if Windows 7 turns me on,, I'm ready to jump ship.

If *any* operating system "turns you on", you need to step away from the keyboard and get a life.

In Soviet Russia, Windows 7 turns on YOU! Oh, wait ... that's Vista!

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tomhudson]

I have a day job as a game programmer, so my iPhone diversions are merely a fun hobby, I'm not really looking to get rich from it.

MEMO
FROM: YOUR BOSS
SUBJECT: YOUR NON-COMPETE AGREEMENT

You forgot that we own all inventions, code, ideas, and your soul, even if it was done entirely off the clock. Thank you for developing the game for us. Now give us *our* money and *our* source code.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[jo42]

Ask yourself, does anyone know your game even exists among the 99,999 other games on the App Store?

The App Store's #1 success is also it's #1 failure -- it is frickin' hard to find the golden needle in over 125,000 haystacks.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Davak]

I'll whore out our little game we just released. It's free, fun, and addictive.

http://qdideas.com/gtf

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tylersoze]

Haha, thankfully I don't work for a company like that. Every developer here has an iPhone app on the store. :)

Re:Anonymous Coward

[mrsam]

Wire transfer fees?

I get regular beer money from Google Adsense whenever I break their minimum for a payout (which is even lower than Apple's). Google pays me by ordinary ACH credits to my bank account, which are completely free. Sheesh, Apple is really boning you.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Because banks will scrape money from you any way they can. A wire transfer depositing money is just another excuse for them to charge you a fee. It has nothing to do with whether it's logical or not.

But I'm sure you're aware of this. I'm just venting for my own sake.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tylersoze]

That may only apply to International Transfers from the other non-US store regions. They may use the ACH method for domestic transfers. I'm not sure since I haven't received a payment from Apple yet, but there's lot of grumbling on the Apple dev forums about wire transfer fees.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[geekoid]

No, he doesn't want to 'whore' his product.

WTF? It's called letting people know it's out their.

If you want to whore something, put it into your sig~

Re:Anonymous Coward

[ProfessionalCookie]

Try advertising

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Animal Chess or "Dou Shou Qi"
Particle Chess is a game based on the rules of Chinese Animal Chess (Dou Shou Qi).

I think I see your problem...

Seriously, your graphics are fine for a low-price iPhone game. And maybe your code is fantastic. But nobody's trolling the app store for a simple board game they're not familiar with. And if I search for Stratego, only two mediocre-rated games show up.

Simple games in general are probably dead on the iPhone. There's too many of them. Two under-served genres are, IMO, RPGs and tower defense games. The latter is a popular, fun genre without a lot of decent iPhone implementations. RPGs are currently dominated by the absurdly awful Zynga, who are making games that would be considered primitive by web game developers from 15 years ago. I'm just sayin', code what you want, but if you want it to make money, do a little research first.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[tylersoze]

Actually Dou Shou Qi is quite popular in Asia, over half my sales have been from there. I was specifically looking for a relatively simple game project that no one had done yet to get my feet wet and was something I enjoyed playing. Although funnily enough, two other Dou Shou Qi games were released within days of mine. I guess those guys had the same idea. One with very polished graphics, Animal Kingdom, appears to be doing quite well actually.

Yeah this is entirely for fun, it would be nice to make a little money, but that's not my primary concern. I just want to put out something I'm happy with and isn't crap. The great thing about the App store is that it makes it easy to get the app there with little effort even if it's buried amongst a bunch of crap.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[nametaken]

Apple only pays if you break $250 for each region, not for all regions combined

That's evil. This sounds like one of PayPal.com's schemes to boost ledger numbers by locking up other peoples' money.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

As a counterpoint, let me state my case: around 300 hours of programming labor in my free time (I'm a gameplay programmerat a AAA-games company during the day). Made a very simple racing game, style-over-substance kind of thing, backed up by amazing technology (Unity for iPhone). Got help from a 3d artist and a game designer to lay out levels, came up with something very polished that has a subtle "wow factor", if only because it has ps1- era graphics on a phone.
Without Apple's help, with all the astroturfing we could get in forums (beta participants, review codes, etc etc) we were selling about 50-100 a day (always at $.99 apiece). One day, without any doing on our side, or even warning from Apple, we got featured on their "What's Hot" category. That first day we sold 1500+, climbed to 96th paid app in the US, etc.
So far in 3 months we've sold 25k, leaving me around 6k after taxes. Not the smallest chunk of change, but not nearly enough to support myself. Luckily since the start I forced myself to do it "as a hobby", always keeping in mind that "if I make $500 I'll be happy". So I'm quite content with a very modest success.
WE got featured again about a month and a half after the first time, this time in an iTunes only section, so we didn't see that drastic climb (to about 4-500 a day for a week).
Now that we're out of all features, we're back at our normal rate.

Conclusion: Apple has to like your game. Otherwise, you're toast. Even then, you'll have to pump one of these fuckers every 2 months or so. Totally doable if you got nothing better to do...

For the curious, our app is "Synth Racing".

- joaquin

Re:Anonymous Coward

[lawpoop]

I'll still buy Macs, but I will NEVER do any other kinds of business with them again.

Why would you still buy Macs, if you feel that strongly about Apple?

Maybe because he's making a business decision, and not holding an emotional grudge.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[mgblst]

Damn that is ugly. Here is a clue for you, comic sans is only a good font if you are a retard. Design isn't hard, find out what looks good, and copy elements from it.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, at 50-100 a day I'd be more than happy. That means an average of $1085 to $2170 per month, which is more than I need to pay rent, electricity, phone, internet, cable and food, with a few spare hundreds as a bonus.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[mdwh2]

Apple only pays if you break $250 for each region

WTF? I mean, never mind the each region bit, even if it was for all regions combined - WTF? That's your money that they're keeping.

So to recap:

* They decide who can write software for the phones you've bought.
* They take a whopping 30% cut (I've never heard of such a high cut for this kind of service - most download sites are free).
* They don't pay you at all if it doesn't hit $250, and that's done on a per "region" basis.

I've never been an Apple fan, but I had no idea of this.

If we're going to have Apple stories all day long, why don't we hear some actual important news about them, instead of stories like "OMG Apple are so great, you can now access this website On YoUr IpHoNe, no phone could do that before!"

Re:Anonymous Coward

[mdwh2]

Er - if they're taking a 30% cut, and keeping the first $250, you can damn well bet they ought to mention it, or do something to justify such a cost.

And he wasn't asking them to mention it anyway, so that's a straw man. He was just asking for his money!

You also confuse the difference between being an entrepreneur and being a spammer. Just because someone doesn't spam (like Apple, incidentally - I still get unsolicited spam from them) doesn't mean they don't understand business. On the contrary, it means they understand how not to piss off potential customers.

And yes, unlike Apple he doesn't have three stories on Slashdot a day about his product. Good for him.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Nithendil]

As much as we hate marketing there is a reason for it. I understand why you didn't mention your app, but the difference between your program that makes no money and a similar program that makes thousands of dollars probably has little to do with technical merit but on how it is presented. I don't have an iphone, but if I did, I probably would have checked out your game.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[mjwx]

I'll still buy Macs, but I will NEVER do any other kinds of business with them again.

Why would you still buy Macs, if you feel that strongly about Apple?

It's like a battered wife, no matter what abuses they suffer at the hands of their husband they will keep going back because he *loves* them

Re:Anonymous Coward

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"I'm not going to whore the product out by mentioning it here"

There's your problem right there. Thats the difference between being an entrepreneur and and being just a programmer. If your not going to bother to mention your app...why should Apple.

I think that's a bit harsh. The people on this site have a way of coming down on people who appear to be 'shilling'. That and the "I wrote an iPhone app" bit are two very good ways to get jumped on and modded to heck on this site.

I don't blame the guy for not wanting to draw Slashdot's fire.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

They take a whopping 30% cut (I've never heard of such a high cut for this kind of service - most download sites are free).

You are lying through your teeth or are so far past ignorant that you have no business posting, then.

Apple: 30% commission for hosting, payment processing, customer access
Palm: 30%
Microsoft: 30%
Android: 30%
Handango: 40%
Verizon VCast store: 30%
Blackberry: 30% (recently cut to 20% for some developer accounts)
Nokia Ovi: 30%

So in fact, Apple undercut Handango, the biggest prior comparable service. The other app stores have all followed suit with the same commission rates.

They don't pay you at all if it doesn't hit $250, and that's done on a per "region" basis.

All stores have minimums for payout in order to reduce the overhead of fees and payment processing. Payment is done per region because sales are done per region. If you never clear $250 in sales, you will get paid when you close your account. Otherwise, you will only be paid every time you reach $250. If your sales are so low that this interval is several months apart, it is unlikely that it would matter in the first place.

Other stores that only pay out at given market minimums: Google AdSense ($100), Amazon Marketplace (once every two-four weeks), direct credit card processors (most have a minimum of $100/week).

That's your money that they're keeping.

So is your bank. So is your boss, since you only get paid on an interval. Those are the rules you agreed to when you decided to participate.

You obviously have little experience in the business of payment processing and selling through a distributor. This is par for the course. The fees, as demonstrated above, are right in line with the others, the payout minimum is a common practice, and developer membership rules are an integral part of every store, differing only in the qualifications and approval process.

No, you just wanted to bitch about Apple again because simply ignoring the stories you're not interested in is beyond your abilities. Who cares if you like Apple or not? Neither the article nor your misinformed criticism of the store practices singles out anything specific to Apple. TFA capitalized on the name for Internet attention; Slashdot did it for ad revenue; you're doing it because you think the Apple whining is somehow less pathetic than the Apple ass-kissing. Every branded entity has blind fans, but Apple and Microsoft haters are a special breed of sad.
 

Re:Anonymous Coward

[wvmarle]

Then Apple do something terribly wrong as I have received payments from PayPal (people paid in my PayPal account and I had it deposited in my non-US bank account) and that was quite cheap, iirc no transfer fee, just a few % for the exchange rate. I'm sure at least my bank didn't charge me for it, and you bet I have to pay for receiving a T/T. Even for some local inter-bank transfers!

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

"You obviously have little experience in the business of payment processing and selling through a distributor."

Apple is masterful at leveraging statutory regulations/laws to their advantage (high minimum payouts, disadvantageous payment methods to clients, splitting minimums over regions, etc.). While you may consider it ignorance, most of us consider it unethical at the very least that they are not up-front about such practices, even though they may not be required by law.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[mattr]

How much of a boost from Slashdot?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[EvilIdler]

Apple always pay at the end of the year. Sure, you get one payment for each region, with separate transfer fees, but at least they don't keep your money forever. Switch to a bank where only SENDING money costs something if you lose too much :)

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Professor_UNIX]

You probably will never see a dime from it. Face it, guys like Steve Demeter got in very early when there was really nothing else to buy on the store so they got most of the purchases. What did he really create anyway... it looks like another god damn puzzle game. There's 10 million different variations of the same "match 3 or 4 like colors in an area to eliminate those objects from the screen" games out there that I can't believe anyone would even pay for that. If the iPhone had Flash support there'd be zero reason to buy 99% of these little puzzle games since you could just play them online via Flash for free.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Provocateur]

Yeah you can mention the app name, while signing as 'Anonymous Coward', right?

Oh, wait...

Re:Anonymous Coward

[yabos]

Uh, it's the bank charging wire transfer fees not Apple. Not all banks do it but a lot do.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is it Apple's fault that your game is unpopular? Just sounds like sour grapes to me.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Gilmoure]

Just checked out your web page. Got some cool apps. After work (not allowed personal electronics in my area), I'll try out your stuff.

Biggest problem I have is trying to find stuff in Apple's App Store. It's not really set up for the volume of apps there. Wish I could browse it from a web page like Amazon's verses being stuck within iTunes.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

While you may consider it ignorance, most of us consider it unethical at the very least that they are not up-front about such practices, even though they may not be required by law.

It's all right there in the developer center for Apple, just like it is for Blackberry, Android, and all the other markets.

Apple is masterful at leveraging statutory regulations/laws to their advantage

Corporations are masterful at doing so. All of them. They pay lots of people a lot of money to do it. This is nothing unique to Apple. Any blame or credit is to be shared by the industry. There are distribution minimums all throughout the distribution market, as my earlier post highlights.

Google AdSense requires you to earn $100 before they issue an EFT/check. Most credit card processors have a weekly minimum of $100. Apple is in neither of those industries. It's a common business practice that is disclosed to developers when they sign up. They can choose to cancel if they find it unacceptable.

If you're not making $150 within about two months, you're doing it wrong. It's not any payment processor's fault if they don't want to issue checks or pay for EFTs for chump change. It's certainly not an Apple invention.

You want to complain, better open the scope of your complaint. You start with the premise that Apple is unethical and fill in the blanks. Instead, you ignore the fact that Apple's model is not innovative--it's built on the existing distribution/payment processing models in use by many companies for many years in many markets. Suddenly when Apple does it in 2008, it's unethical, but it was never worthy of complaint before? Please.

Like I said, it's just as obnoxious as the people who think everything Apple does is uncharted territory. Two sides of the same, sad coin.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

"You obviously have little experience in the business of payment processing and selling through a distributor."

Apple is masterful at leveraging statutory regulations/laws to their advantage (high minimum payouts, disadvantageous payment methods to clients, splitting minimums over regions, etc.). While you may consider it ignorance, most of us consider it unethical at the very least that they are not up-front about such practices, even though they may not be required by law.

Yeah, they sneakily hide it in their terms and conditions. So if you don't read contracts, you are screwed - could never happen in any other business.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a game. And you're worried about whoring it? Who suffers if you mention the name? Your reputation?

This is news?

[FrozenGeek]

Per the article (yes, I know I'm not supposed to read the article BEFORE commenting), there are 125,000 iPhone developers out there. That's a lot of competition. Especially when there seems to be relatively little innovation between apps. You want to make money developing iPhone apps? Find a way to help a niche market solve a problem, and do it better than anyone else. Don't write another tip calculator (are there really that many people who cannot calculate 15% of the total before tax?).

Re:This is news?

[CannonballHead]

(are there really that many people who cannot calculate 15% of the total before tax?).

Yes.

Re:This is news?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Don't write another tip calculator (are there really that many people who cannot calculate 15% of the total before tax?).

For $1.99 I'll tell you.

Re:This is news?

[Nyeerrmm]

I wonder how many of those developers are actually releasing though. For instance, I'm a registered developer (I paid my $100), but I did it solely for personal development.

That is, I'm an aerospace engineering grad student doing a lot of estimation and controls work, but mostly on the theory/simulation side -- as such I realized I really should have some experience working with actual hardware. Since my research doesn't provide that opportunity, and I had my phone, which has GPS, accelerometers and magnetometers handy, so I decided to see what I could do with it. Paying the dev fee was probably cheaper than buying custom-purpose hardware.

It's certainly been interesting, and I'm pretty far along in a program that one can attach to a telescope, align against known stars, and then determine where you're pointing afterwards -- but its entirely something I'm doing for me. When its finished (school, another project, and a girl have prevented me from working on it in a while), I'll probably push it on to the app store, sell it for a few bucks on the off chance I'll make the dev fee back, but really, if it makes the difference in me getting a job I want, then thats much more worthwhile to me.

Re:This is news?

[syousef]

one can attach to a telescope, align against known stars, and then determine where you're pointing afterwards --

If it's accurate enough to then find a specific star, that'd be the first time I'd have been interested in what that over hyped piece of trash phone can do.

Re:This is news?

[Nyeerrmm]

You've identified the main problem -- but its a problem thats solvable. Without any kind of calibration its accurate to around 2 degrees, and with a 6-measurement linear calibration I can get it down to under 1 degree. Calibration is fairly straightforward, optimizing the coefficients to give gravity vector magnitudes of unity in all directions. Unfortunately, at least for my telescope, I need less than half a degree to get it within the field of view with a good wide-field eyepiece. In order to do this I figure a quadratic or cubic calibration is needed, but my matrix inversion routines are very basic and aren't fast enough for 9x9 or 12x12 matrices -- fixing them is where I stopped and need to pick up again. So basically I haven't proven the accuracy is enough, but I think it is.

Precision/repeatability is another issue. A with any sensor, you can improve it by integrating for longer. Of course, with a consumer application you don't want to have to think about it much, so I figured out a way to do a multi-tiered low-pass filter that resets the initialized values when it recognizes that its moving, allowing a fast response but fairly high precision. I also make it so you can reset the filter manually, to make sure you're really where you think you are. I'm personally very happy with the way that part has worked out, and as long as you don't need a fast response and a high precision at the same time, its pretty good (using it as an IMU is basically impossible).

As a note, since you seem to have some idea of the details, up till now I've only been messing with the accelerometer for this, and as such its restricted to use with equatorial mounts -- obviously, a gravity sensor can't detect rotations about the z-axis, and thus is pretty useless on an Alt-Az mount. Hopefully, after integrating magnetometer measurements I'll be able to make it work on all kinds of mounts, and hopefully improve precision at the same time (doubling the number of samples for the same amount of time).

However, I'd also say that its probably a similar sensor to any other consumer level product, so I seriously doubt you couldn't do the same thing on a G1 or any similar phone. Once I get the thing finished, and if there seems to be much interest, I'll put the algorithms out there for others to use.

Re:This is news?

[Mazin07]

Sounds a bit like Google Sky for Android: You just hold the phone up against the night sky, and it labels the stars in the sky based on your location (via GPS!) and time (sync'd with the cell network). Should you need to find something, the screen will tell you which way to turn.

http://www.google.com/sky/skymap.html

Simply too much competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like every potential customer is walking into the New York Public Library. What are the odds of them finding your book among all the books available? Every once and awhile you get lucky but barring advertising or some one reviewing your product the odds are damn slim.

Re:Simply too much competition

[vertinox]

Every once and awhile you get lucky but barring advertising or some one reviewing your product the odds are damn slim.

And word of mouth helps too... The only games I have bought on the iPhone without playing them on another platform first (I bought Wolfenstein 3d, Monkey Island, and Beneath a Steel Sky simply because I wanted to replay them after 10 year hiatus) are ones that my coworkers or friends recommended.

On that note... Alive4ever is a pretty good zombie shooter game for the iPhone. Have sore thumbs because of that game.

Also, it's not news

[rolfwind]

that the software industry is hard. Years back, circa 2000, I heard that 90% of games lost money.

Considering that 90% of the Apps in the app store are crap to begin with, 9% are decent, and 1% good, and even less are great - I'm not sure what is expected?

Dear friend

[Anonymous Coward]

My name is Babatunde head of Apple's iPhone App Approval and Placement operations based in Nigeria. If you allow to share in the profits, I can push your app through to number 1 position.

Please send your banking information and I will proceed with the transaction and we will both become millionaires.

Most apps on the app store really suck.

[Viewsonic]

Oh sure, there are a few gems out there, but good god.. You have to wade through THOUSANDS of crappy useless apps. Not only that, but everyone seems to think 0.99 is a great price to sell an app that does nothing. Oh hey, sticking advertisements into it? Yeah, that gets your application deleted pretty quick, too!

Wake up people, if you wouldn't do this for an app on your Mac/PC, don't do it for the iPhone/iPod.

Re:Most apps on the app store really suck.

[omgarthas]

I don't know in your region, but in mine, 18 of the top25 health care apps are ideal weight calculators that do exactly the same, put your age, put your height, done

iPhone devs learn a lesson from musicians

[Anonymous Coward]

And the lesson is, "just because you have a distribution network with the potential to reach millions of users, you'll still probably sell fuckall."

Welcome to the real world, iPhone devs.

Re:iPhone devs learn a lesson from musicians

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be worse, I wrote a game that was sold at CompUSA and world wide, it was bargain bin but it was the only game on the disc, I made under $35 before the publisher fled the US.

You mean indy development isn't a free goldmine?

[Maury Markowitz]

"I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this."

Umm, in commercial software?

STOP THE PRESSES!

WE ARE JOBS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assimilated, at GROSS $0.99 !!

Penny stocks BEWARE !! WE ARE JOBS !!

So running your own business making apps

[geekoid]

is like running your own business. Shocking~

Re:So running your own business making apps

[e2d2]

Agreed. As someone who started a software company and failed, I can vouch that there's more to it then just software. Much more. Have a plan and make sure it's more than just "If you build it they will come".

The main lesson learned? Money is the life blood of business. Have a great credit line or a lot of cash. Tales of bootstrapping a business on $5k charged to a credit card leave out the inevitable need to actually pay for things beyond that. They are fairy tales spun to entice the reader and make the subject look like a "god of business". Don't fall for it. Be smart, have the bag of cash ready. It's going to matter more than your idea.

     

Re:So running your own business making apps

[geekoid]

If I had 5K of credit on a card, I'd use it to start my business.
Seriously.

Re:So running your own business making apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I've started 3 businesses in the last 25 years (none of them software related). One cost me a lot of money in original investment and settling law suits. One broke even, but business is in the toilet. The other one was the original one and I've made an adequate living from it, but had to close it recently for lack of business. They all required an almost maniacal commitment. What I've learned is that your (eventual) reward is usually tied to the amount you are willing to risk. Some fool in a previous post claimed that Carnegie and Rockefeller were just lucky. Luck had nothing to do with it. They were both ruthless, smart, impatient, perceptive risk-takers, and hard-workers. You risk very little writing apps for the iPhone. To expect great rewards is illogical. To the other fool that refused to "whore" his product, please think about what you wrote. Those whores that you derisively dismiss are selling a service. If no one knows about it, how will they make any money; so they advertise their service any way they can. It's called marketing. If you are unwilling to market your product even after 500 hours spent creating it, you must not think too much of it. There is no wonder you haven't made any money.

News Flash -- Work in hard!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, it it was easy to make a million bucks someplace, then there would be such an inrush of people doing it to dilute it down to where you would just scrape by. Just like the gold rush.

The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Zadaz]

If your app isn't featured or favorited or otherwise supported by a major marketing push, you're doomed.

The little band of freelancers I work with have produce two games. One for ourselves. It was really very good, which bombed at the store. We've sold just a few hundred. We're small, we don't have a marketing budget.

The next game we bade was honestly no very fun. It was okay, not complete crap, but not great. It's been in the top 50 for several weeks.

What's the difference? That second game was done for a Major Developer who was able to spend 20x as much on marketing as development. (No joke.)

And even for them, there's no money in it for them. They're only there to show a success to shareholders and that they're beating the competition in a competitive marketplace. Couldn't have the independent devs getting the top spots, now could they? That'd be embarrassing.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[jjohnson]

Couldn't have the independent devs getting the top spots, now could they? That'd be embarrassing.

You make it sound like it's their fault that your excellent indie game isn't in the top 50. Why would anyone think that strong marketing isn't needed in a crowded marketplace?

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Sounds like they're doing the iphone app for street cred more than as a way to make money. Reminds me of the saying "with sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine".

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Itninja]

The next game we bade was honestly no very fun.

Maybe the games are so rife with typos that players don't care how fun it is. I have seen more than one game out that showing my 'High Scoe' or that I am on 'Level Too'.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't have a marketing budget x 20 doesn't seem much. joke or not. ;)

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[tomhudson]

The next game we bade was honestly no very fun.

Maybe the games are so rife with typos that players don't care how fun it is. I have seen more than one game out that showing my 'High Scoe' or that I am on 'Level Too'.

Maybe someone set them up the bomb?

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[zmollusc]

What you say !!

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Zadaz]

Good point, I should have submitted this post to testing before releasing it.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Jodka]

Why would anyone think that strong marketing isn't needed in a crowded marketplace?

Spontaneous word-of-mouth enthusiasm spreading through pre-existing social networks.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[mgblst]

You are running a business, not a lemonade stand. Ignoring marketing and reviews is ignorant and idiotic.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[SharpFang]

Unfortunately if your (rich) competition is willing to spend on marketing way more than they ever expect to earn back, you'd better flee such market. One thing is competing by merit and minimal profit margins, another is operating at significant loss to deprive the competition of any chance to profit and compete.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[R3d M3rcury]

The little band of freelancers I work with have produce two games. One for ourselves. It was really very good, which bombed at the store. We've sold just a few hundred. We're small, we don't have a marketing budget.

Okay. There's your first problem.

Guess what? You may have the best products in the world. But if nobody knows about them, you're going to fail.

If you're an Apple fan, consider the Mac. It may be the best personal computer out there. But if Apple didn't advertise, nobody would know about it.

In fact, just to get a little snarky, if you're a small company everybody has to wear multiple hats. That includes marketing. I'm surprised you didn't mention the name of your App, after speaking highly of it. Consider the audience that's reading your post: Technically inclined. Likely to own an iPhone or an iPod touch. Why aren't you wearing your marketing hat and, at least, mentioning the name of the game?!

The next game we bade [sic] was honestly no very fun. It was okay, not complete crap, but not great. It's been in the top 50 for several weeks. What's the difference? That second game was done for a Major Developer who was able to spend 20x as much on marketing as development.

Gee, think there might be a link there between the success of a product and the amount of time and effort spent promoting it?

It was a weak game and is on the Top 50 list? Imagine how well a very good game like, say, yours would do if only you decide to invest some money into marketing it.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[Pengo]

You have no chance to survive make your time.

Re:The road to richess passes through Marketing

[jjohnson]

Planning to succeed by (authentically) going viral is like buying lottery tickets. If I was looking at a business plan that even included the word 'viral' in it, I'd walk away.

Better not to know

[SuperKendall]

I do not even want to hear what kinds of targeted advertising appears in a fart app.

To be fair, it IS a world of easy opportunity...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but that doesn't mean it's a guarantee for riches, and I to blame the App Store or Apple's business model for that is nothing but narrowmindedness and stupidity - if the crowd simply don't want what you are offering, it's you who's doing something wrong.

The people who need to read to figure this out

[Anonymous Coward]

.. are unlikely to get rich anyway in any field.

It is stunningly obvious that the likely number of customers for any iPhone application is virtually impossible to determine in advance. From the total number of iPhone users, what percentage would prefer buying an application to look up train routes to looking it up through Safari? This is a problem "professional" developers face as much as "amateur" ones. If that uncertainty makes it unattractive for you to write an app, then the road to riches is obviously not going to be tried anyway so questioning whether it exists is pointless.

Secondly, most apps are crap. Lack of userfriendliness, obvious features that should be in, a user manual that omits vital information - even if the invisible roulette wheel spins so that you happened to be correct in thinking what people wants, then a crap application will get crap reviews and no buys. Hence, if you don't have the Steve Jobs-like imagination and ability to visualise what people like, what they would like, and how they tend to act, you're probably not going to get rich on making an app. Of course, if you fail to combine fantastic visualisation with strong programming skills, then you could always put a lot of work and effort into it - which makes it a bit like a "day job" where "success is not guaranteed and the odds are long".

I would actually be happy to pay quite a bit more than $1 for an app that was rock solid and great in every way. Over time and through trial and error, the best app makers will hopefully invest more effort into their apps and increase the price of them as well.

Just like the web of yester-year.

[Kenja]

Just like adding "on the web" to every idea failed to make people rich (well.... it did from some I guess) so will adding "on the iPhone" to everything fail in much the same way.

A good application will sell. Yet another app of type X will not unless it is CLEARLY better then the rest.

This is true of every platform. The iPhone is not special.

There is no easy money

[QuoteMstr]

Easy money is an phemeral subatomic particles, existing barely long enough to detected before decaying to something else. The moment an opportunity to make easy money appears, it begins attracting people. These people competing with each other, which makes the money hard, not easy, to get. Thus, the easy money decays into the same kind of hard-to-get money you'll find anywhere else in an economy.

Really, any time sometime tells you there's a fortune to be had, he's trying to sell you something.

Go figure

[sbeckstead]

So some idiot gets rich buying stock and we get the startling conclusion that it's not the app store that makes you rich.
Getting rich has always been a combination of sweat, luck and keeping your eyes open for an opportunity. Brilliant reporting, just brilliant.

Let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see... you have.

1. Low barriers to entry and low cost per sale.
2. High platform visibility.

and at the same time a market which is

3. Highly price sensitive
4. Swamped for choice.

As close to perfect competition as I've ever seen, with high demand elasticity and a risky approvals process. I doubt anybody with any background in economics is surprised that it's difficult to make money on the App Store.

What about the Google Money Tree?!

[sirwired]

Speak for yourself pal. I am waiting for my "Google Money Tree" kit that I just ordered online! It was even free!* I am on my way to easy riches! What? You are skeptical?! A Mom from [insert geographic location here] just made [insert some amount between $2k and $3k here] last week! If it worked for her, it'll work for everyone!

SirWired

*Free period lasts for 4.2749 days, and must be canceled via papyrus sent via carrier pigeon to avoid monthly charges of [insert credit limit here.]

Re:What about the Google Money Tree?!

[Esteanil]

A Mom from [your geographic location using an easy JS API] just made [sum of product price multiplied to over $2k] every week for the last five months! At this rate she'll have that [some object the odds are you'll want based on your referrer/tracking etc], and she's available for chat right [a href="chat_window.php" target="_new"]here[a/] Hmm. That'd be a tech somebody would be likely to pay for - a keyword dropping tool based on estimated user preferences for online sales pitches...
Isn't the future nice and scary? Fraud certainly is getting a very large play field on the internet, these days...
Too many people not educated with the dangers, too many kids, too many people hoping for that call and playing the lottery every week... And these days some of the 419s and phishing attempts are scarily convincing.

Oh, and iTunes devs looking for new challenges should feel free to talk to me, there's certainly plenty of call for them in corporate dev...

Re:What about the Google Money Tree?!

[Esteanil]

s/iTunes/iPhone/

Re:What about the Google Money Tree?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself pal. I am waiting for my "Google Money Tree" kit that I just ordered online! It was even free!* I am on my way to easy riches! What? You are skeptical?! A Mom from [insert geographic location here] just made [insert some amount between $2k and $3k here] last week! If it worked for her, it'll work for everyone!

SirWired

*Free period lasts for 4.2749 days, and must be canceled via papyrus sent via carrier pigeon to avoid monthly charges of [insert credit limit here.]

It's also beta!

tautologies

[fermion]

• There is no such thing as a free lunch
• To make money in the stock market, buy low and sell high
• The more people eating a pie, the less there is for each person
• Working hard does not automatically make you rich
• No one has to buy your stuff
• Publishing an iPhone app does not make one rich, famous, or desirable

Re:tautologies

[geekoid]

"There is no such thing as a free lunch"
I had one today.

"To make money in the stock market, buy low and sell high"
Or get a bailout

"The more people eating a pie, the less there is for each person"
Which is why the money is in selling the pie tin.

"No one has to buy your stuff"
Unless you spread FUD.

"Publishing an iPhone app does not make one rich, famous, or desirable"
true.

Re:tautologies

[imadork]

No, you paid for that lunch. It may not have cost you money, but I'm sure you paid for it....

HAL

[Citizen of Earth]

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that trade for you.

The real deal...

[sitarlo]

I actually left my job and write iPhone and Android apps for a living. I haven't had a hit better than top 100, but I still make money. A prolific game developer can earn an honest living on the mobile platforms if they diversify their titles across genres and deliver decent apps. I also make money consulting with marketing firms who are using the iphone as a marketing platform. I made more at a regular job, but I'm happy to give up a little cash for the freedom I now have. In the past decade professional software development has become mundane and more tedium than creative. The iPhone and Android have become creative outlets for me. The app store isn't perfect but it has allowed me to break the chains of cubical bondage. It's not easy though. It takes a lot of balls to escape the systematic chaos of work-a-day life and step out on your own. If and when I re-enter the stupid, pointless, and utterly insane working world, I now have a couple of years worth of Objective-C, mobile platform, and smartphone development experience to put on my cv. Yeah, the app store and Android market aren't millionaire nebula, but they are good for a lot of other reasons.

Re:The real deal...

[Wiarumas]

Great. Now program me a Simtower spinoff. Oh, and a Stronghold one too. Maybe a Harvest Moon one too if you get around to it. I'll pay $2.99 for each. Thanks, I'll be waiting. :)

Re:The real deal...

[dirkdodgers]

Which do you find to be the better development platform?

How long did it take you to develop your first successful app?

Re:The real deal...

[sitarlo]

Both iPhone and Android are great platforms for development. Android is really cool because it's based on Java which is second nature to me at this point. Android also has a very low barrier to entry in that the development stack is free and it only costs $25 to become an "official" developer with checkout rights on the Android Market. The Android devices are feature-rich and generally ok, but not as well designed as the iPhone.

Both support OpenGL ES which is great for graphics applications. Developing on the iPhone is a bit daunting at first because Objective-C has a stiff learning curve that is purely related to its syntactical style, but once you learn Objective-C you'll never want to see C++ again. BTW, you can use C and C++ to build iPhone apps, but it's probably easier in the long run to just spend a few days getting familiar with Objective-C.

The iPhone is a much more closed ecosystem when compared to Android, but that's a necessary evil that supports Apple's business model. Also, the iPhone is a really good device that just oozes design quality. Developing on the Apple platform makes the developer think about design, usability, and quality above features. It's more fun to develop on the iPhone, to me anyway.

Another advantage of the iPhone is the availability of third party, professional tools like Unity (www.unity3d.com) which greatly speed up the development process. XCode is also a fair development tool and it's free with OSX so that's a big plus. I don't think I'll ever pay for something like Visual Studio again at this point. Between Eclipse, Netbeans, and XCode, why pay for an IDE?

Obviously, the biggest con to iPhone development is the app store and the Apple submission process, but once you've been through it a few times you learn the ropes and it becomes easy to get apps published. Still, I make 20x more money on the app store than I do on the Android market, but that may change over time.

It took me three weeks to develop my first app which wasn't very successful but still makes a hundred or so a month worldwide. It took me a couple of months to make my second app which made the top 100 and still sells well in certain regions. Since then I've released over a dozen apps, some globally and some in specific regions and most of them don't make a lot by themselves, but they add up when tallied together. I am starting to see the wave crash a bit and sales have been declining in the last few months, but I suspect they'll go up again after the holiday season when a few million new devices are given as gifts and new users go app crazy.

Re:The real deal...

[iamflimflam1]

I had to port a mobile app to both iPhone and Android. The Objective-C wasn't much of a barrier as I already knew C and C++ so it was mostly just syntactic sugar.

Of the two platforms the iPhone was by far the easiest to get my head around - in terms of architecture an iPhone app is very close to writing a desktop app.

Android on the other hand has a completely different approach, it took a lot longer to understand and get productive with. You can do a lot more with it, but it's definitely a bit odd.

I've also written a couple of my own iPhone apps, one of them quite cool (Sudoku Grab) which was featured by Apple for a couple of weeks and one of them just a silly game to learn open gl. They make enough to justify the amount of time I put into developing them and the amount of money I've spent on marketing (approx 0). I chose the iPhone platform to develop against simply because it was the one I felt most at home programming against.

However, my money would be on the Android platform becoming dominant - it's going to have a few issue, device fragmentation being the biggest one.

What amuses me is how no one seems to have learned any lessons from the past. I remember working during the dot com boom and a typical conversation was "There's billions of people in the world on the internet - we just need 1% of them to use our website, that's just 1 person in every 100! We're going to be rich!".

I actually had someone telling me exactly the same thing about the app store the other day "there's millions of iPhones....."

Appstore.. WHO CARES ?

[ivan_w]

Come on.. who cares..

Appstore ? Amazon ? E-Bay.. Whatever...

Is this Geek story ?

Who cares about the marketroids doing biziniss ??

Because they are using a "geeky" 'a.k.a the internetz' to do that biziness doesn't make them geeky !

Ok.. I didn't read TFA.. but I didn't feel like it!

I want to read about "quantum physics".. "the ultimate programing language" or "the most prominent hardware architecture"..

and NOT about some sleazy company making money with some lousy marketing scheme..

Sorry.. you may mod me -1 as much as you like.. won't change my mind !

--Ivan

(PS : No.. I won't post AC - Because.. I stand by what I say !)

Re:Appstore.. WHO CARES ?

[martas]

dude, your post gave me a really nasty flashback to my ex-father's typing style. where EVERYTHING HAD TO BE CAPITALIZED and followed by MULTIPLE ellipses AND exclamation marks.... ...!!!!! with INEXPLICABLY irregular spacing!?!?!!

Re:Appstore.. WHO CARES ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You show them! Ivan FTW!

Heinz Baked Beans

[schon]

That's obvious - ads for beans.. because if you need your phone to do it for you, you're not producing enough gas!

On a related note, my three-year-old daughter absolutely loves it when someone around her farts, so I started the "pull my finger" bit with her.

The other day, she comes up to me and asks "Dad, I wanna pull your finger!" So I let her pull my finger, and when nothing happened, she looked quizzically at me and said "Hey! Where's the fart!?!?!"

Later she asked me to pull her finger, and when she didn't fart, she had the same reaction.. "Hey! Where's the fart!?!?!"

My wife is somewhat less than thrilled at the whole affair.

Re:Heinz Baked Beans

[Techman83]

LMAO, I can't wait to have kids, I'm sure my Fiance will be pleased when the time comes.

Do not worry

[e2d2]

You can always find a job using one of the many job apps available in the app store.

Re:Do not worry

[martas]

don't want to be a bum anymore? there's an app for that.

now hand over the $200 + god knows how much a month for the mandatory at&t plan.

(and you people complain about high taxes...)

CONTRAST AND COMPARE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux: apps' revenue: $0.00 with expenses of: who cares since it's a hobby !! Net: who cares, it's only a hobby, and I get to share my source with the WORLD. Eat that Apple !!

Apple: apps' revenue: $850,000.00 with expenses of: holy shit I must have been crazy, and I get to keep my source, along with the Linux !! Net: $45,000.00.

People complain about funny things. Taut on that. And you obbiously have never slipped into Pizza Hut around noon-ish behind the office crowd of buffet-pizza fans.

Something does not compute.

[monoqlith]

Besides telling us something that we should all already know - it is actually quite hard to become rich - some of the stories are either more complex than the author is letting on, or quite obviously a result of bad business sense.

1.

"It's kind of a crapshoot," says Demeter, who spent the last two weekends partying in Las Vegas and New York. "I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this."

But it did allow him to quit his dayjob! If not simply on the initial revenues from the application, then from the capital gains made possible by those initial earnings.

2.

The application(Trip Cubby) garnered top-shelf reviews, a spot on Apple's "What's Hot" list, and earned Barnard more than $45,000 in revenue in less than three months. Then came the expenses: $29,000 for programmers, $15,000 living costs, $14,000 to Apple, $7,000 for marketing, $5,000 for legal and administrative services, $4,000 for logo and Web-site art, and $1,800 in loan repayment.

The application sounds very useful, but the features described on the App Store site all seem like something I could code alone in a few months, if not less. So why did this guy not invest the time to learn how to code this project, thus sparing the $29,000 in extra programming? Or, if he did, why did he feel it necessary to hire outside programmers to add to what seems like a straightforward application? If he had simply gone it alone, he might be well in the black right now, even if you include the marketing costs.

3.

In 2009, Ethan Nicholas left a job with Sun Microsystems after making $800,000 in just five months with his simple artillery game called iShoot. Today, the App Store icon from North Carolina is himself staring down the barrel of a gun, struggling to produce another hit game after iShoot was buried by competitors and copycats.

Where did the $800,000 go? Are we to assume that this money simply vanished? If not, then this person sounds pretty successful to me, and "staring down the barrel of a gun" seems just a tad over the top. It seems like they've either left out details or spun them for the sake of a sensational, contrarian narrative. I know - the media never does that, right?

Re:Something does not compute.

[petsounds]

Where did the $800,000 go? Are we to assume that this money simply vanished? If not, then this person sounds pretty successful to me, and "staring down the barrel of a gun" seems just a tad over the top. It seems like they've either left out details or spun them for the sake of a sensational, contrarian narrative. I know - the media never does that, right?

Obviously he spent it partying in Las Vegas and NY on the weekends.

At my company, we had a iPhone games company, which develops many of the top-25 games in the store, come in and give their pitch. The story for them was a little different. They agreed that you aren't going to make a lot of money on the *sale* of iPhone apps. But where they make their money is in-game advertisements. They make much more money on the "free" versions of the app. In this way, it is not much different than the story of the web.

Not the right way to this about it, perhaps

[boster]

Bear with me for this imperfect analogy: A have a few of friends who have written tech books. One of them kept doing it over the years. If the question is wether the money he has made from advances and royalties paid well, the answer is flatly "NO." The pay is quite small compared to the amount of time that has to be sunk into the project. But he keeps doing them. Why? The *real* benefit is that now he's an authority on the subject. This drastically increases his (and his consultancy's) value and has brought him many clients over the years. Being able to point to a working, published iPhone app is probably a lot more valuable to your career and/or business than whatever paltry sum you derive from direct revenue. Assuming there continues to be general demand for iPhone apps, at least. At least, that's one theory.

Don't Develop for Proprietary Platforms. Period.

[warncke]

I have people (who don't know what they are doing) ask me all the time, why don't you develop this, or that (android, iphone, facebook, and on and on and on).

End of story is that it is a really bad investment for and independent developer to invest their own time in learning a proprietary platform or developing for it. If someone pays me to learn it, great, but apparently there are plenty of suckers willing to spend their own time on this crap, so nobody wants to pay :)

Just look at it terms of install base. Less than 20 million IPhones. If you can't make money out of the internet, or the desktop application market, then how the F! can you make money out of the IPhone market?

Oblig. Simpsons

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Finally, after years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick.

Apple Probably Just Paid Him

[warncke]

Run through 250k in sales (nothing in marketing terms), then make a video telling other devs to "get rich quick," and watch them write your software for free...

Re:Don't Develop for Proprietary Platforms. Period

[geekoid]

Yeah, no one ever made money developing for Windows.

Idiot.

Windows and IPhone -- Very similar...

[warncke]

Tell me what the difference in install base between these two platforms is.

Tell me, isn't there a crucial difference between a monopoly operating system, where you sell to essentially the entire desktop market, and a niche proprietary smart phone platform where you sell to a couple of percentage points of the smart phone market?

And, to get back to my main point, how many independent developers make money out of Windows desktop applications?

Finally, is there not a subtle difference between a platform where the owner controls what you sell, when you sell, how you sell, and what your competition is, and a platform where the owner controls none of those things?

Dear Angry Anonymous App Developer

[KharmaWidow]

How much money are you spending on advertising? How many hours have you spent promoting it? "Great written reviews and even good reviews from professional sites" help, but it takes a lot more make *any product* popular. That, or a chance mention by iTunes staff or Apple commercials.

It sounds to me that app developers are making the same exact mistake ecommerce stores are making: setting and forgetting. Apple has 85000+ apps - you need to do something to make it known to us, to the world.

Sheesh, you even fail to promote it in your rant... "I'm not going to whore the product out by mentioning it here" is EXACTLY the wrong attitude to have if your 500 development hours have any value. Whores make more money than bitches.

Re:Dear Angry Anonymous App Developer

[intheshelter]

"Whores make more money than bitches." - No greater wisdom was ever expressed. I too find it useful to incorporate prostitution in all my analogies. I find that it it clarifies like nothing else can.

Vindicating Copyrights and Software Development

[brit74]

I'd like to take a minute to point out the obvious: despite the fact that many slashdotters complain that software development is a racket because software can be sold over and over for "doing the work one time", the reality is far more complicated. This story is a vindication of the copyright system. It shows that business that depends on copyright are not, in fact, getting rich. The reality is that when we, as software developers spend X years writing a piece of software, we HAVE to sell it multiple times to break-even. The result of us selling a product multiple times allows us to spread-out our costs over many consumers. This lowers the cost for all consumers. For example, if I spend one year writing a product and I want to earn $40,000 per year, I can either sell it once for $40,000. Or, if I'm writing software for the general consumer, I can hope to sell it for $10 to 4,000 people. This means each of those 4,000 people get the benefits of one year's worth of software development. Where else can you get a years-worth of work for $10? The fact that we can sell a product multiple times does NOT mean that we are rich. The fact that we can sell it multiple times means that you (the consumer) get a lot for your money, and it means that we (as software developers) can earn a living. The alternative - abolishing copyright, as was suggested by commenters in the recent Slashdot story "100 Years of Copyright Hysteria" - means we will all lose.

Re:Vindicating Copyrights and Software Development

[dirkdodgers]

Another alternative in the absence of copyright is that software for a platform like the iPhone would be software as a service, where what you pay for is not the copy of the software, but access to the server running the software. Of course that would only work for a narrow range of software.

Another alternative in the absence of copyright is that device makers would lock down the platform and partner with developers to still charge money to put a piece of software on a computer. Although this would mean the end of the general purpose computer.

Hopefully neither seem like good alternatives to anyone sane.

But the point of view of the consumer getting more for his or her money isn't one I'd heard before. That's interesting.

Re:Vindicating Copyrights and Software Development

[sowth]

Street Performer Protocol.

So ninety percent of anything is crap

[RickRussellTX]

Sturgeon's law still applies. I've paid for apps with prices ranging from $0.99 to $189.99 (no, I'm not kidding, and that app was worth 10 times that much). Wasn't the same thing true on every shelf at Babbages or Egghead? A tiny selection of good games and useful applications surrounded by an ocean of unremarkable shovelware. And the lower bar to entry for the App Store means that even more stuff will be crap. When TFA says things like, "But while the chance for success may indeed exist, the odds of triumphing are still pretty long", they act like it's a casino instead of a marketplace. It's not.

Re:So ninety percent of anything is crap

[s1lverl0rd]

What iPhone app can possibly be worth three times as much as the actual device? I'm not buying it.

Re:The Road To Rags

[Schnoogs]

You were marked troll only because you spoke the truth and the kool aid drinkers here don't want to be reminded of that...oh well....2012 isn't that far off is it?

iPhone devs have right to be AC

[Ilgaz]

It is because Developers are afraid of Apple and as the only channel is "app store" for non hacked iPhones, Apple can make one's life real miserable if they want to.

Expect many AC developers talking real stuff but they have to stay anonymous. Hell, I even warned one friend to "stay low profile at least until app approved" myself.

Of course, if Application/Game can be released for Nokia touch phones at least which sells millions with some torture of Symbian C++, they would have some kind of power to show to Apple and they would be treated accordingly. That is the game&app developers fault. So, Nokia dev tools aren't classy/trendy as Apple... So what really? Ship it, if Handango/Ovi gets more share, put $5 price tag... Let user decide. At least Nokia won't say "You duplicated (coded better) my functionality". Look at the success stories like Opera Mini, IM clients, media players etc.

Re:iPhone devs have right to be AC

[Anonymous Coward]

It is because Developers are afraid of Apple and as the only channel is "app store" for non hacked iPhones, Apple can make one's life real miserable if they want to.

I'm the AC. Yes, Apple is one reason. Another is that I have friends in the industry and they can be hurt by association with me bitching about Apple publicly. But two more reasons: 1) If I want to do contract work developing for someone else, I might not want them knowing what kind of sales I've had, if they were dismal, as in this case 2) The product was/is on the other end of a legal battle with a company other than Apple.

So, as Yoda might say: up-the-fuck-I-must-shut.

Misleading.

[nathan s]

This article seems to imply that he "got rich" by investing, which is true but misleading. As far as I can tell, he made about a quarter of a million dollars in two months, and it was this capital that enabled him to play the stock game in the first place, since that ~six-fold increase means he invested at least $125,000 or so in order to get to a million (I'm not really sure what he has now, didn't bother watching the video and won't, but I'm guessing he has at least a million now or they wouldn't be calling it "riches"). He could have just as easily lost the money, in my opinion, this way.

Point is, if you don't have $100,000 to throw at the market (and possibly lose it all), it seems fairly intelligent to spend your free time making something you can sell to people, which the summary seems to be discouraging.

Freeware authors (and competition) stays away

[Ilgaz]

That $100 paid along with single channel of distribution with a policy like "you can't post your source" means "go away" to freeware/open source developers.

So as there aren't 100 free/open tip calculators, that idiot will release his junk for $0.99 diminishing the overall quality, look of app store. Apple can't understand the true power of open source on commercial OS or ways to exploit (in good way) the open source.

That is one of things Nokia learned in hard way and still trying to fix by helping open source developers with free signing, acquiring trolltech etc...

Switching from Apple isn't that easy

[Ilgaz]

Other options are worse for him, that is what keeps him on Mac. There is also software re-licensing costs, some big investment on Mac hardware etc.

Me? I got 5 macs in house but after iPhone and Apple's really worsening attitude, I may go back to ordering a Asus mainboard, good case etc. You got what I mean.

Ask the BBC

[mdwh2]

You should ask the BBC to give you free advertising for your application. I mean, they did it for a spinning logo application, so I think your farting application is far more notable.

Just remember to say that it's "On The Iphone" - that turns any boring trivial non-notable or unimportant scrap of information into front page national news.

Maybe

[Rei]

You know, like, such as.

(Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 38 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment)

Captain Obvious on line 1

[mjwx]

This is what I've been saying since day 1. There are just too many people contributing sub par products, too much competition on an extremely limited market. Most iphone dev's lose money after the US$99 per year fee plus whatever else needs to be bought and this is before considering a cost on the developers time. My other app store prediction is that as large development corporations muscle in on the iphone market the smaller A$2.99 app's from independent developers will disappear and once this has happened all the corporate apps will go to an A$7.99 minimum. Apple is openly hostile to small developers.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward

So...

[sootman]

... he's saying that you've got to be creative, work your ass off, make something remarkably good, and then market the hell out of it in order to be successful, just like any other product?!?!? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!

The only reason I bought Trism...

[r0ni]

is because Demi (Steve Demeter) was a pimp ass NES ROM hacker. And I figured this would be one of the only ways I'd ever be able to say thank you for those translations/hacks.

(sigh) - bullsh--

[mcrbids]

The problem is that we imagine there's some reason to it: that if we just think harder, network more, or spend a few more hours in the lab, we'll be successful too. That's bullshit. It's luck. (And increasingly these days, the luck of having been born into the correct socioeconomic stratum.)

Sorry. That's just bullsh--.

Look, I'm not super-rich, but I do well for myself. I have a nice house, I have a wife and two children going to college that I'm paying for, a daughter is an exchange student in Europe, more young teens getting warmed up, and I just bought into a private plane.

But, I started out with a distant relationship with any "silver spoon". I grew up poor, in a mobile trailer on the edge of a small town. I didn't get a college degree. In fact, I didn't even get a standard High School diploma - life at home was bad enough that I ran my senior year!

So I worked as hard AND as smart as I could for years on end. I got used to 50, 60, 70 hour weeks, and have struggled (successfully!) to fit in time with my lovely family. I have started many businesses and nearly all failed to turn a profit, but each failure taught me something else to not do. I read like mad (and do, to this day!) and have discovered that Barnes and Nobles is an incredibly rich resource if you are willing to spend money and time on good quality books. IMHO, it's always worth it.

Opportunities abound, but most are mediocre. You need to find the good ones. My formula is to listen for two words:

1) Expensive, or

2) Pain in the !@#$. (PITA)

People will happily give you their money if you can do it cheaper. They'll also happily give you their money if you make life better for them - eliminate some big problem, whatever. Put them both together and all you have to do is listen and come up with something that works. Don't bother with the proverbial mousetrap - they're already cheap and work well. Instead, look for something where you can save lots of money AND provide powerful, new capabilities.

In my company, we've done a little of both, and have never had a down year in almost a decade. Sure, at first, it was a milestone to be able to pay ourselves an actual, honest-to-god living wage, and it took us 2 YEARS to get to the "living wage" part. Hard years, put in while working a day job to feed the wife and kids. But now, my years of investment are paying off.

I work as hard as anyone, for a very long time (years). Is this luck?

Re:(sigh) - bullsh--

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think luck disqualifies hard work altogether, it just assists.

You worked hard, you had luck. You should realize this, especially, since you had all of those failed businesses.

Luck played a part.

Re:(sigh) - bullsh--

[mcrbids]

Business is like fishing. Yeah, luck plays a part. It plays the part of determine the exact time you become successful. But even with "bad luck", if you do the right things, you *will* eventually catch a fish.

Re:(sigh) - bullsh--

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as hard as anyone, for a very long time (years). Is this luck?

Yes. My family has done the same things that you have done for 40 years. They still live in a trailer.

DIY opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

What strikes me in the story about David Barnard is the quote "Then came the expenses: $29,000 for programmers, $15,000 living costs, $14,000 to Apple, $7,000 for marketing, $5,000 for legal and administrative services, $4,000 for logo and Web-site art, and $1,800 in loan repayment."

Apparently, Barnard paid someone else to do the work for him. That's fine, if course. But the cool thing about being a geek is that you don't _have_ to. Most people here on slashdot would probably be able to code up an app all by themselves, in spare hours. I did, and although the game is only really popular in The Netherlands (it's a traditional Dutch game) it pays for my iPhone. Not much more, but I didn't sink anything but my spare time in it. And coding is fun, so even if it wouldn't have made a dime it would still be time well spent.

So the allure of the App Store is: You code up something yourself, having fun in the process, and submit it. If it makes money, that's cool! If not, it's still cool - You can point to the little icon in the App Store and say "Look! I wrote that!"; Total strangers are using your app, which is a nice compliment to your achievements. If you approach it from a pure business point of view, tallying up all the hours you put into it (or even paying others) then it's just like any other investment: It might pay off, it might not. I doubt you'll get a warm feeling from pointing at an icon in the App Store and saying "Look! I paid someone to write that!".

We all knew it, but now that it's published

[brentonboy]

maybe people will stop trying to get me to join their iPhone app team on the promise of payment "when it gets big."

App Store: New Shareware or Hobby

[Webcommando]

It sounds to me that app developers are making the same exact mistake ecommerce stores are making: setting and forgetting. Apple has 85000+ apps - you need to do something to make it known to us, to the world.

I'm completely with you. Too many developers think that getting an application done is enough to reap rewards. Wasn't this the same problem shareware developers had long ago. Great program, but if you didn't get the word out or get some pick in a magazine, you never saw much cash.

Having sold WinCE and Palm apps through stores like Handango and PocketGear...the iPhone App store is an order of magnitude better at visibility.

With that being said, I consider my iPhone apps as a hobby for *maybe* some extra cash and, more importantly, something to *brag* a bit about. I think of it more like people who do FOS software...it is an itch to scratch.

Ok now the shameless plug: My iPhone RPG toolkit, game, and calendar

Re:This is it!!

[An anonymous Frank]

What if we all paid our $100 for dev access, and then ran a web site where you can exchange your as-yet-unreleased "projects"?!

What I'm saying is that I could see a use in having a site where you can post a dev project, in a form where others can use it on their own devices, kinda like a rather public beta test...

Could that be a way to have whatever features you want, since each app would not have to be approved (yet) by the Apple police?

demeter

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had the opportunity to meet Demeter and I feel like this article falsely represents his work ethic and his dedication to his artistic creativity.

Newsflash!!!

[frank_adrian314159]

Instead they describe an anxiety-wracked marketplace full of bewildering rules, long odds, and little sense of control over one's success or failure.

So what you're saying is that it's a lot like trying to make a living selling anything else? Who'da thunk it...

It is normal

[pubwvj]

Like duh. Most people are not millionaires. Most business owners barely make it. There are only a few thousand developers. No reason to expect more than a few millionaires made from the App Store. In fact, I'm surprised there would even be one after such a short period of time. So, it is a success.

Re:And still at thier whim

[Dare nMc]

true enough. While it seams especially true of programming for a Apple or Microsoft platform, IE all of your profits are at their whim. If you ever start becoming too successful they will either A) cut you off at the knees B) steal your idea, then cut you off at the knees C) let you be if you aren't too successful and they can then use you as a marketing opportunity.

Re:And still at thier whim

[Dare nMc]

I left out option D the most successful option, D) let them buy you out before they do A or B.

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