My brother Graham Dawson’s iPhone app OzWeather finally hit the #1 spot for paid apps in Australia in late January. After a couple of weeks at #1 it has been knocked off by Wobble Bikini Fun. However the fad apps quickly come and go – while they can generate a fair bit of revenue in a short period, their sales are rarely sustained, while the consistent sales of OzWeather over 3 months are starting to become significant.
Graham has regularly released full financial details – his latest blog post Apponomics Part 3 gives an analysis of his latest sales and what he thinks is driving them. The chart of his sales is below.
What this amounts to is revenue of A$35,000 (US$22,500) over three months, with current sales generating revenue of approximately A$500 per day. While this does not compare to the $600,000 in one month that the #1 app globally has just made, it is still tidy revenue for a solo developer who now has time (after extensive development and refinements on the OzWeather app) to work on other things, including one of his next ventures, iTrafficApp.
One of the best things about the iPhone app store is that is providing a ready monetization mechanism for developers with good ideas. Certainly not all will get rich, or even make much at all, given there are now 20,000 apps on the store, but if you have the right idea(s) well executed, it can make you a living or more. A new economy is being created.
Visualization of our activities and model
Our priorities for 2012
