Indie Poll Position
This week my iDevBlogADay entry is going to be written by you, via answering some polls. The success of this article will be dependent on the number of responses we get. The more independent developers that answer the polls, the more interesting and helpful this will be. Next week I’ll publish the results and write a real blog entry and not weasel out of it by creating some silly poll disguised as a blog post. 
I wanted to do this because I think many of us indies compare ourselves to the stories we hear about of an independent making it big and making millions of dollars (and granted some of you on the iDevBlogADay list may be some of those people). But overall, I’m curious as to how everyone is doing. Sometimes I get discouraged (even though I keep telling myself this is just a hobby) when an app I spend months on doesn’t do as well as I had hoped. Hopefully these questions will enlighten all of us. I’m hoping it doesn’t discourage me further, but instead confirms what I already believe to be true.
I’ll post my answers at the end of this article. Yours will be completely anonymous and lumped in with everyone elses. No information outside what is visible in this blog entry will be shared with anyone. I would hope we would all be willing to share with the community, but it’s understandable if you don’t want to.
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My answers:
How long have you been an app store independent developer? 1 -2 years
Which best describes your independent developer status? Hobbyist
What is your age? 45 – 50
How many hours a week to you individually spend working on your apps? 5 – 10
How many people are on your team? 1
How many apps do you have in the app store? 5 – 10
How much have you made on your most successful pay app? $10,000 – $20,000
How many downloads does your most successful FREE app have? 200,000 – 500,000
What is your average income for all your apps per day? $10 – $20
What is the highest app store overall ranking of your most successful pay app? I don’t know
What is the highest app store overall ranking of your most successful free app? 10 – 50
How many submissions (updates included) have you made to the app store? 20 – 30
How many of those submissions have been rejected? 0
How much do you spend on marketing per year? $100 – $200
Do you use the Apple Forums? Yes
Have you ever been feature by Apple? No
Do you get more than 5 support questions a week? No
What are your most successful marketing tools (pick all that apply)? App Review Sites, Word of mouth, Search words in app store
Do you develop for other platforms beside iOS? No
Do you really own a legitimate copy of Photoshop? Ummm… ya, sure
After writing this entry I came across this post.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/iphone-app-sales-exposed
Kind of confirms what I believed to be true. There is a 10% group of developers doing really well and able to make a living doing this. The rest of us need to keep our day jobs!
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One of my apps was in the overall top 10 in countries like El Salvador and Nicaragua. I only sold a couple of copies, but apparently that was enough.