There are few things more coveted in the iPhone developer world than the top spots on the App Store sales chart. Sure, there’s only one way to go once you’ve hit the top; but while you’re there, you’re riding high. You get to sit back, relax, and watch as Cupertino’s little talkbox prints out money.
But how much are those spots worth, exactly? How much do these top Paid Apps bring in?
While most developers that reach the top aren’t looking to spill the beans on how much change they’ve just walked away with, TapTapTap, creators of the current second best-selling Paid App, Convert, have put it all out on the table. After launching with a great product and the helpful hand of positive blog coverage, Convert shot up the charts to #2 with roughly 50,000 sales spread out across two weeks. But once it hit #2, the downloads spiked: 9,000 downloads per day.
After Apple takes their cut, that’s roughly $6,300 a day. Considering that taptaptap is just a handful of guys (their primary team is made up of just 3) — and that they made $35,000+ from sales in two weeks as they climbed the charts — that’s a whole lot of coin. Enjoy your yachts, guys.
$6300 is a ton of cash, how long on average does an app stay in the top 10?
Good for them. They made a very useful app. There’s no hating here. Keep up the good work.
It shouldn’t be that surprising considering the user base, but those numbers still seem sick. I’m glad to hear that a relatively small group can still achieve this kind of success through the app store. I’ve grown too accustomed to hearing about the dark Orwellian side of the app store.
If only they always used their powers for good instead of evil.
This is just an example of developers which make great apps, who make good money. Great apps will be purchased, no doubt about it. Now, to find those great apps is a trick all in itself. :)
I think that’s great for them, and I think it’s great that they decided to share their stats with the public. It should give aspiring app developers a sense of how much effort to put in to an app and balance that against the potential gain.
you forget something. Canadian devs must pay more US taxes and CAN taxes on sales and after personnal taxes at end of year with other jobs. So remove a good 65% on final amount.
6.300$ / day = 2000$/days
and divided by teams members.
Not enought to buy a boat as writen on a comment.
Lud, I may be something something entirely here so feel free to rain on our parade as bob said, but assuming the earnings are being reported in U.S. dollars than that’s more like $6,900/day Canadian and about $2,400/day even after taking out your quoted 65%. According to the posting the primary team is 3 so if they paid out $100k/year total to whoever else was working with them that’s about $250k/year each for the primaries on one app.
Now their boats probably won’t have helipads on them, but I think they could pick something pretty respectable up.
Not really …. the app only only makes that money for a limited time (in this case 2 weeks) – not all year long. So they made 35K in the weeks leading upto the number 2 spot, 88K during the two weeks and will still sell some through the year. Divided by 3 and it really isn’t that much money – 40-60k each.
Marke, you are of course right, my point was more that they are making a decent amount of money and I was getting a little hyperbolic with yearly totals. I still think that making 40-60k each off one app in a few months is a pretty good payday and overtime with minimal updates it will probably continue to be a nice little revenue stream for them.
Hey ludovic
Stop raining on our fantasy parade with your satanic canadian math!
Love
Lazy American wanna be entreupreneurs
lud: Time to move…yikes! Hard to make any money there.
Convert is sweet. Beautiful interface.
this is awesome, though the Convert is the 128616th converter util in the App Store…
But how much App Store brings to 1st place? Any ideas ;)?
It’s a big amount. What about the third?
how could they have such an tremendous start? how did they do that?