How I Made $1,000 on the App Store Without Knowing How to Code
…and unexpectedly helped some people out
What made me think it was possible
I always tell myself that, in another life, I would’ve made a great software engineer. At 24 years old in my current life, though, the window for me to learn how to code is rapidly closing (I know there are countless examples that prove this sentiment wrong, but those people are far smarter/braver than I). It’s this delusion that made Trevor McKendrick’s story stick out to me.
For those who aren’t devotees of Alex Blumberg and Gimlet Media’s StartUp Podcast, Trevor was memorably featured as the “Atheist Bible Salesman” on Episode 11 of Season 1:
“Atheist Bible Salesman” doesn’t do Trevor justice — he’s created a veritable empire in his company Salem Software, which sells six-figures worth of Spanish-language Bible apps yearly. Lots of people make lots of money selling apps (and lots make lots more than Trevor), so what makes him so interesting? He didn’t know how to code.
Trevor’s story is super interesting, but he tells it better than I could hope to, so I won’t get into too much detail. His methodology is also worth nothing:
In short, he systematically browsed the Apple App Store for business opportunities. He was specifically looking for paid apps that ranked highly in the “top grossing” charts but appeared to be lacking in quality, and he found that Spanish Bible apps fit these criteria perfectly. Trevor then worked with freelance programmers to create the initial versions of his app.
Feeling inspired (and admittedly jealous of Trevor’s cleverness!), I perused the charts of the App Store myself, in the hopes of finding my own untapped niche. I soon found an unexpected one.
How I built the app in two days
Alcoholics Anonymous has a central text, the “Big Book,” which is in the public domain — just like the Bible. The moral implications of potentially selling an app to this niche made me a little uneasy, especially as an outsider to the community. That said, there were several Big Book-centric apps being sold on the app store already (including an official AA app, which was both the most expensive and inarguably the worst of those available), so I set out to make a better app for this audience and sell it for less.
When you can’t actually program your app yourself, creating a mockup is insanely important. You can’t rely on a freelancer to completely understand your vision — you have to show them! After playing around with a handful of mockup tools, I stumbled upon Goodbarber. Goodbarber actually isn’t a mockup tool at all, but rather a drag-and-drop app builder. For as little as $16/month, you can build and publish an app on both iPhone and Android. Think of it as Squarespace for mobile apps:
I began using Goodbarber with the intentions of creating a mockup, and I’d then have a freelancer use that to make the “real” app. An app created by a $16/month, drag-and-drop builder would be an embarrassment, I thought. But, at the risk of getting overly philosophical, what is a good app really?
Goodbarber allowed me to include the full text of the Big Book in an easily-navigable, reader-friendly format, which was already an improvement on the apps available for people in AA. On top of that, I was able to “hack” (using the term very loosely) Goodbarber’s plug-and-play features to add a few other useful tools to the app.
- For example: I used Goodbarber’s Podcasts feature, which allows you to add a feed from any Podcast to your app, to include AA Meeting Speaker Tapes. Listening to recordings of speakers from meetings around the world is a popular practice for many in AA.
With Goodbarber, the app wouldn’t have all the bells and whistles that I thought would make the perfect AA resource, but did I really need everything? Why wasn’t what I had good enough (at least for version 1.0)?
I decided to cast aside my Product Hunt-induced insecurities and just go for it. After building the app in two days (entirely in Goodbarber), I used Launchkit’s free screenshot builder to make pretty screenshots for my app store page. Finally, the longest two weeks of my life later, my app was finally published on both the Apple App Store and on Google Play:
My total cost to this point: $141 (including Apple and Google’s developer licenses)
$141!
Growth tinkering
The high of merely seeing my name and my app on the App Store was exhilarating, but it didn’t last long. After a day or so of almost zero sales, I wanted more downloads! Here’s a couple of tactics I initially used to promote the app:
- I set up a Twitter account for the app. While difficult to track the impact of this, it’s too simple not to try. I was careful not to outwardly promote the app (or even mention it). I just followed relevant accounts, favorited some tweets, and shared some relevant articles.
- I used SensorTower’s keyword tools (on a free trial) to optimize my app name and keywords for both app stores.
#2 appeared to make a huge difference. Within a day, I began appearing in the top ~10 search results for key terms and was starting to see organic downloads! For the next few weeks, I would see anywhere from 0–4 downloads daily. This would cover lunch some days, which for a small side project, was a success to me.
Even with some extra lunch money in my pocket, I still was curious to see how far I could push this. My next experiment: free.
It doesn’t take a genius to make the conclusion that free apps get more downloads that paid apps. In 2013, Flurry found that 90% of apps in use were free. That same year, eMarketer found that paid apps only made up 4% of total App store revenue. Free apps with in-app purchases are the big money makers.
I wasn’t able to create in-app purchases with Goodbarber, but I still wanted to test the free waters. So, I created a second Goodbarber account and made a stripped-down version of my first app. This version still had the full text of the Big Book, but the more premium features (like the Speaker Tapes) weren’t available. To “unlock” those features, I put links in the app to the App Store page for the paid app.
In less than a day, it was evident that this was going to work very well:
In the first two months, the free app was downloaded over 14,000 times. Revenue for the paid app increased 171% in those two months compared to the previous two.
Why was this working? My hypotheses:
- Less competition — there are many paid AA apps available but only a small handful of free ones (and the free apps were even worse than the paid ones)
- Winning search — because free apps are downloaded much more frequently, I was able to start ranking #1 in the search results for key terms (see image to the right).
- Providing value — this last theory is on the softer side, but the free version of my app provides a lot more value to those in AA than most of the paid apps available. It includes all of the same content that many other apps charge for.
Results so far & what’s next
As of posting this, the app has made $1,118.28 in total revenue:
The app’s standing in the App Store charts fluctuates wildly, but in the “Books” category, it’s made it as high as the #4 Paid App and the #26 Top Grossing App:
This was especially cool because Trevor’s app (the inspiration for all of this), La Biblia Reina Valera, is #28 the right-hand chart above! Full disclosure: Trevor’s app is usually in the top 10 grossing apps in the category, and #26 was the highest mine has ever reached :)
Admittedly, this is very small potatoes for many people. Trevor makes six-figures a year from his apps, and mine will need an outright miracle just to break five. It’s hard not to feel warm and fuzzy about this project, though, when you get reviews like this (these reviews are also my rebuttal to anyone who says selling an AA app is immoral):
As cheesy as it may sound, reviews like the ones above have encouraged me to keep working to provide useful resources for folks in AA. I’m now working on a weekly email newsletter with content for people in recovery, and I’m looking into experimenting with audiobooks (the current AA audiobooks sound like early-20th century public radio recordings).
I probably won’t ever be able to make a living from this. If I can make some spare change and actually help people in their recovery at the same time, though, I couldn’t be happier with it.
Full list of resources:
- Goodbarber: Since I originally built the app, I’ve test out the other drag-and-drop app builders on the market, and Goodbarber is by far the best out there. If you tell them I (Noah Kotlove) recommended you, they’ll give you one month free!
- Launchkit: Their free screenshot builder couldn’t be easier to use — just upload your app screenshots and add a device and/or overlay text. When your screenshots are ready, they’ll send you a .zip with all of the image sizes you need! Launchkit also has other (free!) great tools for monitoring reviews, tracking sales, and building websites for your apps.
- SensorTower: SensorTower’s keyword search and optimization tools are easy to use and super effective. They gave me keyword ideas I hadn’t thought of and made it simple. Unfortunately, their lowest price plan runs at $79/month, but they do offer a free one month trial that you can cancel at any time…
- App Annie: This free app analytics service allows you to check your apps’ performance on all platforms in one place.
