On Deck Money Making Ideas Part 2 – iPhone Apps

In my last post, I told you about how I was going to explore PPC Affiliate Marketing to earn more income online. Here, I’ll tell you about another idea that is currently underway as well – iPhone applications.

I presume you’ve heard of the iPhone. If not, you should crawl out from under that rock. Anyways, iPhone applications are selling like hotcakes. There are over 10,000 applications that iPhone users (over 10 MILLION of them) can download. Some of them are free, while others go for a small price, usually between $0.99 and $9.99.

So let’s see, if I create an iPhone app, sell it for $1.99, and just 0.5% (just HALF A PERCENT) of iPhone user’s buy it – that’s $10mil * .005 * 1.99 = ~$100,000. Sound too good to be true? Well, have you heard of the application so tastefully named: iFart?

iFart’s Numbers

This application is basically a gag app where you can setup different kinds of farts to go off at different times. There’s something called a “Security Fart”, and also “Sneak Attack” – but I won’t get into the gross details. It sells for $0.99 on itunes.

Sounds like a loser app up front, but it’s become one of the most successful applications developed for the iPhone so far. You can read for yourself at Joel Comm’s website, but here is how iFart sold within just a few days (Note that apple takes 30% off the top before distributing earnings to developers):

• On 12/22: 13,274 units sold ($10k)
• On 12/23: 13,349 units sold (another $10k)
• On 12/24: 19,520 units sold (another $14k)
• On 12/25: 38,927 units sold (another $27k)

…and that was only 4 days worth. It came out on 12/12, and is still selling strong today…amazing!

Inspiration!

So, of course – I saw this as an opportunity to do something similar. Even if I was making $500 a day, that would be AWESOME! (or even $100 a day!). But, I have high hopes, and I’m shooting for the stars, and I plan to take you along with me.

Why This is a Form of Passive Income

I see this as another form of passive income because you’d work to create the application, but after that, it’s just up for sale in the iTunes store generating money for you. Also, using another definition of passive income, it’s scalable. Meaning, I won’t have to put any more work into it if 10 people or 10 thousand people decide to buy it.

So How Do You Make an iPhone Application?

Honestly, I have no clue. But remember what I had said in my post about how one of the biggest mistakes I made when starting my blogs was to try and learn and do everything myself? Well, I still hold that to be true, and I would waste lots of time and money trying to learn how to code everything myself. Plus, the final product would probably be mediocre at best.

I could pay someone to make it for me – and this is exactly what I’ve done. Actually, not just me, but one of my best friends too. We’re partnering up and decided to go into this together. We’re actually having a great time working with our developer and thinking about marketing our (first) iPhone app.

The Details About Our Application

Well, the idea is finished and the application is all figured out, it’s just being developed as we speak. I can’t tell you yet exactly what the application is, but trust me we’re gong to work on an aggressive marketing campaign to help promote it.

Once it’s out, I’ll go over the exact numbers with you, including how much we paid to get it developed and exactly how long it took to get from our heads to the iTunes store. Gosh, just writing about the whole thing gives me goosebumps. I mean, it could be a flop and we’d lose our fee for paying to get it developed, or, it could be a hit and we could also earn $10k a day. It’s like fishing (I love fishing), but in a lake where we know there’s tons of hungry fish – we just need the right bait.

What ever happens, the rewards far outweigh the risk factor involved.

I’m sorry I cannot go over more of the details with you, but you’ll definitely hear about it once it’s all underway.

To The Readers:

Have you ever thought of making your own iPhone application? What if you had money that you could use to pay somebody to do it for you, what ideas can you think of? You don’t have to comment or reply with your ideas, it’s just something to think about

p.s. I’m actually at my Bachelor Party right now. I’m writing these ahead of time and timing the publishing (which is an awesome feature of WordPress, by the way). So until next week, I won’t be able to respond to any comments or emails – but keep them coming anyways! I’d love to hear what you think!

Cheers!