A designer from Victoria, BC. I make the iPhone apps Manual, Slide and Everyday. You can email me.

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• Manual’s 2014 Sales Numbers

  Marco Arment — Overcast’s 2014 sales numbers:

  Nobody ever wants to talk about money.

  But current and prospective indie app developers could really use more information on the subject. I’ve seen some very informative and helpful posts from developers revealing their revenue numbers […]

  I’ve decided that the potential educational and market-research benefits to others of adding Overcast to the mix will be greater than the risk of people thinking I’m an asshole for doing so. I hope this is helpful to anyone researching the indie iOS market or thinking about entering it.

  Well said. Developers rarely share sales data, and understandably so. It’s hard to do so without looking like a douche. But personally I know that when I was starting out those rare peeks behind the curtain were incredibly informative and inspiring. It’s scary to enter a market without any real sense of what’s possible. Your expectations could be way too high, or so low that you never try. I want people to see that even an idiot like me can make it work, you can do it too. I’m gonna follow Marco and Monument Valley’s lead, and whip my dinky out.

  Manual is a custom exposure camera for iOS. It was created in ten weeks from first PSD to submission. I enlisted developer Craig Merchant, we’d collaborated before, and he was interested in taking on a side project for a split of the first few months. I worked on it full-time while Craig did it part-time. Manual launched on September 23, 2014 for $1.99.

  I thought Manual was way too niche. How many people actually wanna set ISO on their smartphone? It never crossed my mind that it could exceed Everyday’s launch. The launch went so unbelievably well. I was blown away. People were tweeting, the press was great, Apple featured it immediately. Shock and awe. I will toot my own horn and say that the video I made with Oliver helped a lot.

  Manual was available for 100 days in 2014. Here’s my dinky:

  95,621 total sales.
  

  $123,413 USD total revenue (after Apple’s 30%, before taxes).
  

  $91,773 USD in the first month.

  Yeah it was fucked up. In terms of up-front expenses it was minimal, the investment is our time. I spent $1,500 on the website, video, sound design, domain, and stock photos. There are no substantial monthly expenses. 

  All:

  

  First Month:

  

  Rest of the year (69 days):

  

  Rank, first month (overall in light blue, category in dark blue):

  

  On the second day it peaked at #4 overall and #1 in Photo.

  Rank, rest of the year:

  

  We briefly dropped below the top 500, but came back pretty well after our big 1.1 update and the holiday bump.

  I hope you’ve found this helpful. It hasn’t been for sale long enough for me to get any sense of a trend. I will have to see how it does in the coming months as the launch momentum has wained and holidays have ended. But so far I feel like it will land somewhere comfortable. Craig is currently taking a split, once that agreement ends and the sales settle I feel it will land as a comfortable recurring income, even after the Canadian government guts me. I will be able to make a consistent living from my apps and that’s pretty exciting. Will it last though? Who knows. That’s why I will keep moving forward with other projects.

  • #App Store
  16 Jan 2015 / 73 notes