New goal unlocked! $250 for the month of May.

What have I been working on?

I had a bit of a block in April where I had various new app ideas, but less motivation to sit and build them. I found this lack of motivation in other areas of my life too, like in my gym workouts. I still went a few times each week, but it felt more of a chore this month. I’m hoping it’s just a lull and the impending summer weather (if you can call it that in the UK) will rejuvenate me a bit.

Anyhow, I released just one new app in April.

The first was another micro app, which was another quote widget app. Are these apps mind blowing and challenging me? Not at all. But, of all my apps these seem to be the ones making me the most money. Who’d have thought that most of my income would come from apps built in a couple of days over the apps I actually spent time developing and making more lovable.

So I added The Art of War Quotes Widget app to my portfolio. It took about 6 hours to complete, with some of the boring work outsourced to ChatGPT.

This one hasn't worked out so far, releasing on the 12th April and only earning $8.48.

If that failed, where'd the money come from?

Here's the breakdown for April:

As you can see, the majority of my income came from one app. Without this app, I'd have been nowhere near my goal, and this worries me. However, I know that this is the case for most iOS developers who I've seen share their earnings. Most income comes from a small percentage of apps. It's the 80/20 rule in action.

Despite my overall income being way higher, a few of my apps actually did worse than last month. But with the income being so low for these apps anyway, I won't spend too much time looking into this. I might just make small updates to them in the coming months to keep them seen as 'actively developed' apps by the ASO gods.

What else?

I also worked a lot on my 'Life in the UK 'citizenship test app. I started this in March, but has taken a bit longer to complete as I had a break from it for a while. Building the quiz engine was fun, but also quite involved. After finishing the quiz engine, I lost some motivation as I knew I had the more boring work to do, but I since forced myself to finish it and get it released.

These types of apps rank very high in the UK top paid apps charts and cost about £4.99, so I have done the same with my pricing. At the time of writing this (3rd May), I actually released this today, so will talk more about this app in the next monthly earnings update.

Finally, I added monetisation into my Metal Stud Detector app. This was just a premium unlock for customisation features, such as changing sensitivity of detection and changing tint colours etc. Unsurprisingly, this seems to be the incorrect monetisation method for this app, so I’ll be reviewing what I do with this. I don’t think paying for customisation is enough of a draw, with the app fully functional without this upgrade.

As well as some small updates to some of my existing apps, this summarises the action taken in April.

What’s the plan for May?

Well, I have some ideas on what I want to build next, but they aren’t what I would call micro-apps. For this reason, I’ll probably use May to start one of these slightly more involved apps, but also release a micro-app or two in the meantime. These small ‘pay upfront’ apps seem to do really well for me in sustaining my interest as I see some money coming in, so I’ll stick with them for now.

Summary

I’m really pleased with how April went, especially smashing my goal, but I definitely felt the lack of motivation this month. Hopefully it’s just a blip but we will see. I’ll keep going with the plan and aim for big things in May. I've set myself a new target of $250 for May.

After the first quarter of this year, I’ve earned a total of $376 and that’s way more than I could have envisaged at the start of the year when I was earning a few dollars each month if I was lucky.

Action = results, plain and simple.