Summary

As you can see above, I did achieve my goal of my first $100 month! 🎉

To say I was pleased with this would be an understatement! I know I've worked hard so far this year to earn what I have, but this is a really important milestone for me.

What have I been working on?

So in March I released two apps in total, which is 50% down from the four I released in February. There is no real reason behind this, but I spent some time away with family in Paris, and also spent some time updating some of my older apps.

The two apps I released in March are:

I also released an update for my Pomodoro Timer app. This was motivated by seeing a sale of the premium upgrade, which I'd not seen in months. I also noticed my app downloads and user counts starting to climb consistently after doing some ASO work on that app. So I decided to give it a fresh update, with some new content to further enhance the premium offering; color themes. I added these in only in the last week or so, so I'm yet to see if they have made an impact so I'll include that in the next update.

Why make those apps?

As you can see from my March earnings, almost 60% of it came from one app. That app was the very simple Laws of Power app. It's worth noting that I updated this at the start of March to include a regular widget as well as the initial Lockscreen widget. I think this worked in giving it a boost in downloads as it now offered more, and the algorithm likes an app that has a regular release schedule.

Anyhow, because of the continued success of this, I decided to recycle the code and make another, but this time for Stoicism, as this was something I noticed was gaining popularity on platforms like TikTok. I outsourced the boring bits to ChatGPT (namely, putting all the quotes and authors into Quote type swift objects, because I couldn't be bothered). All I had to do was to go through them and make sure ChatGPT hadn't added in any made-up quotes of its own! You can see what I mean here (with mistakes it made in number ordering included! 🤣):

As can also be seen from my earnings, this was a success, bringing in $21 and has already brought in around $10 for April. Not bad for a day of work if it continues at the current pace. These apps are also very easy to update regularly, as I can just add more quotes and widget backgrounds to add more value and feed the algorithm.

I won't talk much about the metal stud detector app just yet, as it's completely free with no monetisation at the moment. I want ASO to do its thing and to get a bulk of users before I start adding in paywalls. This is just an experiment at the moment and I'm not even sure what I'm going to offer as premium content just yet.

Rest assured I'll keep you updated on that! You can see here though that the impression count is good, but the conversion rate isn't great, so I'll be working on improving my app store images and descriptions too with this.

What's the plan for April?

Well, I will be working on how to earn money from the Stud Finder app. On top of that, I'm also working on a new app.

Here in the UK, some of the top paid apps in the app store are based on the citizenship test you have to take when applying for UK citizenship. These apps typically offer study materials and practice exams.

So why not have my own?

I've already created the exam engine, with the ability to flag answers, go back and forth for review before submitting answers, view historic scores etc. I just need to add some styling and all the official questions, which I can get online. Once I've done that, I'll be adding in the learning material and will be ready for release.

These apps are typically 'pay-to-download', and are often in the region of $4.99, so I'll do pretty much the same.

Here is a sneak preview of how that's coming along so far:

Summary

March surpassed my expectations, and I'm super proud of the result of my hard work paying off. This really is a game of 'effort in, results out'. Nothing works when I don't work, so I'm just going to keep going and see if I can hit that April goal of $150.

Be sure to check back and see if I hit it in next month's update.

Note: If you missed my first App Store earnings update, be sure to catch it here.