How much money can you make from an application for the iPhone?

That probably depends on how popular it is and how much you charge for it. You might get lucky, and get millions of downloads, or you might not, and just earn a few $ on the side.

It depends on the application. If you develop an application that scratches an itch or does something cool, there’s the potential to make millions. (The man who wrote Trism quit his day job when he broke $450,000 in profit.) If you make another fart application, there’s a good chance you won’t recoup development costs.

It’s a shot in the dark. iFart claims 10,000 downloads per day.

P.S. @Cwilbur. This is Riser. I’ve missed you.

It’s a tough market to contend in. If you plan on being successful then you better have some good ideas and a strong passion for creating them. Gizmodo had a story awhile back that showed the difficulties in getting an app noticed.

If you can make one that automatically send you copies of all naughty pics taken with the phone, probably a fortune. Otherwise the market is pretty competitive.

I’m actually planning on making a Halo Arsenal app that has weapons that behave and look just like they would in the games. Maybe a free version with just the assault rifle and the full version for a buck 99?

Seriously consider making the full version $0.99 even if that means you don’t provide as many weapon selections. In that Gizmodo article mentioned above there’s a big section on how $1.99 apps just don’t sell as good. Or if you want make your app really impressive and give it a higher price. From what I’ve read though you never really wanna go with the $1.99 price tag as it can discourage potential buyers.

Ya, but it’s emphasis_Halo!_emphasis I’d pay 10 bucks if I were a serious halo nerd.

The shitty thing about writing apps is you can make a lot right away. But your app fades fast so it is up to you to promote it.

I heard a guy on TV or radio talking about this, and he made $800K from his iphone app.

@Fred931 Your app would likely be denied as you do not own the Halo trademark.

Of course, give it a try, but you have no legal recourse if they take your app down. You lose your time and investments, poof, just like that.

Do some research and you’ll find information about profitability of iPhone apps. Basically, if you can keep it in the spotlight, you can reap money, but you have a huge chance of not being in that light and thus getting trickles if anything.

And the ad supported method just does not work economically. You would have to serve thousands of ads to each user. So go straight for the pay version and scale it down if you want to release a free demo mode sans ads, which is a great business model for the iPhone.

The same you can make with a Mac application or a Windows application or a Blackberry application, etc. The iPhone is not a magical money printing device. Just because you make an iPhone app doesn’t mean it’ll sell. Some have been very successful with them, but many of them were early adopters and got in before there were tens of thousands of apps in the app store. It is completely flooded now and difficult to stand out. You have to have total passion for the app you create and make it worthy of the iPhone/Mac/Apple fan’s time by polishing it and making it exceptional. If you plan to throw something together and put it up on the App store and watch your bank account overflow, you will be disappointed.

The fact is this is another .com boom. Very soon it will die out and only outstanding applications that truly benefit the user will remain unscathed… like ifart.

what I planned to do legalwise was ask Bungie Studios, Microsoft, and Gearbox for permission to use their sounds and graphics. It’s not like I would use their copywrited stuff without their consideration.

@Greenwriter: You shouldn’t have said you missed me, at least until you reloaded and fired again. Now I have early warning.

Also, yeah, it’s a boom, but there’s a lot of money to be made before it dies out.