Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

http://tbbuck.com/is-a-web-app-earning-100-dollars-month-still-a-failure/

by joshuacc • 15 years ago

23 37 15 years ago

tbbuck.com

n9com• 15 years ago

It's not a lot, but on the upside, it's more than how much many VC backed startups earn :)

aculver• 15 years ago

Sometimes I wish I could burn karma to up vote something more than once. :)

eggbrain• 15 years ago

To me, it is only a failure if the time you put into it can make you more money or fulfill you in a greater way if you put it elsewhere.

$100 may not be much, but if you are constantly churning out $100/month side projects and working very little to keep them up and running, that turns into big money fast.

On a side note, I must admit that at $19.99, I would not buy an app with the sole purpose of cleaning out my Twitter inbox -- maybe I'm not the target audience, but that seems like a lot of money for something that does a very specific task -- one that could be easily implemented by Twitter at a later time.

rheide• 15 years ago

I've got a webapp that makes $0 a month but I don't consider it a failure. Just tell yourself it's a hobby ;)

acangiano• 15 years ago

Twitter, is that you? :-P

pbreit• 15 years ago

No. Twitter makes boatloads of cash.

blackboxxx• 15 years ago

Depends on how much time and mental cpu cycles you spend making that $100. If it's only a few minutes to a couple of hours a month, it's a keeper.

Assuming that's the case, scale your app so it brings in more (it's already proven itself) ~or~ put it on the backburner as a "passive income generator" and go hard on something that will bring in real money.

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

If you put more than an hour a month into it, then yeah, it probably is. Your time could probably be better spend elsewhere.

Of course, that assumes the main goal of the app was to earn money. The knowledge gained from creating it could very well be worth it.

larrik2• 15 years ago

An hour seems too low. I'd say more like 4 hours at least, more if you are taking time that would normally be wasted anyway.

Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your comment.

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

Yeah, opportunity cost is really hard to measure.

But I think if someone is industrious enough to support that project for an hour a month, they are industrious enough to use that hour some other profitable way, though. It's unlikely they would just sit on their thumbs and wish they had something to do.

mootothemax5• 15 years ago

If you put more than an hour a month into it

Thankfully, the support costs are, err, maybe an email every few months? Basically, extremely low. Combined with sharing the hosting with TweetingMachine, it is essentially all profit at this point :)

Sukotto• 15 years ago

  it is essentially all profit at this point

Then, no. If it's on autopilot and making money it's a success.

Now it's time to build another $100/mo success until you get enough of them to buy that private island you're always wanted...

robjohnson• 15 years ago

Absolutely not a failure. You almost surely gained knowledge through the process of developing the app and that knowledge is an intangible asset that will contribute to every future project you work on.

dejv• 15 years ago

I would consider it success.

$100/month is not a lot of money, but creating app that makes $100/month from nothing is much much more harder than polishing this app to bring $200 (or even $500) per month.

jeromeparadis• 15 years ago

If you break even and make profits, then yes, it's a success.

Granted, you would need quite a few apps at that level a earnings to make a living.

Bobby_Tables• 15 years ago

Depends on your intent. If you quit your day job to work on it and were hoping to make a living, then it's absolutely a failure. If it was a side project you were working on in your spare time, and you made it to learn and/or have fun, maybe not. I'm working on a project of the latter sort...it's not the kind of thing that can generate a significant revenue stream. But it was fun to write, it will be fun to use, and if it can pay its own hosting costs, that's an added bonus...

Zarathust• 15 years ago

Success is the difference between expectations and results. I'm pretty sure the guy didn't expect to get millionaire with his app but according to his other posts he learned a great deal. I think it is not possible to consider these projects on financial success alone.

midnightmonster• 15 years ago

The way I figure it is, if it consistently clears $100/month more than the value of the time you put into it each month, hey, you've got a new macbook every year.

npaquin• 15 years ago

There is no failure when creation and learning has occurred.

mootothemax5• 15 years ago

Hi everyone, blog post author here, and I'd like to apologise if this reads like a bit of a grumpy whine, despite the fact that the tool's making money :)

I'm currently experimenting with various marketing efforts), and they do sometimes seem like an uphill effort, with very few definite answers other than "Experiment and see!"

I'm trying to work out how far to experiment with this one, and will keep on writing updates as they happen :)

binarycheese• 15 years ago

You can use this app as a learning experience (education) for creating a bigger and more profitable app

larrik2• 15 years ago

The app is still new. After a while, it may make more. Or it may not. Who knows? I wouldn't call it a failure.

For instance, I haven't updated one of my iPhone apps in a few months, but in the past week or two my sales for it have been better than I normally get in a month. Sometimes it gets better, and you just have to let it grow.

mootothemax5• 15 years ago

The app is still new

To be fair, it's not that new - it's well over seven months old at this point :)

politician• 15 years ago

Drop the price, study the market. Otherwise, I agree with the general sentiment that it's not a failure.

TheOnly92• 15 years ago

If earning $100/month is a failure, mine will be an epic failure. I'm totally not earning anything, plus it's still running totally based off my own wallet.

A way to indicate whether it is a failure or not is whether or not it continues to grow, if you're targeting a very specific market it is very unlikely that you will earn a lot of money (I personally don't have that much amount of email that I need InboxCleaner to do some job for me...).

If however it is an awesome thing, people will get to know it and start using it, then it won't be a failure.

Paymo• 15 years ago

Think about it this way, a ton of startups that get funded with huge amounts of money end up making $0/month :) On the other hand, pricing is a real problem. I don't see many people paying $19.99 for it. If you believe many people have this problem i'd suggest a very low monthly fee - although it will make less in the begining it could make more in the long run (as long as twitter doesn't implement a feature like this).

mootothemax5• 15 years ago

i'd suggest a very low monthly fee

I was previously charging $4.99/month, and before that $19.99/year. So far, the one-time fee is winning, although I'll be interested to see if that continues next month ;)

Quick edit: Right in the early days, I experimented with charging $1/month and $4.99/year, just to see what'd happen. End result: a lot of nothing. Still not sure what to make of that, other than people don't want to pay for the service ;)

knubie• 15 years ago

I think the price is way too high. Apps like this generally sell for <$5 I don't see too many people paying $20 to clear their inbox.

jivejones• 15 years ago

Thats enough to buy coffee for a month, in my books that success :D

switch2• 15 years ago

Yes and No.

You have the wrong approach. You can't predict success and you can't predict what markets will work and you can't prredict what the perfect product for a market is. You have to release products and track ALL possible metrics and tweak consistently.

Basically, even the really big companies have hits and misses. And more misses than hits.

So, firstly, you should be releasing 5 or 10 high quality web apps and seeing which stick and focusing on the ones that do.

That's the first step - finding a market demand.

Second is hitting the value for money/quality/perfect market fit.

That's the second step - after you have found market demand, making the most of it.

An inbox cleaner for $20 is just too expensive. Too much friction - especially for a new product from an unknown developer. You have to minimize regret for users - or rather, potential regret.

Instead of thinking in terms of what you want to make think in terms of what people want to get in terms of value for money. 5 people is too small of a data point. So you have to lower the price anyways - to get enough customers to find out whether there is market demand or not and what things people want and what they are willing to pay for.

So play around with the price a bit. Plus release 4-5 other products and see if you find a market with huge demand - one where even lower value for money sells well.

mootothemax5• 15 years ago

So play around with the price a bit

Previously, I have charged $4.99/year, $19.99/year, $1/month, $4.99/month, and $19.99/one-time is the latest price. You're right that the sample is too small to make much of... on the other hand, it is double what the tool usually makes per month.

I'm happy to experiment, my main question is: am I missing out on the bigger picture by charging for this app instead of using it to promote TweetingMachine? I'm not convinced that the target audiences are the same... but guess I'm going to have to do another experiment ;)

switch2• 15 years ago

It's not a good idea to turn a product into a free product to support another one unless that other product is something like Google's Search Engine.

Even then, you could argue it's better to build multiple streams of income and not depend on one product.

An offer of Buy 1 product and get the other free - that's fine. But giving away inbox cleaner doesn't make sense unless you get a really high conversion rate for Tweeting Machine.

You have also asked a completely different question in your blog post. To sell more tweeing machine subscriptions - perhaps a longer trial (1 or 2 months instead of 10 days) or a lite version would make sense.

tszming• 15 years ago

You can try to wrap your webapps into an iOS app (via webview) and charge it 19.99 per download.

201studio• 15 years ago

Depends on how much time/resources/money is spent each month. Cost to benefit ratio.

I myself not having a profitable app on the store would see it as a success.

grimen• 15 years ago

If you wrote it in 1-2 days, not really (or you learned something on the way). Otherwise: yes.

zeit_geist• 15 years ago

yes, it is a failure.

peregrine• 15 years ago

Put the $100 into a savings account and use it for a rainy day. I see no reason to stop running something that makes money.

Is a web app earning $100/month a failure?

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