October 2011 Monthly Income Report

Every month, Dave and I like to post a monthly income report for the world to see. We do this as an effort to maintain transparency for our business, keep us motivated to push for more income growth, and to inspire everyone else to push forward on their business ideas and form some passive income streams.

What’s new with us

October was a crazy, crazy month for us. I had to meet a very tight deadline at my full time job and lost an entire weekend of my time to the dreaded crunch. I wound up working 35 hours over the course of a weekend and slept at the office to push this project out on time. The deadline was met, but I experienced pretty hardcore burnout and didn’t want to work on any apps for a while. Unfortunately this was reflected a bit in our income, and I wasn’t able to get a second app built this month.

Now that we got through the craziness of October, we’re back on track building new apps. We’re hoping to work with a graphic designer on a few projects in the near future. We’re also looking to get a seasonal app put out for the holidays, and maybe make some extra money off all those shiny new phones people will be receiving as gifts.

We’re going to make a strong push to generate more growth this month. We’ve set some attainable goals, but you’ll read about those at the end of this post.

What went right

Launched Food and Wine

Despite the hectic feel of October, we had a few things go right this month. We launched both versions of the Epcot Food and Wine App, so we have another completed project under our belt. It definitely felt good to add this to our portfolio. We finally have some variety in our iPhone applications, and we’ve got an Android app up that’s not a soundboard. We’re looking forward to getting a few more apps out by the end of the year.

Maintained Revenue

Despite not introducing any other new apps this month, we maintained our revenue stream. We had a bit of a dip in our earnings, but the dip small enough to not have a major effect on us. It’s great to know that we can rely on making a certain amount every month, despite how many new apps we put out.

Record Single Day Earnings

This is a small thing that went right, but we managed to have a record earnings day. Our highest single day earnings by the end of October was $7.29, which is pretty great. I remember when Dave and I just wanted to make $1 a day, so it’s nice to know we’re slowly creeping up toward the $10 per day mark. This business is definitely for the long term, so while our earnings may seem small, you have to start somewhere. Can’t wait until the day we’re making $100 a day and looking back on our $7 days and chuckling.

Gained New Skills

Finally, Dave and I both added new skills to our developer tool belt. Though this doesn’t have affect our income directly, adding new skills allows us to build more complicated applications, and hopefully have better income potential. This was the first time we both worked with databases/Core Data, as well as sharing from a mobile app to Facebook. The results have been pretty good, and it’s nice to know that we have this experience behind us.

What went wrong

Food and Wine Woes

We had a few things go wrong this month, but we learned a lot of lessons. Two things that went wrong are actually related: we launched the Food and Wine iPhone app late, and we had to remove features that we wanted to include. We were on a really tight deadline for Food and Wine, so we knew that we might need to cut some features in order to get the application out. Unfortunately, we were right, and we had to cut out a few things that we really wanted to include.

Luckily the festival is an annual event, so we’ll be able to add the new features for version 2 next year. However, we knew that the audience for this app was extremely limited, so we wanted to make sure we knew when we should drop features and just push the app live.

The most important lesson here was to know when to cut your losses and push live. Had we continued to develop features, we would have missed income generation opportunities, due to the limited schedule of the event.

Delayed Next Project

Finally, I had to delay working on an application I wanted to start. I was given the opportunity to build an application for Florida Hospital and took the immediate income opportunity over the long term recurring benefits of another apps. Luckily the project was large enough so it was worth the time put in, but there was definitely an opportunity cost involved.

Income Breakdown

Another decent month this month, but we didn’t see any income growth. We were a few bucks under last month’s income, but it’s not so much that we were worried about it. So far we’re on track this month to pass October’s income, so we should see some growth in our next report.

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