This is part 4 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 3 here.
The First App Store Version
In 2008, Apple announced the App Store and I applied for an Apple Developer membership ($99/year), so I could sell apps on the App Store. Everyone else did the same and Apple was swamped. Despite applying as soon as possible, I didn’t get approved for about 6 months.
I found a zip file and it looks like I might have released Numerology v1.2 on November 8th, 2008, so 1.0 would have been a little before that, maybe a month earlier.
Here’s the app’s first icon:
1st Numerology Icon
and a screenshot of the main screen from July 6th, 2009:
Numerology's main screen
and an early demo movie from December 19, 2009:
I remember when I received my first payment report from the App Store. It was confusing, and I was disappointed because I thought I didn’t make any sales. Once I better understood the reports, my confusion turned to delight, as I had made $300! I don’t remember the exact amount. This was more than anything I had ever made selling my own software.
In fact, that must have just been 1 line item on the report, because App Store Connect’s Sales and Trends shows I was paid $1.65K in October 2008.
I was making money from the App Store and off to the races. Everybody was buying iPhones and apps. Every January, after Christmas, you would see a big boost in sales for your app.
Numerology Lite
Around June 2009, I released a lite version of the app that was free to download and had an in-app purchase to basically make the app the same as the full version. It got a lot more downloads, but it actually sold a lot less than the full version. Eventually, I discontinued it. Numerology Lite made over $25K during its lifetime with 3.29K downloads.
Spanish Localization
Around May 2011, I localized the app for Spanish. Numerology is an app that has a lot of text, so it was a lot of work to localize (this was before AI). I localized the app, hoping it would increase sales. It basically had no effect.
The End of an Era
So let’s jump ahead a bit. Here’s is the lifetime proceeds graph from App Store Connect for Numerology:
Numerology Lifetime Proceeds
As you can see, my best year was 2012. I think the was effectively the peak of App Store mania, and the end of the easy time of making money on the App Store. My best month was January of 2012 where I was paid $6,000 for the month.
For a few years I lived completely off my App Store sales (my expenses were pretty low), but after January 2012 it was all downhill, as you can see (until 2024).
Stay tuned for part 5, where I’ll talk about the struggles to make money on the app store.