TipRate Soars to Number One

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Yesterday my TipRate app for IOS became my top performing app. Both the IOS and the Android versions of DartOut have been my top performing apps for as long as I have had more than one app in the store. DartOut has been pretty popular  because my son and I play darts on a dart league, so we have been able to show people the app at our dart matches, and the league even posted a nice little blurb about it on their Facebook page. With the tip rate app, we haven't really had any direct marketing, so it was really nice to see that the IOS version was starting to get used. Interestingly the Android version is still at the very bottom of the list. 

Yesterday the TipRate app generated 27 cents. Now that doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't a lot of money, but considering it only makes a fraction of a cent from the ads when someone opens the app, that really is kind of impressive. You might make a penny or two if someone clicks on the ads, but that doesn't happen very often. I am still not 100% sure how the formula for the ads work. We usually generate between $2 and $3 a month from all of my apps combined, so .27 in one day is also a significant jump. 

You might be saying to yourself, if you make so little on your apps, why do it? There are two reasons for that. The first is that at some point one of these apps might go viral and start getting millions of hits a day and make some real money. Of course that is like thinking you will make it big in show business or win the lottery, but there is always a chance. The main reason I write apps is to increase my skills. To be a better programmer, you have to write code constantly. The more you write the better you get. Often times in my day job, I will get put on a project maintaining a legacy application for 6 months to a year. In that short of time, my skills can start to go stale. Building apps in my spare time allows me to keep up to date on the latest frameworks while building things that are real. Building a real app that you put out in the world is totally different than going through tutorials and playing with sample code. 

So yes, writing an app might not seem worth the time when you are making penny's here and there, but the real value is in keeping my skills up to date which makes me marketable and keeps me at the top of my game. And to be totally honest, it is a lot of fun to build an app, put it in the app store, and share it with your friends. Its kind of a cool way of showing off my skills. 

If you would like to take a look a the TipRate app for yourself, here is the link to the app page. http://tiprate.kartech.com

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