5 Steps to Passive Income From iPhone Apps

I have been toying around with the idea of creating an iPhone app for the past several months. I think there is a great potential for a serious passive income doing this.

So I have been doing some research on the steps required if I want to get an app into the app store. I have compiled all the information that I have found into this one easy post for you.

First of all there are two different ways that you can earn money from building an iPhone app.

1. You can sell the app for a certain price in the app store. From that price Apple will take a percentage.

2. You can give the app away for free and install PPC ads into your application.

Which one is the best way. It probably depends on what kind of app that you are thinking about. Personally I’m drawn to giving it away for free and then having PPC ads on it.

I like this idea because I know as an iPhone user that I accidentally hit those ads all the time. Now some people thing this is annoying or intrusive to have ads on there, but I don’t care about those people because I would be giving them something for free. If possible, you could sell an ad free version to the people that are that worried about having ads on the game.

1. Come up with an idea. ANY IDEA.

Have you seen the apps in the App store. Yea there are some really good ones that are very entertaining or pretty useful, but there are also apps in there that are completely pointless. (Bubble Wrap?!)

Seriously quit worrying so much about having the perfect idea that is going to hit the #1 most popular app in the App Store. Yea that would be great but it may or may not happen. Just get an app out there and see how it does. You don’t have to change the world with you app. You just need people to download it.

More downloads = More Income

2.Get the App Built
Notice how I said “get” it built not build it yourself.

That’s right you don’t even have to do this yourself. You don’t even have to know anything about programming.

I have a very limited knowledge of computer programming, but I don’t have near the understanding that it would take to build an iPhone app, and I know that the time I spent trying to learn this programming language is time and energy that are better spent on trying to create other forms of passive income.

Getting this app programed is a lot easier than you might think too, because there are lots of people that out there that are ready and willing to make an iPhone app for you if the price is right. The most popular place to find someone that is willing and capable to perform a service like this is on elance.com

All you have to do is go on elance and find someone that is willing and capable to build an iPhone app for you.

There are two ways you can do this:

1. You can post a job with a description of what you want. Don’t be too specific here because you don’t want someone to steal your idea. Just give them the basic idea of what will be required of them. After you have had a few serious bids on your project, then you can give them more specific details on what it is that you want done.
2. You can also just search through the profiles of companies that are on the site already. A simple search on their site for iPhone applications turns up dozens of companies.

Now that you have someone hired to build here are a couple tips that I can think of that would be important when dealing with your developer:

• Work with the developer to set deadlines.
  • You are probably not going to know what is a reasonable timeline to finish so you need to communicate in order to set good efficient deadlines.
  • You don’t want this person to take several months to build something that should only take a couple weeks.

3. Submit to Apple for Approval

This one is pretty self explanatory, but it is still important and often forgotten about by most people.

If you have a deadline that you want the app to be published by then be sure to keep in mind that it is going to have to be approved first. I heard that this process will take longer than you might think. (possibly several weeks) Even longer if they have to send it back to you for revisions before it could be published.

4. Market Your iPhone App

There are several different ways you could market your new iPhone app. Buy advertising space on an app review site. Write about the app on your blog.

Get your friends to download and review the app for you, so maybe you can move it up the list of most popular apps. Maybe not the top 25, but you can even get into the top list for your category you will see an increase in downloads. And more downloads means more passive income for you!

5. Be Ready to Change

Alright you did it. You had an idea, got the app built and approved, and marketed your app. All that is left now is to sit back and enjoy the money that is coming in.

A little active marketing here and there after your inital marketing strategy will help to ensure that you keep getting downloads.

I would be willing to bet that your downloads will start of slow and with a good marketing strategy they will slowly start to increase. Eventually this increase will stop, then plateau, and then slowly start to decline.

What I’m trying to say here is that you need to plan for the future and have new apps ready to come out when your apps are starting to get older so that you can keep that steady level of passive income that you created.

Now you probably are not going to make a living off your first app unless you happen to hit a gold mine, but you should be able to make your money back from what you paid the developer plus a nice little profit each month. So obviously if you can afford to create more than one app at a time you will be able to increase the income that you can get. If you repeat this process enough then you can eventually earn enough passive income that you just might be able to live off of this income.

So if you have had an idea for a new iPhone app but you thought you couldn’t do it because you don’t know how to program, you don’t have an excuse anymore. Get out there and do it.

This can be a daunting and scary task so if you need help, one of the best resources that I have found on this subject is the book, How to Make iPhone Apps With No Programming Experience. Sometime it helps to have a little guidance from someone that has done this before.

Have you ever created an iPhone app? Do you have an idea. Leave a commet for me and tell me about it. Did you program yourself, or hire it out. Also if you leave a link or the name of your app, I’ll check it out.