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Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?what had been changed?

by umenline on 11/24/14, 12:06 PM with 24 comments

I asked the same question 854 days ago .. i still love desktop app's wander if small indies can make a living from it ?

  • by sireat on 11/24/14, 1:39 PM

    Let's assume Desktop includes Mac, Windows and Linux.

    First You need an app that solves a need (doesn't matter if other commercial or open source alternatives exist) and does not completely suck.

    That's the easy part.

    Then you need a channel to display your app. That also does not seem so hard these days. Mac, Windows both have stores, we can consider Synaptic and Ubuntu store thing to be a channel too(setting aside money question for now).

    Unfortunately channel is not going to suffice.

    The hard part is getting a funnel, that is a way to guide your prospective customers to your product.

    One method perfected by patio11 was to create SEO friendly content for one audience, but use the SEO juice to sell to completely different audience. This is very very hard to do.

    Of course, if you already have your own channel(nice e-mail list), then you can push your apps too.

    But building an e-mail list is again very hard.

    The days of late 1980s shareware boom have been over for a long time, but I suspect with razor sharp focus there are still some success stories(paging Patio11 and his Bingo Card Creator).

    Disclaimer: I write internal apps at mediumcorp for a living and have no personal indie success stories.

  • by tabulatouch on 11/24/14, 8:12 PM

    I am making a living with my windows only projection mapping application http://www.facadesignage.com It started in 2006 but went online 2 years ago, and that was my best idea ever (i mean going online). I learned a lot about software, products, funnels, marketing and niches. And best of all: narrowing down the user pain and solving it at the UI level.

  • by sebg on 11/24/14, 4:51 PM

    This is the canonical article I point people to when this question comes up: http://www.evanmiller.org/why-i-develop-for-the-mac.html

    Evan is a frequent contributor here on HN and it's also worth reading most of his other articles/posts as well.

  • by mike_hearn on 11/24/14, 2:24 PM

    You mean other than Notch, or anyone in the video games business, or the iLife team at Apple, or the Microsoft Office team?

    Sure. Lots of people are making money from desktop apps. Just because it's not hip or cool these days doesn't mean it's useless.

  • by umenline on 11/24/14, 7:14 PM

    Example of someone or small team ( i guess ) that doing useful desktop apps http://www.hkvstore.com/ someone knows something about them ?

  • by razster on 11/25/14, 12:13 AM

    The company I work for makes a living off Enrollment software and Demographic software for Windows. A lot of our clients do not wish to have their systems connected/cloud.

    I do not see a change anytime soon.

  • by dragonbonheur on 11/24/14, 1:20 PM

    There's a much higher probability of getting that question answered on the Business of Software Forum which can be accessed through joelonsoftware.com

  • by umenline on 11/25/14, 8:04 AM

    This is also good example for great niche: http://www.collectorz.com/