Are indie iOS apps still worth it?
I look at the extremely successful stuff like Tweetbot and Apollo and think "hey, I could make that!"
But at the same time I look at stuff like Sylo and Submarine, where I also think "hey, I could make that!" but with much less enthusiasm. These two are also really good apps, but just haven't seemed to hit that marketing "sweet spot".
Could someone share some insight as to what this market is like? It just seems like the App Store is super saturated. Does the large userbase make up for this? If I make yet another Twitter client, Reddit client, or music player, could I reasonably expect some sort of return on my investment (granted that my app is good, obviously)? Or is it mostly luck?
Hey, I'm an iOS dev myself, trying to make it as an indie (currently only at 40$/month, so it will take quite some time). While I was skeptical for a long time that being an indie on the App Store was possible, over the last few weeks I've had the chance to meet online 3 persons making money on the App Store, 2 of them already living from it.
What I've learnt discussing with them and analysing their apps, is that the apps have nothing incredibly "unique" or technically hard; they are not over-complicated, their design is not perfect, and the devs do everything themselves (code, design, marketing). Their apps just fit a need and have nice features and a paid option (or are paid apps).
Some of them are in highly-saturated categories and have many competitors. Doesn't matter, because there are also hundreds of millions of iOS users with DIFFERENT needs and preferences. If you are looking to make a few thousand $ a month to become a full-time indie, you "only" need a few hundreds paying users a month. It's not easy, you need to do some good work for a few months or years, but it's absolutely feasible.
So you can do it! Don't let anyone or any article tell you that the App Store is an impossible place for indie dev to succeed in, that you need an amazing idea or ultra-complicated apps. Just ship several apps until one picks up, improve it to grow its revenue, and once it gets to a plateau, release a few more apps until the next one picks up, etc.
I strongly advise you to start looking for people that already made it, and to be in touch with them, and even create a Mastermind group if you can. And listen to Under The Radar's podcast, there is something extremely motivating about listening to two guys discuss something that is already a reality for them but a dream for you: living from app revenues.
TL;DR: there are many more full-time iOS indie dev than we could guesstimate when reading pessimistic articles about the App Store being saturated. It can be done, and you do not need magical skills. Just keep shipping.
PS: You can read about my personal goal and journey here: https://medium.com/building-lokas-journey-of-an-indie-ios-developer/quick-presentation-what-is-this-about-b186f3cd2fb9
I'm by no means an expert, yet to the best of my knowledge there are two problems here:
The App Store is notoriously bad for (or biased against) discoverability of most new projects, regardless of how 'good' they are.
My personal approach would be to ignore the App Store as a discovery channel completely and market the app as you would a normal web app - find an important problem you can solve for a niche you understand well. If you're set on building 'a better version of the iOS app for x, then unfortunately I have absolutely no idea whether that's a waste of time and/or how you would work that out before building it.
As a former indie iOS developer I have to back this up. The market is extremely saturated and the discoverability is horrible. You really have to come up with a strategy to drive external traffic to your app to rise in the charts in order to even compete with others there.