Surprise! I made $5/mo after I decided to give up

After I created PhotoCopyThis, I joined a start-up and got too busy with the work. My original monetization strategy is stupid - I was using Ads - and the main purpose of this app is to help users "save time", so they don't stick around in the app. Lesson learned: only use ADs as a monetization strategy when your app is highly addictive - like a game or social media.

Anyways, I did not have the time to change my monetization strategy with my 80+ hours full-time job. It costs me about $1/mo for Google Vision, and I earn about $0.5/mo from ADs. I was okay keeping it in the App Store and maybe working on it later.

After 1.5 years I launched PhotoCopyThis, I found that Apple is releasing Live Text in iOS 15. The feature is exactly the same with PhotoCopyThis, and it is even better than my app. I did not want to remove the app from App Store since I want to keep it in my portfolio when I do freelancing. But I was pretty sure no one is going to use my App when they update to iOS 15.

This year, I decided to put fewer hours in consulting I was looking into cancel subscriptions or things I don't need in my life to save money. I look at PhotoCopyThis, sometimes the usage is high, and it cost me $2/mo. "That's enough!" I thought, I went to Apple connect and I made it a paid app.

Of course with this change, the bill from Google Vision becomes $0.1-0.2/mo. "That's working!" I was happy with the change because I didn't want to keep letting people use it. Of course, usage and downloads are down.

I forgot about it, and the other day I was in Apple connect looking at some other app's performance. I noticed that I made some money from PhotoCopyThis. It is not $1, or $2. It is $10! I made in average $5/mo. There are only a handful of people downloading and using the app - it is actually good for me. Two Lessons learned here:
1. More download is not more revenue. Paying customers are more important than the number of downloads and subscribers.
2. Everything is worth something - if people are using them, don't let them use them for free. They need to pay for what they had used

What's next? I decided to play with the price a bit and consider adding a translation feature to the app. Even iOS 15 Live Text is better than my app, it still doesn't have some of the features I have in my app. In addition, I guess some people have older phones so they don't get to upgrade to iOS 15. I probably will not put too much effort into this app - but I am happy with the valuable lessons I learned!