Have you ever wondered what it’s like to make a living solely from creating iPhone apps? Sounds like a dream, right? Well, for me, it's been a reality for over a decade. Back in 2013, I released my first app on the App Store, and since then, I’ve been growing my portfolio, allowing me to operate as an independent iOS developer. In this article, I want to share my iOS app business journey with you—from humble beginnings to achieving full independence. Maybe it’ll inspire you to kickstart your own adventure in the world of iPhone apps. Let’s dive in!

Jump to:
- The Story of My Business
- How Did I Come Up With the Idea for My First App?
- Switching from Android Developer to iOS Developer
- Inspiration – Where to Get App Ideas?
- The Biggest Challenges at the Beginning
- Building the iOS App Business Solo, Without External Help
- What Software Developers Hate the Most—Marketing
- Where to Get Money for Starting Out?
- Summary
- What About You?
- FAQ
The Story of My Business
In 2013, I released my first iPhone app on the App Store as an indie iOS developer - Force Saber of Light, a simple lightsaber simulator. Since then, I've made a living solely from my iOS app portfolio, which I’ve built and expanded over the past 11 years. It might sound simple, but trust me, it wasn’t.
Today, I’m a fully independent iOS developer, but back in 2013, when I first started learning Objective-C (yep, back then there was no fancy Swift, and the whole iOS development process was done in this weird C-based hybrid), I didn’t even own a Mac.
To be honest, developing iPhone apps wasn’t even my first choice.
It all started around 2009, when I was 20 years old and still attending IT technical school in Poland. One of my classmates had just gotten the first Android phone available in our country—the HTC Dream, which was known in Poland as the Era G1 (still not sure which name sounds more marketable).
We browsed through the Android Market (that’s what Google Play was called back then) to see what kind of fun stuff we could install on this gadget. The market was full of soundboards, glitchy games (there was no Google review process for apps—anyone could release an APK with just one click, and it was instantly available worldwide), and a bunch of boring finance apps that didn’t exactly scream "20-year-old fun."
Then, while scrolling, something caught my eye—a lightsaber icon. As a Star Wars fan, I had to check it out. We downloaded an app called Android Lightsaber.
We launched it. The app wasn’t visually impressive—even by the standards of those days.
But then, I moved the phone—and magic happened.
The phone made a sound. The iconic sound of a lightsaber swing. But here’s the twist—it wasn’t triggered by pressing a button on the screen; the sound played when you waved the phone in the air, as if you were actually holding a lightsaber.
As 20-year-olds in Poland, we didn’t have gyroscope-enabled phones (we probably didn’t even know what a gyroscope was back then). This was something entirely new, something we weren’t prepared for. The whole class took turns waving that phone around, even the teacher got in on it. And that’s when a spark ignited in my mind—this app could be so much better.
I can’t remember exactly what the app looked like visually, but I remember all the things I would’ve added or done differently—if only I knew how to code.
But, as much as it sounds like a beautiful, dreamlike story, I didn’t start coding right away. I had to finish school, prepare for my final exams, and get into my dream university—Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
Long story short, I did all those "life" things. But during my first year of university in 2010, instead of studying for exams, I was learning how to program Android apps.
I hadn’t learned Java before, but that didn’t discourage me. Once you know one object-oriented language, picking up another is easier—and I already had some experience with C++ and Pascal from school. So, I bought an Android programming book and started working through the tutorials.
I even had a moment of doubt about my career path and went to an interview for an Android programming internship at a corporation, but fortunately, they didn’t call me back—thank goodness for that!
Progress was slow, though. The book I bought wasn’t a step-by-step guide, but more of a bible about the entire Android framework. Great for an experienced developer, but not ideal for a total newbie like me.
I soon realized that even something as simple as a lightsaber app was beyond my abilities at that time. So, I began thinking about what kind of app I could realistically create.
How Did I Come Up With the Idea for My First App?
Like all the best ideas, it came to me by chance.
It was typical student life—we were hanging out at a pub, drinking beers with friends. After a few rounds, we ran out of creative reasons for what to toast next.
“We’ve got a problem. An app would totally solve this!”
And that’s how I came up with the idea for my first app. It was a simple app with just one button in the center of the screen. Press it, and a randomly selected toast from a pre-set list would appear, giving us a reason to raise our glasses. Not the most original idea, but it was practical—a real “Make a Toast!” app. (It’s no longer available.)
Why not the lightsaber app? As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know how to code something like that yet.
It would have required using local storage (like today’s iOS UserDefaults), local variables within an Activity (the iOS equivalent of a ViewController), sound playback, and navigating between views.
At that time, the only thing I could do was display a single view. So instead, I decided to create a much simpler app based on an online tutorial, just to finish something, release it, have it in my portfolio, and gain experience in publishing apps. It was my way of breaking the ice.
“Make a Toast!” wasn’t a good app. It was literally just a screen with a button, and when you pressed it, an Android toast notification appeared with a random toast. Not great. But the main goal was to publish something and gain experience in the entire process—from idea to publication.
So, I quickly uploaded the app to the Android Market and... disappointment.
Over three days, it made $0.20 from AdMob ads. Total. That wasn’t what I had in mind.
But I didn’t give up. I sat down and coded two more apps—"Top 10 Movie Quotes Soundboard" (soundboards were hot back then) and “Buttons” (another soundboard, but this time with popular Polish memes).
Through these projects, I learned how to play sounds and navigate between views in Android, which took me further. Things got a bit better—earning $0.40-$0.50 a day from display ads wasn’t as much of a problem anymore. But I was still far from having a real, stable, and most importantly, profitable business.
Let’s be honest—my first three apps were just bad.
Instead of coding more junk, I decided to create something that had been missing from the Android Market for months—something I’d been thinking about since my school days. A proper lightsaber app.
The best one at that time was still the Android Lightsaber, the same one I’d played with in school two years earlier. By that point, it had over a million downloads. There was a clear demand for such an app, so I thought, why not go for it?
Here’s a little business tip: if your idea for an app already exists in the form of a competing app in the App Store, that’s great! It means there are people who want that functionality. Now just make a better version.
The whole development process took five days out of my life. I was coding from dawn to late at night, and on the fifth day, just before going to bed, I uploaded the app to the Market. Full of anxiety, excitement, and hope all at once, I went to sleep, ready to check AdMob in the morning…
… and saw $5.
Well, to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was expecting. I was sort of satisfied, but I still felt something was missing…
...until the next day, when I saw an additional $8 in my account, followed by another $14 the day after that.
By February 2011, I had earned $1,080.07 from ads in my Android apps. This was 2011, I was a student in Poland at a public university (where education is free), and after paying taxes, this was enough for me to live on! And since then, I’ve been living off it.
But hey, I was supposed to talk about building an iPhone app business!
Switching from Android Developer to iOS Developer
My business started generating regular income, but it was only from AdMob ads. The next logical step was to introduce paid versions of the apps—without ads and with more features. So, I consulted with my accountant about the legal side of things (in Poland, the law doesn’t always keep pace with new technology).
"Paweł, of course you can sell paid apps. You just need to issue an invoice for every app you sell."
Wait, what?
With AdMob, things were simple from an accounting perspective—Google sends a monthly payment, I issue an invoice to Google, and that’s it. But with even just a few app sales a day, I’d have to spend loads of time manually inputting invoices for each user into my accounting system.
That wasn’t going to work—it didn’t make sense for a solo entrepreneur like me without any employees.
"Is there any other way to handle this, Ms. Accountant?"
"Not for Android. But on the Apple App Store, it’s different. One collective invoice per month to Apple, and you’re good to go."
Okay, I liked Android at the time, but business is business—so I became an independent iOS developer.
Seriously, if it weren’t for taxes, I probably would’ve stayed with Android.
But the decision was made, 100%. I gathered up my savings, bought a Mac Mini, my first iPhone—an excellent iPhone 4 model—and a few books on Objective-C. There was no turning back.
I wasn’t planning on reinventing the wheel from a business or development perspective, though. I didn’t waste time writing iOS projects for fun. I immediately started converting my two most popular Android apps to iOS—Force Saber of Light and The Whip Sound App.
Since I already had a decent grasp of Pascal, C++, and Java, learning Objective-C as another object-oriented language went fairly smoothly (though Objective-C does have a unique syntax).
After three months, my ad earnings on iOS matched my Android revenue, and once I introduced paid versions, over 70% of my company’s revenue was coming from the App Store, not Android.
I continued supporting my Android apps for a few more years, but for a long time now, the App Store has been a far better source of income for me than Google Play, so I focused 100% on iOS.
Inspiration – Where to Get App Ideas?
In my opinion, if you want to start a business like mine, the best app ideas are the ones that solve a problem you personally have. That way, the app will be useful to you, too.
That’s what I did with the lightsaber app—there was already one on the market, but I just wanted a better version on my phone. So, I had to make it.
I needed a simple currency converter—nothing fancy. Something quick, easy, and always up to date. Sure, there were existing solutions, but I built one that worked the way I wanted—MixCoin.
I also wanted to gain experience working with APIs and AI, and at the same time, I was remodeling my home, looking for interior design inspiration. Of course, I was browsing Pinterest, but despite being a visual person, I couldn’t quite imagine certain styles in my own spaces. The result? Room AI Studio.
I operate a bit like Apple. I’m not always the first to have the best idea on the market. But if I come across something I like, and it’s not perfect, I’m happy to work on the concept to improve it.
The Biggest Challenges at the Beginning
Learning to code (AI won’t do it for you), time, and the costs of getting started.
If you don’t know how to code, you’ll need to learn. This is the biggest quest you have to undertake if you want to become an independent (or even dependent) iOS developer. It’s much easier if you’re already a developer in another field—Swift isn’t difficult (and it’s actually very pleasant to use), so switching over won’t be too hard.
It’s more challenging if you’ve never written a single line of code in your life. But don’t worry—if you’re determined to learn, the resources available today are vastly better and more accessible than they were a decade ago when I started.
To learn how to create iOS apps, you need time. If you’re still in school, you’ve got plenty of time—you just need the motivation and a bit of persistence. If you’re working and have kids, it’s tougher. Pulling all-nighters isn’t always an option, but if you cut down on entertainment time, you can carve out some hours. It all depends on how motivated you are.
And then there are the costs—you need a Mac (an iPhone is technically optional, but I can’t imagine releasing an app that was only tested on the simulator). Add to that the cost of an Apple developer account—you don’t need it for learning, but once your app is ready to publish, you won’t be able to do so without it. Xcode (the software you use to create iOS apps) is free.
If you can overcome these three biggest challenges, the rest won’t be as much of a hurdle.
Building the iOS App Business Solo, Without External Help
I don’t have hard data, but I’d bet that over 80% of the apps in the top 100 aren’t built solo—they’re built by teams. Why do I think that?
Because I know how much time and effort it takes to create and release even a very simple app.
Planning, UX and design (how navigation should work, where the icons should go, what each menu should do, etc.), coding, testing (whether it’s unit tests, behavioral tests, or exploratory testing)—those are some of the typical developer tasks. But the work doesn’t end when the app is released.
- Creating the app icon—you can do it yourself, hire an illustrator, or use Midjourney.
- Writing the app description for the App Store (do you hire a copywriter? Use ChatGPT/Claude?)
- Choosing keywords (SensorTower? AppFigures? Do I guess them myself?)
- Translating the app into other languages (will Google Translate be enough? Maybe DeepL?)
- Writing/generating privacy policies (Iubenda—I don’t even think twice about it)
- Creating a website for marketing materials (hosting, domain, WordPress)
...and so on. There’s a ton of work, and it’s especially hard in the beginning when you don’t know how to approach it. And even when you do, the amount of work doesn’t shrink—you just get faster at handling it.
Having a team makes it quicker, but then you have to pay them and manage them. You can absolutely go that route, but I can’t offer any advice on it because I’ve always worked alone. It’s doable.
You just need to be aware and ready for the fact that as an indie iOS developer, you’ll actually be a business owner, not just a programmer in a company. Coding will take up around 40% of your time. The rest will be spent on marketing.
What Software Developers Hate the Most—Marketing
Marketing apps. Ugh, boring, right? I know—I don’t like it either. I’d much rather spend all day solving coding problems than figuring out how to get users to download my apps. But if you want to create a business—you need marketing.
Preferably the free kind!
There are many techniques: paid ad campaigns, growing social media accounts, paying influencers, content marketing, SEO—these are the most popular ones. But if you want to launch with a low budget, you likely won’t be able to afford most of those—both financially and time-wise.
That’s why the three free marketing techniques I recommend (and that have worked for me, and still do!) for iPhone app businesses are ASO, gathering user reviews, and cross-promotion between apps.
ASO – App Store Optimization
This means optimizing all the marketing materials that Apple allows you to showcase in the App Store for your app. That includes:
- App icon
- Title
- Subtitle
- Keywords
- Description
- Translations into other languages
- Screenshots
Yes, there’s quite a bit of work involved here, especially since when you finish and finally release your app, you’ll be eager to see it live in the App Store right away. But skipping this stage or doing it half-heartedly is a big mistake.
Why? Because before a user ever starts using your app (no matter how great it is), they first need to be convinced to download it from your App Store page. Your main task is to polish that page to the best of your ability.
Cross-Promotion Between Apps
If you have at least two apps in the App Store—that’s great, because you can now promote one within the other and vice versa! Depending on how similar the target audience is for both apps and how good your marketing materials are, the effectiveness will vary. But this is free marketing, so it makes no sense not to take advantage of it.
User Reviews
App reviews are one of the most important factors in ranking your app high in search results. That’s why it often happens that a few days after your app launches, the daily number of installs decreases. But over time, if you gather a lot of good reviews, the number of installs starts to rise.
One of your main tasks when it comes to the long-term maintenance of an app is to gather as many positive reviews as possible. It’s challenging and time-consuming, but it will help stabilize your business and keep your app ranking high for years.
Where to Get Money for Starting Out?
Earn, save, be frugal, invest wisely. To start, you don’t need a leased car, the latest iPhone (the iPhone 16 just came out, and I replaced the battery in my 12 and plan to keep using it), or a set of business cards and corporate swag. That’s all an illusion.
What you do need is a good Mac—I use a Mini and an Air.
The Mini, because it’s the cheapest in Apple’s lineup but has the same technical/programming capabilities as the more expensive machines.
The Air, because a portable laptop is just an extra for me, something I can take on trips or use while lounging on the couch in the evening to get some work done.
You don’t need the latest equipment to start, though if you plan to be in this business for the long term, newer equipment will last you longer. If you have a specific budget, invest in a better computer and a worse phone, not the other way around. That way, you’ll be more productive with your coding while still testing your apps on older phone models, which are far more common on the market than the newer ones.
And you can safely assume that if an app works well on weaker phones, it’ll work on the more powerful ones too (a bit of an oversimplification, but mostly true). One thing though—don’t buy Apple computers with Intel processors, go for the M-series (Apple Silicon).
If you have the budget, treat yourself to a nice, comfortable keyboard. I’m personally a fan of mechanical TKLs, and I can’t imagine working on anything else (especially not on the ones from Apple, which I find extremely uncomfortable). The keyboard is important since you’ll be spending a lot of time typing code.
A good monitor is also essential—you can work on a laptop, but a large external screen is a level of comfort and convenience that’s hard to beat.
Summary
While the road to building a stable iOS app business has been full of challenges, the satisfaction that comes from working on my own projects every day makes it all worthwhile. The independence that comes with being an indie developer is something special, but at the same time, it requires determination and continuous growth. If this sounds like something you’d want to pursue, don’t hesitate to take that first step. Every expert started as a beginner, and your dreams of creating apps can become a reality sooner than you think. Good luck!
What About You?
Are you thinking about starting your own iOS app business or already on your journey? I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, or stories! Drop a comment below, and let’s chat—I personally reply to every comment. Let’s connect and help each other along the way!
FAQ
My journey began in 2010 with Android development, but I transitioned to iOS in 2013. I taught myself Objective-C using books and immediately started converting my most popular Android apps, Force Saber of Light and The Whip Sound App, to iOS. It wasn’t an easy path, but with determination and the right tools, I built a sustainable iOS app business over the years.
The biggest challenge was learning a new programming language, Objective-C, as well as navigating Apple's App Store ecosystem, which is quite different from Android’s. I also had to invest in a Mac, an iPhone, and a developer account to publish my apps, which was a significant upfront cost. Additionally, there were differences in how apps are marketed and monetized between the two platforms.
I find the best app ideas come from solving problems I personally encounter. For example, I wanted a better lightsaber simulator on my phone, so I created one. I also needed a simple, no-frills currency converter, so I built MixCoin. I recommend creating apps that you yourself would use because chances are others will find them useful too.
The three biggest obstacles are learning to code (if you don’t know how), finding the time to develop your app, and managing the costs of entry. You need a Mac and an Apple Developer account to publish apps, and if you’re juggling work or family, time can be tight. Learning Swift is easier nowadays, but in my time, learning Objective-C from scratch was a tough but necessary challenge.
I highly recommend using App Store Optimization (ASO) to improve visibility in the App Store, cross-promoting between your apps if you have more than one, and gathering as many positive user reviews as possible. Good reviews help boost your app’s ranking in search results over time, and cross-promotion is an effective, free way to advertise your apps to similar user bases.
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