Users and Earnings

So, back in September I both implemented ads on the site and released my first proper app (although I didn’t put Ads into WristCheck until v1.2 about a month later).

This was all a fun experiment to see if I could make this wee hobby break even… want to hear how it’s going?

A summary of costs

Let’s start off with what it costs to put things together. I’ll keep this super lean and ignore some pretty significant ones (such as the price of my MacBook or cost of holding onto old phones for testing purposes rather than trading them in or selling them).

First, let’s start with the website itself - nice and easy, I host it for free using github pages, so let’s assume the only cost is for the domain, which comes to [checks notes] around £13 per year (I’m in the UK so will stick to GBP).

Next, we’ll again ignore the value of my time (this is all for fun, so happy to assume that’s free!) what does app development cost?

This differs by platform, with Google charging a one-off US$25 fee to register as a developer (which works out at roughly £20) and Apple charging an annual fee of $99 or £79 to maintain a developer account.

For the app store listings and some peripheral work I’ve made use of freely available web apps, however should I ever reach the point of ‘profit’ I’ll be dropping these guys a wee donation too as they have been absolutely invaluable (I’ll need to write a separate post on that!).

Adding these all together comes to £112, but since the Android fee isn’t recurring (and the web hosting fees are increasing) let’s say my break even target is a nice round £100

User Numbers

Before going into the income, let’s first summarise how many people actually use the app and visit this site (clue, not many!).

For the website, Google Analytics reckons I’ve had 50 unique users in the last 90 days (ha, what are you here for!)

For WristCheck things aren’t quite so clear - on Android I seem to hover around 70 active users. This jumps up and down and I’m not sure if that’s because some people give up on it at a similar pace to new users onboarding, or if it’s just that the analytics are wonky!

On iOS I’m not sure how to see active users (and anyone who opts into not being tracked wouldn’t show anyway), but I can see I’ve got a little over 160 unique installs, so if half of those users stick with the app (and who doesn’t like graphs!) then it’s probably roughly in line with those Android numbers.

Earnings call

So that’s my target… how close to it have I managed to get?

In reality, I started to gain a little income in October, so for the purposes of this post it’s an update of earnings from October 2022 to February 2023, roughly a five month period.

In that time I’ve earned:

£10.97 from ads in WristCheck.

£2.63 from ads on the website.

and that’s it… a grand total of £13.60 so far!

Honestly, I’d call that a success! (Certainly better than the £0 I had previously).

What’s next?

So, I’m currently £86.40 below my target for the year, but I’ve not setup the long promised WristCheck Pro option yet, which I’ve made a start on (and several people keep asking me about!).

My plan is to allow a simple, ‘pay what you want’ option to remove ads in the app, which is surprisingly more awkward than it sounds when your app is on two platforms!

So first I’m going to tackle a simple ‘Remove ads for £1 (or thereabouts)’ on the MP Checklist app. It’s likely to have a smaller userbase and most users will probably play through the game with it once or twice at most and be done. This’ll help me figure out the details of how to best implement in-app purchases and see if I can make a dent in that outstanding £80ish…

Cover Image by Freepik