Wanna Make Money With iPhone Apps?

I knew that people were killing it iPhone apps, but it was only when I talked with Pat Flynn at Blog World Expo that I realized how feasible it was to enter that market, even today (by feasible I mean possible, not easy).

Sure, Pat started a couple of years ago, but if I am not wrong he is putting more effort on that side of his business only lately. Right now he has 27 apps released in the app store, and some of them are really simple yet smart stuff like a “Traffic Light Changer” app (yeah, it’s only a joke app, but people are downloading it).

How much does he make with the free apps? Around $4,000 monthly, and it’s growing…. so yeah not pocket change from where I come from.

I mentioning all these because Pat is writing a kind of a series on the iPhone apps business, and I think those of you who are interested will find it very useful. The first post was called 5 Things You Must Know About Creating Your Own iPhone Apps, where Pat talks about why you don’t need to be a developer to have your own iPhone apps, why getting the app ready and approved is only half the battle and so on.

This week he published a new post on this topic, titled iPhone App Business Models: Paid vs. Free. It’s an interesting discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of charging for your apps or making them free.

The only part of the mix missing is how he actually gets his apps done. Where he find developers, how much he pay them, and how the process works. I’ll send him an email with a suggestion for this post.

Finally, there are a couple of other markets you might wanna try first, because they will probably have less competition right now. The first one are the local iPhone apps markets. If you live outside the United States and the iPhone has a big adoption in your country, for instance, you could develop iPhone apps targeting your local market/language.

The second one is the Android market. If I am not wrong Google is already shipping more Android devices than Apple is shipping iPhones every month, so this might be another good opportunity.

If it was not for the lack of time I would certainly be entering this segment right now. I just can’t imagine how a mobile app development company can go wrong these days. Even if you don’t have enough creativity to come up with your own apps the demand for outsourced development work is just huge.

Are any of you guys already playing with mobile apps?