How to Make Passive Income Apps in 2017

What If I told you that the secret to making money from apps in 2017 isn’t on Apple’s iPhone or even Google’s Android? That it’s not on mobile at all. That would be wild right? We have to think outside of the box. Think outside of conventional appreneurship. There has been way too much hype surrounding the app store “gold rush”. The app store is saturated and competition has grown at an alarming rate. Let’s diver deeper into how to make passive income apps in 2017.

Number of apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store

Things look a lot different today than they did when I first signed up for a developer account in 2009. According to Statista, there were roughly 100,000 apps in 2009 on the Apple App Store. That’s it?! Wow. Compare that to over 2,000,000 apps in the Apple App Store today! The app store is 20x bigger than it was 9 years ago.  How do you even get seen in a sea of over 2 million apps?

The Google Play Store has seen even more growth. They didn’t even hit 500,000 apps until 2012, and then quickly grew to over 2,500,000 apps today. It’s known that Google Play doesn’t have an approval process like Apple, which is why they have grown so quickly. There are a lot more low quality apps that have flooded the Google Play Store vs the Apple App Store.

The numbers clearly show that competition is fierce. Yes, you can still make money in both the Apple App Store and Google Play stores. However, you’ll be competing against companies with huge corporate funding or indie developers with years of experience. It’s not going to be an easy road.

Mac App Store

So let’s look at another app store. The Mac App Store.

There are about 30,000 total apps on Apple’s Mac App Store.

To be exact, Appshopper says there are 29,739 total Mac apps today. I’ve read so many articles about how developers have hit the top 30 rankings in the Mac App Store and there was too little money to continue development. I’ll argue that this isn’t true. I’ve personally made over $20,000 last month. Most of it being from the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store has less competition. Revenue isn’t as high as the mobile app stores, but it’s high enough to generate a decent amount of passive income.

In the Mac App Store, you’re a big fish in a small pond.

Visibility is the key to success. That doesn’t go without saying that there are still a lot of trials and tribulations for being a Mac app developer. The Mac App Store is still in the early stages of it’s mobile counterparts. There are a lot of low quality apps with developers trying to make a quick buck. Combined with a lot of shady things I’ve seen that I’ll go into a bit later in future articles.

Competition and Money

Having around 30,000 total apps on the Mac App Store is significantly less competition than over 2,000,000 total apps on the Apple and Google Play Stores. There is also a lot less money.

You won’t hit it big like on the Apple App Store with $1,000,000/month, but you can make a decent amount. The Mac App Store can realistically bring in anywhere from $1,000/month on the low end to $50,000/month for the top developers.

The biggest benefit to desktop apps is that you can price them higher. Most apps on mobile are either free or $0.99. However on desktop, you can easily charge up to $29.99. That means you only have to sell your Mac app once to make as much as selling your iPhone app 30 times! Puts it into perspective right? If you look at the top grossing Mac Apps, you’ll actually see plenty of apps priced at even $99.99.

The mac app has a better chance to be seen and you only need to convert sales a few times to make a decent amount. That’s how to make passive income apps in 2017. The best way is to create a simple, but high quality product that you can price well. Let’s say hypothetically you price it at $49.99. If you average 1 app per day, that’s $1500/month. Not bad for passive income apps in 2017.

Do you have any app ideas? Have you tried creating apps yet to generate passive income?