I decided to write a blog post about becoming an uber neato iPhone developer and about all the fame it has brought me, but i can't bring myself to lie to people. So i decided to write about my experiences with iPhone App development so far.

I find myself talking to people a lot about my iPhone apps, it's something i'm proud of, not because they are sheer awesome because that wouldn't be the truth, but just how many people your app can target and having just hit the 20k downloads mark what time would be better.

So earlier this year @scottdrinksbeer showed me an article called "The Easiest Way To Build Your First iPhone App" on NetTuts+, which explained the easiest way to create an iPhone app using HTML and PhoneGap. Using PhoneGap was great and i was able to get some results with it, but it limited me slightly and the app i created using PhoneGap was rejected on the grounds it was useless, i agreed.

I'm not the kind of guy to give up on something so instead of going down the easy route i thought learning actual iPhone App development using Objective C was the grown up thing to do, so that's what i did, because i'm a grown up now.

The internet is huge but there seemed to be a massive lack of resources online to do anything really useful with the iPhone and i wasn't prepared to learn everything at once. YouTube it turns out has a lot of nerdy teenagers who are pure genius and know Objective C and are willing to share this with everyone.

One of my ideas was to create a simple iPhone Soundboard with quotes from my favourite movies after i became inspired by the PocketAlan for the iPhone (since removed) and there were plenty of resources on YouTube to help me do this.

Since then i have been playing around with the iPhone SDK in-between my day job as a web designer and in mid-Feb MOVi was created, submitted, approved and made available in the app store.

While creating the app my plan was simple, ambitious, but simple, i would create the app, get it in the app store and leave it for free, then when it gets popular i would charge 59p for it. I also threw around some numbers, again very ambitious, i decided if i could get 1k downloads a day i would be a millionaire in no time.

I didn't get 1k downloads a day, but i did get 200-300 a day which was great, expect the app was free, so i decided to go with a price increase of 59p. Immediately downloads went right down and on the first day of the new priced app i managed to rake in $2.

So obviously i wasn't a millionaire and with these numbers it would have taken me 140 days earning $2 to be able to break even after registering for the iPhone developer program ($99).

Anyway a few days went past and i got bored and decided to create my second app, a stripped back, ad supported and free version of MOVi Soundboard called MOVi Soundboard Free (i'm a creative genius). My plan was simple, create a free version with less of everything and promote the full, 59p version and have some AdMob ads in there to help pay the bills. It turns out free versions of apps get downloaded a lot and luckily this has helped promote the paid version and sparked a few more downloads a day.

Almost 3 months down the line i'm celebrating the 20k downloads (collectively) something i never thought would happen and something that has proven iPhone app are popular, very popular. I'm not saying iPhone App sales are paying me a lot of money but i can see how a business with a successful app can make millions a month.

So that's the story so far, not a very interesting one but i do want to keep people updated and i plan on posting usage statistics for the free app and sharing with you guys some of the resources i found but i felt the need to share with you my story first.

Keywords: iphone, iphone apps, iphone app development, iphone profit, iphone app profit, application development