Category Archives: Programming

Project Pricing – A Popular App of Mine to Price Projects.

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One of my most popular apps right now is Project Pricing. This is an app that I wrote because I needed an easier way to figure out how to price items that I was selling on Etsy. This was my solution.

The app solves some common issues that people have when they price their own items – such as including enough to pay themselves. The simple layout lists several fields that allow the user to enter their own numbers. It also allows you to decide if you want to calculate how long it took to make the item in minutes, or hours.

It then allows you to play with the margins you want to make and lets you quickly see how that affects the overall price of the item. Since I personally use Etsy to sell items, it included an option to include Etsy fees in the cost.

This app is as educational to explaining pricing downfalls as it is useful to those that understand how to price their items.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/project-pricing/id1014738560

A Feature For One of My Apps – Time Clock Helper.

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Since I brought up the idea of marketing yesterday, I thought I would show a bit about one of my apps.

This is my Time Clock Helper app that I wrote years ago to help myself quickly calculate the hours I was working each day. It was based on the older style paper punch cards with four punches for each day.

The original version of the app made the user type in their hours in 24 hour time. This was met some backlash, so I added a way for the user to enter their punches using a scroll wheel. The scroll wheel would use whatever time representation the user already had set up in their device – for the most part 12 hour time. This seemed to fix most of those issues, and didn’t hurt the purpose of the app at all. So, in all it was a successful change.

Thousands of copies of this app have been sold and it is used by hundreds of people a day as far as I can tell from Apple’s information.

This app can also track multiple days – simply press the “Add to Total” button and it will be added to the list of saved days and included in the total number of hours worked. You can view all of the saved days, along with the date they represent. If you need to change the dates, you can easily from the list. Also, you can email the list of days along with the total hours worked to anyone that you want.

At one point I had a request for the app to handle businesses that round their hour calculations either by 6 or 15 minute intervals. It wasn’t overly tricky to add the option, so the app fully supports those systems, too.

Click to bring up the Apple App Store

  • An image of my app as it is currently displayed in the app store.
  • Another view of Time Clock Helper, but this time showing off dark mode.

Mobile Apps Aren’t a Get Rich Quick Scheme Despite Rumors.

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We have all heard stories of apps that have brought their creators a lot of money. We all know of programs and apps that are worth millions. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case for most apps out there.

I have personally managed to get apps ranked in the top 10-20 in their categories, yet I am far from rich. It’s kind of like winning the lottery, though to even get to the small winnings takes a lot of work. I have close to a dozen apps for sale that I have written and updated over the years. I am currently working on several more along with some major updates to an existing app, yet money isn’t rolling in.

If you want to get in the top tiers, you need to be ready to work and also find a way to focus on marketing. Marketing is side of app development that I have the most trouble with. I am decent at creating an app that is useful for people and supporting the app. I’m not the best at getting people to find the app in the first place, though. That is a subject that I hope to write about more as the year goes on with some actual solutions.

But, for now, if you are planning to write an app or several don’t be discouraged if the sales don’t magically appear. It takes time and effort. Also, remember for every app that you hear about that is worth millions of dollars, thousands of them bring in at most a few hundred dollars. If you really want to make things work, then you’ll need to find a way to keep pushing even if you aren’t making the money that you hoped that you would make.