Hey guys, sometimes I am so pumped up about how awesome Buzztouch is I just have to start a thread about it. I have to stress that I am not trying to boast at all - any success I have had I contribute to Buzztouch alone. Without Buzztouch I would still be waiting tables and wondering what to do with my life :P Anyway, the point of this thread is to say that since March this year I have made over $22,000 with apps made using Buzztouch! Again, I say this not to boast but to prove that Buzztouch is absolutely all it says it is. I have absolutely no coding skills, no html skills, NOTHING - yet this website allows me to build fully functional apps and actually make a living off of it. I have had numerous apps completely bomb, and I'm sure everybody else has. Don't let this get you down...I seriously think this is one of the most incredible money-making opportunities that will present itself in our lifetime. Keep making apps and eventually you just might stumble across a hit. Imagine going back 3 or 4 years and asking Rovio if they thought Angry Birds would be the #1 iPhone app of all time. You never know what is going to be a success! I'm not at all a pro on the topic (honestly I think I've gotten pretty lucky so far) but here are the best 3 tips I can think of for building successful iPhone apps 1. Look at what's popular - seriously, it's that easy, just look at the top 100 paid/free apps and you will get a pretty god idea of what will be successful 2. Make a nice icon! The icon is the first thing an iTunes shopper will see. If your icon is pixelized, re-sized, clipart, do you think it will appealing to the average user? If you go to a site such as oDesk.com, you can pay a developer to make you a high quality icon for about $20 - it's worth it 3. Use appirater! - https://github.com/arashpayan/appirater Appirater is huge - without it you will probably get very few reviews for your app. With it you will get TONS. Implement it using this awesome tutorial by tonycelestino - http://www.buzztouch.com/forum/thread.php?fid=B60C6EE41CD7D289048B0F4&tid=B60C6EE41CD7D289048B0F4

That's great!! Really motivating!

Good advice. Thanks. Miguel

I like this post! are you self hosted or do you just use the Buzztouch Hosting?

Which app makes you the most? i like your ideas the apps are seriously cool!

Great story Absentia, yes Buzztouch changes lives!! Success stories are always awesome to hear. Keep up the good work!!

Those numbers make you a resident PRO If you ask me. No question luck is part, but it's not dumb luck - you targeted some good topics. can I ask what % of that income from App Sales and what % of that from Ad revenue? and you've got plenty of coding skills now IMO, I've learned more than a few things from your posts!

Thanks for the kind words. Great way to start my day while drinking my coffee, but don't down play your skills and hard work. Everybody has good ideas, but far fewer are able to execute on those ideas. Kudos to your dedication, enthusiasm and willingness to "Do the work" that it takes to be successful. Great job!

Wow! That's seriously impressive! You may not have coding or development skills, but you obviously have some marketing or other skills that have allowed you to produce desirable content...good job! And I agree with @Atrain53 about this qualifying you to be a resident PRO! Mark

Congratulations! From what I can see, is al of his apps are free - so must be all ad revenue :) Cheers, David buzztouchmods.com

@Absentia HOLY SMOKES BATMAN!!!! WHERE DID YOU COME FROM??? You are amazing. I love hearing stories like this! I graduated from K-High in Ketchikan years ago & I just love to see you are from Alaska...your choices in jobs up there are pretty slim to none not to mention dangerous. Either sliming fish in the cannery or loosing a limb chopping down lumber.... I am so glad you found buzztouch too and I have a request to make. Could you please get a hold of STOBE aka Chris Robbins to grab an interview from you or hell start your own podcast. You are not only a PRO my fellow buzztoucher you are an industry leader....guru... I want to know all about how you did it! 1. I see you used free apps... how do you monetize? 2. Are you marketing your apps outside of the Apple Store? If so what? 3. Where do you get content and concerns of copy rights? 4. Do you have more than one developer account or just the one? Man I have so many more questions but I am just blown away....thanks again for the great story! -Sheri

Thanks guys! I just wanted to show people that this is a totally viable way to make apps. I was honestly a little skeptical when I first signed up last year, and I'm sure a lot of others are when they first discover BT @Nick - I still use Buzztouch hosting...I plan on switching over to self-hosting in the near future though. And the app that makes the most (or has at least made the most) would be my One Direction app @ATRAIN - about 25% of that is from 99 cent sales, all the rest was generated by ads via RevMob

@Sheri - haha yes, very slim! I tried construction for about 3 months and came to the conclusion that it was definitely not my thing. I grew up in New York originally but have been living in Wasilla for the past 6 years. Looking forward to winter :( Whoa those are some serious compliments! You may be exaggerating my skills just a tiny bit :P but thanks all the same! Let me see if I can answer your questions.. 1. As stated in the above post - I use RevMob. All of my apps have a "Download a free game" or "Free app of the day" ad the shows when the app is launched 2. I don't market my apps at all. I used to go to the Toucharcade forums and give out promo codes and make contests, but I didn't really feel like it was having a huge impact. I don't believe apps downloaded using promo codes are counted towards your app ranking anyway. I just focus on making apps that already have an interested user base 3. I haven't had any issues with copyrights. The only time I received a copyright infringement email from Apple was for my "Dooors Walkthrough" app, but the developer of Dooors retracted their complaint for some reason and Apple sent another email saying there were no issues. I do my best to avoid infringing on anything - in the my app descriptions I always state that I am not affiliated with whatever/whoever the app is based on and I encourage anybody to contact me if they feel that my app infringes on their trademark 4. I just have one developer account. I tried to make another one once, but I didn't realize you can only have one personal developer account. I would like to form an LLC eventually and make another account using it

this is very inspiring Absentia!

how do you get past apple rejection with celebrity images within your app? my apps always get rejected if they have celebrity images. :/

Oh weird..I didn't even know you could get rejected for that. Maybe the differentiate between bands and celebrities? Or maybe you just got a really tough reviewer. The only thing I have noticed they are very strict about is the app name. My app used to be called One Direction Fan Club for example, but I recently had to change it to "Fan Club - One Direction Edition" so that people won't think it is an official app

yeah that could be the reason.i will try to submit again. btw, thanks for the appirater tip! i have apps that is live for almost a year now and have only 1-3 reviews. lol

have one more question if you don't mind... how do you do the revmob ad link in your apps? that's the "More Games" button right? I really don't get how to implement it (unlike the fullscreen ad which is easy).

It's actually a lot easier than you might think. Start by creating a new buzztouch RSS screen - go to the control panel and delete the placeholder NASA feed. Just make sure the "RSS Feed Url" box is blank. This way when you tap the "More Game" button to load the screen it will just show a non-stop loading animation because there is no RSS feed to load. In the viewWillAppear method of rssReader.m in your Xcode project, add this code - [RevMobAds openAdLink]; That should be all you need to do. When people tap the "More Games" button a screen will appear with a loading animation, and about 3 seconds later the app store will launch. I like to use this screen because it shows the user that something is loading (i.e. the app store) I also like to use the action sheet that asks users if they would like to launch the app store. I do this because I think it might annoy a lot of users to be unexpectedly yanked out of the app check out this link if you want to add the action sheet as well - http://www.buzztouch.com/forum/thread.php?tid=E556F925A3605A8B4D4C81A&command=isSearching&currentPage=1&topicTitle=&createdBy=Absentia&repliedBy=&minViews=-1&maxViews=-1&minReplies=-1&maxReplies=-1&forumCategory=

Genius! will try it out now! thanks :)

Hi Absentia, I know I shouldn't ask you this but I think there has been some changes with the Appirater code? Like for example in the instructions you provided there is this step: "5.1 - Enter your iTunes Connect App ID at the #define APPIRATER_APP_ID line." BUT I didn't find it in the Appirater.h file. Instead i found these: "APPIRATER_APP_NAME" and i found this appid method: "+ (void) setAppId: (NSString*)appId;" I'm kinda stuck at step 5. I'm so sorry for bothering you and I hope you can give me some help here. :((

nevermind, i think i figured it out! still testing things out, got this match-o linker error but i'll search it out first before asking for help. lol thanks again for being awesome and sharing to this community :)

Amazing. From what I hear alright revmob is THE AD NETWORK in terms of making the most $ from ads. Congrats! :)

@awesomatt - any luck yet? What version of Xcode are you using?

hey absentia, i got it working now without errors!

Awesome!

yeah :) thanks!

Love the forum post. glad to see its working out for you. Im loving it also but money is not coming in. im just waiting for it to be my time ;) I have a question if you dont mind? How do you add the 'more games' button? thanks!

to deal with biz cards, i use CardFila.com to collect all his business cards on Iphone. You can do this on Android, computer, laptop. So easy to collect, find and use any contact at any time. You can access the contacts everywhere without Internet connection by using CardFila for Mobile. http://cardfila.com/

@ Jeffrey Runey....probably the wrong place to share your wares...your post is not relevant to the topic and kind of a turn off to many on here. If you didn't notice buzztouch has no follow links so not going to do any good for your affiliate or website. I personally use a free service called Evernote to store all my business cards. Best of luck to you making apps...you continue this blatant forum marketing <my personal opinion forum spam> a great way to get a bad reputation and possibly excused from the forum. We are all here to help another business but I assure you this is not the way. Sheri

I reported him a while ago but no response from BT team yet, he made this post elsewhere too. David https://buzztouchmods.com

Thanks for this, will use!