Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 050 How Do I Make Passive Income on My App?

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050 How Do I Make Passive Income on My App? · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: How do I get passive income out of my app?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do I make my app a money-generating machine that doesn't require me spending all my time maintaining it?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is a question that Marius asked me recently.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one that's a great question because it really gets to kind of the heart of today's idea of what a software developer can be.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very true.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can create software today as an individual and make money.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to have a company, you don't have to be a big name, you don't have to have this complex distribution system.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can distribute an app store, you can distribute personally directly on your website, you can use a third-party service to do so.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: But just because you can doesn't mean there's not a lot of question marks around how to do so.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And passive income is this kind of buzzword recently that the past few years has really caught on the idea that you make passive income.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start there then.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there is almost it's almost a non existent to say there's passive income.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Passive income pretty much doesn't happen.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: There is low input income, but there's not passive income.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: For example, personally, I have what could be considered a passive income business.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I will tell you, I spend 40 hours a week working on my passive income business.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I sell courses.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to imtimcore.com, you can buy my courses, and I don't have to be there helping you walk through the process of buying it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a shoe salesman at the mall where you have to interact with me in order to buy my product.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can just go online, make a purchase, and you know what?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Probably during this episode, people will make purchases.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So when I go to sleep at night, people make purchases.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like this great idea that I cannot work anymore and I'll get income for life, but not really, okay?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because it takes work still.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: You still have the maintenance work.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: For example, just in maintaining the community, meaning uh you make a purchase and it doesn't show up in your account for some reason.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a glitch of some kind.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Usually just FYI.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: The reason it doesn't show up in your account is because you use the wrong email address or you mistyped it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so it went to a different email address and created a new account.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Email help at imtimcorey.com and Tom will help you out.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that is my next point is that I actually hired a person full time to help maintain the community.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: His title is community manager.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: His job is to respond to those emails at help at imtimcore.com where you have a problem with your course, or you need a refund, or you need a receipt, you don't know how to get one, or you you want to know about more information about something.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: He answers that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: We have a forum for all uh course purchases.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he's in the forum, he's making sure that you're taken care of, that you've got the login information, that you are um able to participate, that maybe he even jumps in on some interaction there.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: He's on uh YouTube in the comments, he is responding to comments, writing down suggestions you have, putting a list so I can review them in one spot.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of work that goes into maintaining this community and maintaining this passive income.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't be just hands off because not only is there that whole community side, which Tom takes care of a lot of the work that he can, but then there's also the side of we need to still be in front of you.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: If I just decide, you know, I'm gonna turn off the YouTube channel or I'm gonna stop posting to YouTube, you'll probably not come around as often.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you don't come around as often, then you don't get to see what new things I'm offering.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: You don't get to um watch those ads and give me a little bit of income that way.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: You don't decide that you want the source code for the Tim Co.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Retail Manager series, and so you support me on Patreon.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: You don't decide that what I'm doing for the community is useful, and so you just support me on Patreon because of that.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of benefits to me being in front of you, and so I put out two videos a week to do that.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for me, I want to be in front of the community, not because it gets more sales, although it does, but also because it allows me to help more of you.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of the questions, this is a quick side note, but one of the things that comes up is, you know, why do you price things the way you do?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I do so in order to provide more to the community.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Your purchases, your watching videos, your Patreon support, whatever you do to support, all of that goes towards being able to provide more to the community.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, yes, take a salary.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love my salary, I appreciate my salary, thank you very much.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But that allows me to work full time on this job.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's allowed me to hire Tom to help support you as an audience.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's allowed me to hire Dan to help support you as an audience.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking right now to potentially hire develop at least one developer and at least one web person.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not taking in uh resumes of this time, just so you know, but we're looking to hire more people in order to um help grow this free content to the community.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking to build an application that it's going to revolutionize how training gets done.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you, it's gonna be awesome.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to show it to you.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a little bit yet though.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we're looking to do these kind of things because of the support of the community.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: That support comes from you knowing there's a need, you knowing that there's something available for you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that comes from being in front of you.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that it's passive income is a bit of a misnomer because yes, if I went on vacation, which I'm going to do in the end of May, well, if I go away, I'll still make money.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: The business will still continue to generate revenue, even with me not there.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: But it's going to start to go down if I do that too much.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that passive income will go away if I am passive.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start with the idea that it's not passive, okay?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: But there absolutely is a lot of value in having something that doesn't require your time in order to give you money.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I have been a consultant, I actually turned off my consulting work.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple of customers, they're kind of winding down now, but I don't do consulting anymore.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is because it takes my time.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: If I want to generate more income, I have to spend more time.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, the one thing that we all have an equal amount of is time.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take up a big chunk of my time, I can't spend that time in another spot too.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had people ask me, can you do one-on-ones?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help me out with this project?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: I really need help.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I really want to, but I only have so much time.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I can either spend it on something that benefits lots of people or just you.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had to make that choice.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, there's there's things you have to think about when it comes to your income.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: If your income is always tied to I work more in order to get more, that's gonna, there's gonna be a cap at some point.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's a point where you just can't make any more income.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's even harder than that in the fact that you can't find the jobs to even give you that income.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So having something that generates revenue, an application that that sells, and that um you can put in front of people, and the sales page is always live, and the the shopping cart is always live, and they can check out whenever they want, that can be really powerful.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you do that?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get to that point?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a couple of steps.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, you have to have a product that provides or fills a need, that provides some kind of benefit that people want.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of makes sense, but you have to think that one through.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: So fill a need of your own.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, find something that really bothers you and take care of it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: But then you have to go a step further and you have to in some way put it in front of people.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: If people don't know about it, they won't buy it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have found things that I didn't know existed, and I'm like, oh, I could have used this six months ago, I could have used this a year ago, I could have used this five years ago, and I just didn't know it existed.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the difficult thing.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to do some work to get in front of people.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it is um, well, first of all, website, getting a great website together and having something to show off what your product is and why it's valuable.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you sell on an app store or some other third-party marketplace, you still need to have a website of your own that shows off very clearly what the product is and what the benefits are.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So very clear on what it does.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then you need to have some type of I hesitate to say the word advertising because it's gonna give you the wrong idea in your head, but advertising.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I make my living selling courses, that's pretty much my primary income.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've cut off all other revenue streams.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've cut off consulting, I've cut off my day job, I pretty much just have courses.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I get some money from YouTube ads, not a ton, but it's still a chunk.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I get ads, or I get money from Patreon.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you everyone for that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: But my the vast majority of my income comes from selling courses.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So with that comes the question of, well, how do I get in front of people?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't advertise by paying Facebook, Google, Bing.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't put billboards up on the side of the road.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do any of those traditional advertising revenue streams where you sink a lot of money in and hope you get a lot of money back.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, I provide a free service, I provide my YouTube channel, and that really powers the sales of my courses.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't at this point advertise anywhere.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've tried a couple of times, it's just not worth it at this point.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: So when you think of advertising, don't just go to I'm gonna pay Facebook to have Facebook ads.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: That might not be the best solution, even though it sounds great, it sounds targeted, it sounds ideal.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I had a person from Google reach out to me.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: They did a special promotional program for businesses of my size.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, we will give you an account manager that will manage your Google ads from Google, and they're gonna optimize your ads and make sure that they are the best possible, and they're gonna get you in front of more eyes, they're gonna show you how to really do ads well.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, sure, let's give that a shot.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: It did not go well, it did not go well at all.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I lost money.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I've tried Facebook ads and I've got those targeted audiences, like you know, look alike to my audience, people who are or like you who might need my products.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, it didn't work real well.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Work better, but not real well.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not always about paying people to get people in the door.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's a matter of providing a free service.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you provide a free version of your app that actually does something valuable.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um, if you provide, let's do a simple example, a to-do app.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe your to-do app does some really cool things with cloud syncing and be on every device.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I know to-do apps do this, but maybe yours is really cool that way.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what if you had a to-do app version, the light version, that um did half those things?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it didn't sync um to the cloud to multiple devices, but it just it backed up to the cloud just for that one device that you've got.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is something that is still valuable.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it may mean that some of your audience doesn't pay.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: It may mean that most of your audience doesn't pay.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if you get that in front of people, then there'll be some people that upgrade to the pro version.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'll probably be one of those.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the type of person where if I like the app, if the app provides value to me and I can see how I might use the paid upgrade, I will probably upgrade it just to support the person and get those extra potential benefits.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So do something like that and then give it away places.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to Reddit and give it away.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're giving something away for free, then you are providing a value that people feel comfortable sharing.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're just saying, share my revenue stream with people, like if you say, hey, buy my app, buy my app, share this a page about asking people to buy my app, that's not really something that I want to do.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if you say, hey, this app will do this, this, and this for free for you, I'm gonna probably share that.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if my friends need that, I'm gonna share that with them and say, hey, have you tried out this great-to-do app?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So get in front of people in a way that makes sense for your app.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: That I call that advertising, it's under the advertising umbrella, but it's not traditional advertising.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Don't spend money on it until you can make more money back than you're spending.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna need to advertise, and then you're going to need to continue to maintain.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So an app that never changes probably isn't going to survive forever.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I would encourage you to think through how I can better serve my audience with this app.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so continue to think about the upgrades, continue to think about the bug fixes and the feature additions or the tweaks to make things even better, whether it's make it faster, make it more streamlined, uh, make the processes more easy to understand, whatever it is, continue to innovate in your app.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Doing those things will allow you to have that passive income that's not work-free, but that does provide you with an income stream that isn't necessarily tied to your hours.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you upgrade that app, yes, that's taking you time, but the amount of money you can make off that is not necessarily proportional.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: You will make a lot more money.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if I put a course out, I will make money, first of all, right up front.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: This means people that are gonna buy it day one, but then there'll be people over the next three and four years that will buy that app or buy that course.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And by doing so, I continue to make money off of what I invested in originally.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the same thing is true with apps.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have that continual revenue stream, even if you're not upgrading.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: But upgrading provides that continual buzz around what's new and reminds people that your app is there and encourages them to share what cool new things are coming with your app.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I'd say to approach the passive income stream for your app.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just about doing no work, but it's about doing work smart.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the question.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a question, go to imtimcore.com.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a page there for the podcast where you can leave your questions there in a form, and I will hope to answer them on this channel.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So this is not only on YouTube, but it's also on the podcast player of your choice.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to check it out in both places.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening, and as always, I am Tim Corey.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCore.com and enroll in a course.