A Struggling Developer Who Made The Original iBeer App Earned $20,000 A Day At Its Peak
It was the biggest thing on the App Store long before TikTok and Instagram. The simple gimmick did nothing more than imitate a glass of lager, but now the creator of the app is revealing that this parlor trick ended up making him a fortune, and at the peak of its success was bringing in a jaw-dropping $20,000 a day.
The creator of iBeer, a struggling 37-year-old magician by the name of Steve Sheraton, recently sat down with Mel Magazine to reflect on the gag and the story behind its creation, as well as how it helped him achieve financial security.
Sheraton revealed that the faux beer actually predated the App store, initially showing up as a video where users had to time their actions to match the movement of the clip. He uploaded a video demonstrating the project on YouTube where it quickly amassed millions of views.
“I was dead broke, just trying to get by, living on a friend’s couch, and suddenly, the video was getting millions of views, which was a lot in 2007. People were begging me to get this thing on their phones, they didn’t even have a word for the app yet. It was just a little video file that people had to hardwire in and download via iTunes,” he says. “But I probably made around $2,000 a day for the longest time from that.”
Not too long after, Sheraton was approached by Apple, who was scouting for developers to create apps to show off the iPhone’s capabilities. So, he overhauled the project with a newly formed company called Hottrix and utilized the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer, which could track the motion of the phone. The result was a simple and realistic trick that could have only succeeded in the early days of the iPhone.
"The accelerometer is constantly measuring the phone's angle versus the horizon," he explained, "so by tethering the line between the liquid and the foam to the horizon, you can move your phone in any direction and it looks like it's filled with liquid."
Sheraton charged $2.99 for the gimmick and it was an instant success. The magician turned developer said that the app “shot to first place in the app store on the very first day,” he also revealed the app continued to be a success, staying on the top of the charts for almost a year.
Sheraton revealed that during the App’s peak, his team at Hottrix was pulling in $10,000 to $20,000 a day from downloads. Eventually, Sheraton says, the novelty wore off, and by 2010 the app had faded from the top of the App Store charts completely. Sheraton says he left the company for good after this, but not before making enough money to retire.
Source: Mel Magazine, 9to5 Mac
from TheRichest - Feed https://ift.tt/oe1ROsfIc
Post a Comment