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Single App Nets $600K in Month

The gold rush continues in Apple's App Store

By Clay Dillow, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 13, 2009 10:42 AM CST

(Newser) – With more than 20,000 iPhone apps available, it seems inevitable that most would make peanuts. But Ethan Nicholas’ tank artillery game, iShoot, raked in $600,000 in one month——$37,000 on its best day—proving the gold rush is on in the App Store, Wired reports. The store provides a platform for selling and distributing software, allowing individual coders to match software giants in their reach, provided their products are good.

When Nicholas launched iShoot in October, business was slow. So he coded a demo version, iShoot Lite, that users could download for free. Nicholas advertised the full $3 version inside it, and within months 320,000 of the 2.4 million demo users had purchased the game, pushing it to the App Store’s No. 1 spot—where it stayed for 26 days. The game is still at No. 6.

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Apple customer uses an Apple iPhone at an Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008. Apple Inc.'s fiscal fourth-quarter report, expected after the market close Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

In this Oct. 19, 2007 file photo, a customer holds an Apple iPhone at the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., Friday, Oct. 19, 2007. Following the success of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, mobile phone manufacturers... (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)

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I'm not going to be a millionaire in the next month, but I'd be shocked if it didn't happen at the end of the year.
- Ethan Nicholas, creator of iShoot, an application for Apple handheld devices

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Single App Nets $600K in Month