The Advantage of Being a One-Person Team and Seizing Early Opportunities

David Smith is a full-time independent app developer. Since 2006, David has owned and operated a small company focusing on creating applications for the iPhone and Apple Watch.

David has built many successful apps over the years. His most recent app, Widgetsmith, went viral and hit #1 on the App Store. It has over 50 million downloads. David’s other successful apps include Watchsmith, Pedometer++, and Sleep++.

David also co-hosts a weekly podcast called Under the Radar, where he and his co-host Mario Arment discuss Apple-related topics.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to transition from a hobbyist to a full-time app developer
• Two big mistakes to avoid when starting out as an app developer
• How customers find new apps in 2021
• The biggest waste of time and money for an app developer

Links & Resources

• The LibriVox project
• Mirror app
• Launch Center Pro app

David Smith’s Links

• David’s Website
• Audiobooks app
• Widgetsmith app
• Watchsmith app
• Pedometer++ app
• Sleep++ app
• Under the Radar podcast
• David’s Twitter: @_DavidSmith
• iOS Version Stats

Follow Us:

David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnard

Jacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeiting

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Episode Transcript

David Smith: 00:00:00

I’ve launched, I think it’s 56 or 57 apps at this point, and all but about six of them have completely failed. 

I say that mostly because I’ve launched more failures probably than anyone in the App Store in some ways, and that’s the way that you can end up with success, I’ve just kept trying, and it got me that little baseline of income that it was like, okay, I’m not just wasting my time here.

David: 00:00:19

Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I’m your host, David Barnard, and with me as always Jacob Eiting. Hello Jacob.

Jacob: 00:00:43

Hi David Number one, How are you?

David: 00:00:46

I’m good. Our guest today, maybe number two, is David Smith, long time indie developer and podcaster. Starting with Audiobooks in 2009, David has built many successful apps over the years, including Widgetsmith. Pedometer. His most recent app, Widgetsmith went viral on TikTok, and hit number one in the App Store.

Welcome David.

David Smith: 00:01:10

Thank you, It’s great to be here.

David: 00:01:11

Yeah, it’s great to chat. We’ve chatted in person a few times, and bumped into each other at WWDC over the years. You’ve been doing this pretty much since the very beginning, right? Audiobooks came out in 2009, when did you actually start working on that?

David Smith: 00:01:27

So, It wasn’t even my first first app. I think my first app that never went anywhere, it was launched in 2008. So, I mean, I was within a couple of months of the App Store launching. So I’ve been doing it essentially as long as you could, and I think I started working on, oh yeah. Audiobooks, the end of 2008.

And it’s just kind of grown from there. So it’s about 13 years in the App Store.

David: 00:01:46

Like me and Jacob, actually, we both had apps...

Jacob: 00:01:50

In the on days of paid up front, and only 200 apps on the App Store, and all that. It is a good time. Were you a developer, like a Mac developer before that? Or how did you trip into iOS?

David Smith: 00:02:06

Sure. I was a web developer before I did this, and so, I mean, honestly, I started writing apps before I even actually owned an iPhone. I just, it seemed like a good opportunity and I wasn’t particularly happy where I was at work and it was just something that I thought would be interesting opportunity.

And I started learning and didn’t know what I was doing for a long time, but just kept at it. And so it’s just one of those things I got into mostly because it seemed like a good opportunity at the time. And so, you know, I just, eventually I initially was doing some web consulting as well as my iOS work.

And eventually they just, the web consulting disappeared and it became iOS full-time, and that’s sort of been the story for more than a, you know, like 10 years now probably.

Jacob: 00:02:47

Yeah, no, I was, Kind of similar, like I just saw it coming and it was like, Hmm, maybe I should. And I went and picked up the Macco OS, the the Hillegass book and learned Mac OS programming, like, yeah, because there wasn’t the iOS book, right. There was no iOS, it was iPhone iOS. But yeah, it was a different time, fewer apps way, smaller community.

So, yeah. Interesting decade.

David: 00:03:15

I do want to start by digging into the story of Audiobooks, and, I think one of the, one of the interesting things to me, because it happened to me as well, is how having this kind of foundation app that, that started in 2009, that did well enough. And, and I’m, I kind of jumping ahead here a little bit, but I, I think if I know your story correctly, Audiobooks is kind of what helped you make the leap to be full-time indie. And then once you become full-time indie, you started to have the time to experiment with all these other apps, and a similar thing with me, like I’ve had a couple of key apps over the years that kind of provided that like foundation of income that let me keep going.

And then, that allowed me to experiment with all these different apps, like launching a pro ended up coming out of, of already having income to be able to take this big bet. and then mirror came along where it was doing really well, and I was able to take other bets. And so it seems like that’s somewhat the story of Audiobooks.

So, so let’s, let’s dig into that. So it was 2008, you had had a failure and then you, you start working on Audiobooks in late 2008. what was the, what was the inspiration and, and, and, and how did how did you kick off that?

David Smith: 00:04:31

Audiobooks was an app that it’s essentially, it’s a, it’s a wrapper and a player for a free public domain Audiobooks. that was all it was, and it was essentially just coming into the market because. at the time, I mean, there were there, wasn’t an easy way to listen to any Audiobooks, on the iPhone at that point.

An...