The general question in all of these articles is: “Can an average guy become a successful iPhone developer?”. The answer depends on how you define success, and on that topic I can speak from my own experience.

If, to you, success means making a million bucks overnight you will most likely be unsuccessful. To me, success is defined as the return on my investment (both in time and money) on the project. In my previous article, I mentioned making somewhere around a hundred dollars a day on iLaugh. However, I didn’t mention how much I invested in the project.

The first version of iLaugh and its subsequent revisions took me very little time to create. I estimate that I invested between ten to twenty hours of my time to create iLaugh 1.0. At my asking rate of $100 per hour, that represents a $1,000 to $2,000 investment. The server running the first iteration of the iLaugh API cost me about $100 per month to maintain.

If you look at the numbers for iLaugh from previous months, I make over $3,000 monthly (for a total of over $8,000 so far). Thus, I consider it a success.

Many people, in response to my previous article, said that I too, was one of the lucky ones, albeit on a smaller scale. And while that may be true, considering the low quality of that first iteration of iLaugh, a more carefully crafted app would likely have done better.

I believe the potential for success is relative to the investment put into anything.

If you look at the familiar success stories, many of them involve reinvestment and good marketing. For instance, Tapulous hit the jackpot with their Tap Tap games. Being good friends with one of their employees, I know exactly how much work goes into their production.

Perhaps one of the most talked-about success stories is Trism. Its developer, Steve Demeter, made an insane $250,000 in just two months. What I believe is the key to Steve’s long-term success, is that instead of buying a fancy sports car, he reinvested his money into founding a sustainable business.

Part of reinvesting, and a facet of development often ignored, are things that a typical developer can’t do. Most importantly: design, copywriting and marketing. These are things that will most likely have to be outsourced. Developers are reluctant to do that, because it’s very costly, but in the end, ignoring it is going to cost them the popularity of their application.

I view iLaugh 1.x as a catalyst towards bigger and, hopefully, even more successful endeavors.

In fact, I have already put a big part of my (in comparison to the numbers above, quite mediocre) earnings into the second iteration of iLaugh. I’ve hired a bunch of people much more talented than I am in their respective fields, and iLaugh 2.0 is coming along really nicely. It will be entirely different and nearly incomparable to the first iteration. There are some very cool things coming.

So, responding to my initial question: “Can an average guy become a successful iPhone developer?”. Yes! An average developer can be successful in the App Store. But it takes hard work, a lot of time, money, and perseverance.

The new server is completely unmanaged, which means that I have no web control panel to manage things. But worry not, that’s actually a good thing, because it means I have no web control panel to complicate and fuck up things either.

But it meant I had to setup Apache manually, including the vhosts so that my domain get mapped to the correct content. The problem is I have north of ten domains, each with their own subdomains. I could do it the standard and documented way of adding a VirtualHost for each domain, or I can be clever and have it do the work for me.

My first idea was to go with mod_vhost_alias:

UseCanonicalName Off

LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon

VirtualDocumentRoot /home/kenneth/www/%0/public
VirtualScriptAlias /home/kenneth/www/%0/cgi-bin

This worked like magic, automatically translating the domain requested to the path. http://domain.com/* would translate to /home/kenneth/www/domain.com/public/*. But, www.domain.com would translate to a folder named www.domain.com. This meant one of two things: either I had to create dirty symlinks in my www folder, or anybody accessing my domain from the www. subdomain would get a 404 error, both of which are unacceptable.

Another option would be to change that code like such:

VirtualDocumentRoot /home/kenneth/www/%-2.0.%-1.0/public
VirtualScriptAlias /home/kenneth/www/%-2.0.%-1.0/cgi-bin

This works by taking the last two parts of a domain, but it has two big flaws. Firstly, it completely ignores any subdomains. Secondly, it doesn’t work with multiple-tld domains, such as .co.uk domains.

After a whole afternoon of trying different things, I came to the optimal solution, through URL rewriting.

With this solution, domains, whether they have www. or not, map to the same domain.tld folder, and subdomains also map to folders in the same root folder (www, in my case).

UseCanonicalName Off

<Directory /home>
Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGIAllowOverride All
</Directory>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/home/kenneth/www
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/icons/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/cgi-bin/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www\.)?(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /home/kenneth/www/%1/public/$1

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/home/kenneth/www
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cgi-bin/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www\.)?(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /home/kenneth/www/%1/cgi-bin/$1 [T=application/x-httpd-cgi]

To match these nifty-looking business cards, I today designed and launched a new personal “hub” site to overcome the usability and the not-so-friendly look of the old one.

Going from this:

To this:

My blog shrinks the image, go visit the site, it look much better in reality.

The last thing I wanted to show off is something I should’ve shown off a long time: my formal art portfolio.

Click on the (very modest) title page to view the rest.

I have read your recent article entitled How to Block the DiggBar in which you argue that the the DiggBar is fundamentally evil. You then go on to show how you go out of your way to block traffic coming from a shortened Digg URL.

I’m all for calling out jackassery on the internet and am an avid reader of your RSS feed, in which you usually do a pretty good job of that. In fact, Daring Fireball is, according to NetNewsWire the feed I give most attention to. However, this specific article perturbs me in a number of ways.

Firstly, regarding the topic of the DiggBar itself, I disagree with you in that the DiggBar is the possibly very best possible implementation of that specific feature. I’ll be the first to agree with you that framing the content is not an ideal solution, but I fail to see a better one.

The DiggBar may have its fair share of flaws. It may or may not attribute to Digg some of the search engine ‘juice’ that is rightfully the publisher’s. However, it is important to note that Digg has denied this claim, and I, for one, believe them until proven wrong. It is also important to note that if it weren’t for Digg, the publisher wouldn’t receive the search engine ‘juice’ — or the traffic for that matter — in the first place.

I personally think they have done a pretty good job using the available technologies. The fact is that the DiggBar is primarily a tool for Digg users, and that for that purpose it is a very useful and both well-designed and well-engineered tool.

The second thing that troubles me about your article is how you go out of your way block Digg traffic, and by sharing the know-how encourage others to do so too.

This will certainly not be of any benefit to the publishers. In fact, it will most likely destroy any chance of them becoming popular on Digg. While I agree with you that average Digg users are of incontestably lower average quality than your average reader, it is widely agreed that just like any publicity is good publicity, any traffic is good traffic.

One definitely does not lose anything by letting Digg users use the DiggBar on one’s site. Blocking the DiggBar will only have two effects: to turn free traffic to one’s site into no traffic at all; and to ruin the experience of Digg user’s who’d like to use one of the site’s most attractive features in conjunction with one’s site.

Lastly, I also have a gripe with the tone of your article. I find it to be misleading in that it gives your opinion — a negative portrayal of Digg — and passes it off as fact. Your description of the DiggBar, for example, does not actually fully describe the DiggBar, but rather enumerates several negative facts concerning it. This immediately gives the reader a fully negative view of the DiggBar that it perhaps doesn’t deserve.

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Ballenegger

GoDaddy is the corporate equivalent of a MOTHERFUCKING CUNT! No, Seriously!

And I totally mean that.

Today, they charged me close to $10 for the renewal of a domain I bought last year for one or two dollars for the purpose of setting up a site as a first of april prank.

Please note that I never agreed to renew the domain, and that with my usual registrar, I can drop domains just by letting them expire. Also, when I bought the domain with GoDaddy, I specifically used PayPal and chose the option to do a one-time payment, and not letting GoDaddy automatically charge me for anything, but it looks like that setting got ignored.

I already knew GoDaddy was evil, since they tried to upsell me tons of things when all I wanted to do was get a cheap domain, but now I know they actually steal people’s money.

First, it’s a great feature for the user. It’s a joy to just chose a beloved track, and instantly get plenty more of that awesomeness. I’ve been a great fan of Genius myself, and I use it all the time. It’s also great when picking out tracks for a DJ set.

But what probably goes unnoticed by the general public is the staggering amounts of money Apple will be able to make of this. They will own the data to what millions of people are listening to. They’ll have direct access to millions of people’s tastes, likes, dislikes. Many companies would kill for such data, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the labels were prepared to pay big for such statistics.

Additionally, Apple is using genius to sell more music on the iTunes Store through the sidebar. The iTunes Store is already the biggest music retailer in the US, but with Genius, it’ll only sell even more music to the people already buying music on the store.

And lastly, Apple could sell promotions for artists who want more exposure for their music. Since Apple controls what users are exposed to / listen to when they’re in Genius, they can now push an artist more often in their user’s Genius lists, and thus give the user the impression and the feeling of liking the music. They can thus manipulate the user’s tastes, and I’m willing to bet that many record labels would pay big money for that kind of exposure.

A recent post by Marco Arment captured my attention.

The argument has been done to death the first season, no need to go over it again. But there’s a few things so fundamentally wrong with his argument that I have to call him out on it.

It’s the usual Phill Ryu publicity stunt that will result in a bunch of blog attention, a few developers selling licenses at very steep discounts, and a token charitable donation to downplay the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Ryu will likely walk away with.

Firstly, having worked with and for MacHeist personally, I can tell you first hand that it isn’t just a one-man show. There’s a much bigger team of Directorate, Coders, Designers and more, as you can see on their about page. Phill Ryu is best known as the public face of MacHeist, because it is his role. But by no means is it his own personal cash crop.

Secondly, specific numbers aside, donating 25% percent of revenues to charity is certainly not a “token donation.” A quarter of any revenue is not to be taken lightly. Now, granted it might be a marketing tool, but don’t let that negate the fact that charity does end up with a pretty huge donation in the end. MacHeist donated $500,000 last year, and this year looks like it might be getting a full million.

a previous MacHeist offered developers about $5,000 per application for sales that eventually grossed over $300,000

Now, this is just plain false. This is unconfirmed data and is based merely on rumors. It might very well have been the case, but do not parade it as fact, and do keep in mind that at the time a $5000 flat offer for an unknown business model that could very well end up in a flop was a pretty serious risk to take. The MacHeist guys did in fact claim that the numbers were much higher. Either way, this argument has gone back and forth enough the first season.

But the part that really gets on my nerves is this:

Their developers can tell themselves that it’s a good deal and it’s worth eating the discount to gain exposure.

We — and I say that as a developer who participated in a previous MacHeist bundle — are old enough to tell what’s good for us. What we especially don’t need is outsiders telling us we’re being ripped off. We’re running a serious business, and trust me when I say that we do not take such decisions lightly. What’s worse is that the person giving this argument is not even a Mac developer, according to his blog.

What you need to understand is that MacHeist is a business. We developers also run businesses. The keyword here is business. We don’t take these decisions on emotional value. We take these decisions because we judge that they will be beneficial to our businesses. We have to consider many things: The price of supporting and distributing thousands of licenses; (Please note that not all MacHeist sales actually mean an extra user for the developer. Many customers buy the bundle just for a specific app.) The actual (flat or percentage) monetary revenue we make out of it; The exposure we gain; The image this gives off the app.

Additionally, I’d like to prove this by giving the example of Gus Mueller. In the first season, he was offered a deal, which he declined, because he perceived it as a bad business decision. On the other head, he accepted the deal this time around with Acorn, because this time his perception of the new deal was different.

I have one thing to ask you, and that is not to believe when people tell you the developers are being ripped off. Rather make the decision to purchase the bundle on whether it has enough value for you to justify $39.

It is well known among the art community that the best way to improve is practice, practice and practice some more. Second to that is reading tutorials.

I’ve been a paid subscriber of PSDTuts since the inception of its paid membership, about a year ago. They’re truly a great site, well designed and with (usually) quality tutorials.

Now, the sheer amount of content posted to the site can be a bit overwhelming, especially when I already struggle to keep up with my NetNewsWire non-read item count:

While it is relatively useful to read tutorials as it gets published, it is much more useful to actually get back to them once you’re trying to design something, and could actually apply the expertise from the tutorial into your own personal work. This is why you need a good bookmarking system.

My first system was simply to use Safari’s bookmarks. But that quickly got out of hand. The main problem is that the title of the tutorial gives you zero insight on what the actual result looks like.

I then set out to find a solution that would let me visualize the result. I searched and searched hopelessly, and settled on using Together to categorize not only tutorials but other art resources such as textures, layer styles and so on.

This worked alright, but very very slow. My disastrous internet connect is more to blame than Together for that, though. The one thing that I didn’t like was the lack of a good pre-visualization. I hoped to find a way to be able to visualize the result of the tutorial first. An useful feature would have been to be able to set a custom image as icon for the items.

This didn’t seem possible with anything I’d tried, so I stuck with this suboptimal setup for month, as the second-best solution.

When I first heard about LittleSnapper, I initially dismissed it. I later fall in love with it upon reading Sophia’s case study and realizing this could be the solution I had been seeking for so long. This was all before I had even downloaded the beta.

While it is mainly marketed as a screenshotting utility, it’s likely that LittleSnapper will become my bookmarking utility of choice. The breakthrough comes in the fact that I can use the DOM-screenshotting feature to make a picture of the result of the tutorial in just a click. LittleSnapper will store the URL in the metadata, ready to launch with a keyboard shortcut, thus giving me the bookmarking functionality I had been seeking.

In the interest of full disclosure, note that I do know Together’s developer and have received a free license.

I haven’t posed here in more than a month, because a month and a half ago I suddenly found myself without a computer. The local power utility company, Eskom, burnt my motherboard down. I have already posted about how much Eskom sucks in the past, so I will not elaborate on that.

So my Mac was broken, just when the 1 year warranty was over. I sent it in for repairs, at a local Apple Certified repairs place. They quoted me for nearly R10’000 (That’s about $1500). After a month of nothing being done, I decided to just buy a new Mac, instead of bothering repairing that one. I bought a new iMac 20” 2.66GHz, and switched the RAM and the Hard Disk from the old one. I am now back online, with a brand-new computer, and I shall be updating this blog more often now.

The real reason for this post, though, is to announce my new site. I have had this idea in mind for a long time, and I really needed a site that could serve as my identity hub. By that, I mean a page that links to my main profiles around the internet: This blog, my company site, my deviantArt profile, my Twitter account, my last.fm profile, and lastly my Facebook profile.

Introducing kenneth.ballenegger.com!

I have to say I’m pretty proud of this design.

Here’s a short video of the main design steps & decision that went into this site:

I’m hoping this will look slick and professional.

I’m aware it isn’t totally finished: it brings IE down to its knees, and some parts don’t look quite right in Opera. I will do my best to fix these issues ASAP. If this is the case for you, I suggest you upgrade to a more modern browser.

Feedback is welcome! Tune in in the comments to see how much they rock. My comments show up purple, while the rest are yellow. It also uses a speaking verb at random from a hardcoded list, because it’s cool!

And be sure to click on the photo that sticks out.
It’s free, good-looking self-promotion.

This was mostly designed by Ernest Liu. Check him out, he rocks!