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by duanem 2434 days ago
I develop Flowx [https://www.flowx.io], an Android weather app. It makes around $2,500 USD/month with about $500/month in costs excluding my time. It covers about 60% of my total costs including my time which is 40+ hours a week. I cover my remaining costs through contract work. This might not seem like a success but the business allowed us to move to the Rarotonga, Cook Islands from Auckland, New Zealand. Lifestyle-wise and building-a-business-wise, I think it's a success.
2 comments
duanem 2434 days ago
Just an added note. I started Flowx as a side-project in 2012. In 2016, we moved to Rarotonga and we decided then to try to grow it into a business. It was making ~$100/month at that stage. Since then, it has grown it to $2500/month through added pro features and a better subscription prices.
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zenlibs 2434 days ago
Congrats - this is certainly a success, especially for monetizing in a heavily crowded space with many free alternatives available.

Can you share a few pointers on competing in a crowded market.

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duanem 2434 days ago
The app space in general might be crowded but the weather market for the Flowx type of app is not so crowded. Windy (and Ventusky) is our closest competitor. Windy initially targeted extreme sports but now seems to target the larger extreme weather (hurricanes) notification and warning market, i.e., high-volume. I believe there is enough room for Flowx alongside Windy, etc... by targeting a niche market that require more in-depth and technical weather data, e.g. farmers.

Technically, Windy is based on the code from https://earth.nullschool.net which limits them to that code-base. Flowx is written from scratch and is different by design. This means I can do different things, e.g., the smooth swiping. So I think I can compete with different techniques.

As an engineer, I am guilty of focusing on features and the product over marketing. So my marketing is lacking. Though, I'm looking into writing about my experiences with the weather app.

In summary, I think there is enough room in the advanced weather data market and can compete through niche markets and technical features.

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