treebetty llc

After feeling demoralized by wasting a year on my failed 'Mebop' series, I took a step back from development to rethink my next steps. The Kids App space had changed a lot and my sales had declined. Big names like Disney and Nickelodeon were making apps based on their characters. You can't compete with brands like Dora or Cars. I was wondering if perhaps it was time to get a job again. Then one day my husband asked me if I could make him an app to help him stop smoking. I said 'sure'. 6 months later, the DONE habit tracker was in the App Store.

After the success of my Peek-a-Zoo series and my Infant Zoo series, my next series was going to be an artful series full of color and classical music sound also for babies and toddlers. I spent close to a year on it making it perfect and it was met with a big flop with almost no sales.

After releasing my first app, Peek-a-Zoo in 2011, I reused the code and released 4 followup up apps to extend the series (Peek-a-Zoo Underwater, Peek-a-Zoo Train, Peek-a-Zoo Farm, Peek-a-Zoo: The Collection), many of which were feature by Apple in various categories. I also reused the code to create a similar series aimed at infants. When the App Store came out with 'Bundles' I created bundles for my different series.

At the end of 2014, I hit over $100K in revenue for the first time.

My goal when I started was to be able to quit my job and surf every day. After 2 years of side hustling, my apps finally made more than I was making in my job, so i quit. But not to surf every day, but to work on the apps even more. I had a feeling the best of what i could do was still yet to come.

I had a 6 month old baby and a part-time job as a graphic designer when I decided I wanted to make an iPhone app with the dream of one day quitting my job and being able to surf every day.

So, I bought a book on Amazon, taught myself Objective-C and illustration/animation, and then worked weekends and from 5 AM to 6 AM on weekdays for the next 18 months.

1.5 years after starting, II released my first app into the App Store. Peek-a-Zoo: Peekaboo at the Zoo.

It made about $20/day for the first year.