The archive · Small Business & Money · Marketing decision · 2008–2009
iShoot: a Sun engineer's self-taught tank game earns $600K in one month
Ethan Nicholas taught himself iPhone coding at night, shipped a $2.99 tank game, and a free Lite version funneled 320K buyers — $600K in a month.
iShoot (Ethan Nicholas)
What it had to solve
Ethan Nicholas was an engineer at Sun Microsystems in 2008, supporting a wife and a baby on one salary. Apple's App Store was seven months old and already crowded, but it let one developer sell directly; he taught himself iPhone programming from websites at night because he could not afford the books.
How it works
In late 2008, Ethan Nicholas was an engineer at Sun Microsystems with a one-year-old son and a family budget that did not stretch. Apple's App Store, seven months old, had opened a channel where a lone developer could sell software directly — so Nicholas taught himself iPhone programming from websites at night, holding his baby in one arm and coding with the other.
He built iShoot, a tank artillery game, and launched it in October 2008. Sales were slow until he added a free version, iShoot Lite, that carried an ad for the $2.99 full game. Free users downloaded it 2.4 million times, and 320,000 of them bought the upgrade.
The paid game soared to No. 1 in the App Store and stayed there for 26 days. In a single month it grossed about $600,000 — $37,000 on the best day — and Nicholas quit Sun Microsystems the day it topped the chart.
Wired reported the story in February 2009 as proof that the App Store gold rush was still on for independent developers, and by March Nicholas said iShoot had passed $800,000 — a figure most software developers of the era measured in years, not months.
Why it lands
- The free Lite version turned Apple's distribution engine into free advertising — 2.4 million downloads cost him nothing but code.
- Upgrade ads inside the free app reached users at the moment of maximum engagement, converting a small share into 320,000 paid sales.
- A simple one-screen game fit the self-taught, one-man production constraint, letting him ship in weeks instead of years.
- Releasing during the App Store's early gold rush meant top-of-chart visibility snowballed without any PR budget — No. 1 for 26 days kept the downloads compounding.
What it did
iShoot grossed about $600,000 in a single month — $37,000 on its best day — and Nicholas quit Sun the day it topped the chart; by March he told Wired he had passed $800,000.
What you can take
When you cannot afford paid marketing, make the product itself the funnel: a free version that carries the sales pitch can turn millions of downloads into paying customers.
Since then
Nicholas told Wired he expected to be a millionaire by the end of 2009 — 'if it weren't for taxes I would be a millionaire right now' — and by March he said iShoot had passed $800,000. The store kept filling up, but the story's place in the indie canon was set: Wired cited iShoot alongside Steve Demeter's Trism as proof the App Store gold rush was still on, and the free-version-funnel playbook became standard practice for mobile game launches.
Sources
- Coder's Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone Gold Rush Is Still On
- Self-taught coder takes $660K in one month with iPhone game
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