"Quit day job to become freelance iphone programmer?" I believe it is everybody's call, but i think one must be very cautious, specialy with the new Apple's condition in place now. If you have a day job, you should maybe keep it for a while and planning working during your spare time on your app and if it does become successfull then you could make it more "pro" and open a company en hire employees....to bring the sequel
Yeah, yeah, Art Director, that's it! Put down the knife! Actually she'll probably be relieved... it's a lot of extra pressure to have this work to do in the evenings after you get done with another job during the day!
Keep the day job Unless you have the world's greatest idea keep the day job. Even if you have the world's greatest idea as everyone has already pointed out. The app store is awash with apps and developers. It's just like the days of the dot com boom - people have seen other people getting rich and think that it will be easy. It's also the same old arguments - there's 20 million customers out there, I just need to sell to 1% of them to make a good living... You can make money on the app store - for example, if you get your app featured on the front page of one of the large stores (e.g. US, UK, Germany). If you're in that lucky position then customers come to you. I've posted my sales stats which shows just that - look at the UK before and after appearing in the "What we're playing" section. Even with that, there's no way I could live on the income that's generating, and it's also a temporary thing. If you're not in that position then you are just another app on the store amonst the other thousands of apps. It's incredibly hard to market an iPhone app - most people do not go out actively looking for apps, so things like google adwords are a waste of time. The majority of people don't spend their time browsing iphone web sites looking for the next big thing. They might occasionally catch a buzz about some great new game if they see it mentioned in the popular press... But most of them will ocassionally start the app store on their phones, look at the top 25 lists for anything that jumps out and maybe buy an app. Where there might be potential to quit your day job is to sell your services to everyone else who desperately want to make an iPhone app. There were good times to be had back in the dot com boom doing that (until it all went a bit tits up!).
The contract Be very careful about signing the contract with the restrictive clauses. Even though people act like you need to sign a contract to stay employed, in many cases this is not true. Even a very basic rent-an-attorney from your state can give you an idea of the options you have.
A contract is a two way thing Cross out the clauses that you don't want to agree to and initial them. Then sign the contract and tell them that you've deleted a couple of clauses that you weren't happy with. Put the ball back in their court.
