In the past I used RealStudio and Xojo rather seldom just for a specific project.
But in the past days I’m getting more and more fun…and maybe one of my project will be featured in a blog entry (o;
Now my serious question:
Can people make ends meet with developing Xojo apps for customers?
Reason for asking:
I did some applications in the past, mainly web/database, for local internet providers and pharmacy industries like Novartis.
And as I am getting older and older and my current job doesn’t satisfy me (except the 95% home office) I am thinking about opening up new possibilities.
Another direction would be to sell my TIG welding stuff and complete my CNC plasma cutting machine, maybe driven by Xojo (o;
So what are your experiences from you?
Do people need customized applications?
Or in which field do you earn most working with Xojo?
At least 2/3 of my income over the past four years has come from writing and maintaining a suite of Xojo apps used on my client’s production lines. Some control hardware, some don’t. The ecosystem is essential to the operation and has become so complex that there’s quite a bit of job security there, especially as the client’s own IT team had never even heard of Xojo when I mentioned it to them last year.
When I do work for other clients (typically development of products using embedded microcontrollers), there’s almost always a Xojo app involved in some way - test/provisioning, configuration utility, etc.
I started to use Xojo in our company when I had to deal with embedded systems who all have a serial interface, either RS232 or UART.
So I did two years ago a simple app that queries the microcontroller and builds up the UI with all controls showing what can be configured.
Was used heavily for testing a new orbital welding gun to optimize voltage, current, motor speed and so on…
My idea is also to focus on electronics and embedded systems or building automation systems…as that is my background (besides vacuum tubes, forth, assembler and cisco/juniper configuration ;o).
I have a product for DJ’s I’ve been developing in Xojo for about a year now. It’s in final beta and the feedback has been universally positive. Once I get my payment situation figured out, I will be forming an LLC and selling it under a subscription model. I estimate if marketed properly it could attract between 1000-10000 subscribers at $19.99/mo. I also have future expansions planned for additional fees. Obviously there are going to be costs involved in marketing, updates, support and infrastructure, but that one product alone should be able to provide a living and then some.
Between that and the re-launch of my personal brand next year, I hope to draw attention to some of the other professional audio software I have developed (some in Xojo, some in other languages) and spur some sales on those too.
I do.
But it depends.
As Jeremie says, you can either find a niche/vertical market, make software , sell it or lease it for a high price.
or find an application that enough people will buy regularly at as lower price.
Just like ‘there is a book in everyone’, there is a way to make a living using any development tool. But you need to be able to identify a market, write the software, and monetise it effectively.
I was a Xojo consultant for over 20 years. In 2019, business was cratering so I started looking for a full-time job (not that being a consultant wasn’t more like 2 or 3 jobs by itself but you get my drift) and found one in March of 2020 (the week lockdowns started).
I don’t follow the consulting leads as much as I once did as I used to answer every single one of them. They don’t seem to be as prolific as they used to be so that might be an overall indication overall of the waning popularity of Xojo. Or, people looking at Xojo are finding developers in other ways. I honestly can’t say because I do zero consulting now.
I think if you can serve a niche with either consulting or apps you can make a decent living. I decided it wasn’t worth the constant worry/stress of getting work for next week/month/quarter/year and at one point we had 4 developers. Clients want everything as cheap as possible and expenses never went down (especially medical insurance). I had some competitors that seriously undervalued their services and again that put downward pressure on our rates.
I loved the flexibility of having my own business. Hated the stress and the hours. Loved the diversity of projects. Hated some of the clients. Loved some of the clients. Hated the cash flow uncertainty. Enjoyed promoting Xojo until I felt they jumped the shark and abandoned long-term developers.
FWIW, still using Xojo in my full-time gig though we are actively moving away from it. At one point our company had around a dozen developers using Xojo every day. Now we’re down to 3.
I’ve never once had a client ask in advance (or generally at any other time) what language(s) I’d be using. All they care about is that the stuff works. But that will vary depending on the business segment being served.
That’s fair. I advertised as a Xojo consultant so that’s how most people found us. Many people discovered Xojo, wanted to learn more so purchased our training Xojo videos, and a lot of those people became consulting clients after they realized that it’s a bit of work making a good cross-platform application. So the Xojo part was baked into my equation.
I’m not saying that my experience is indicative of the overall market. Just relating my experience.
We converted a number of our commercial apps that were written in Visual FoxPro to XOJO around 2014 and they have been very profitable. In my opinion, it’s not the development language that you use to create your app, it’s the benefit of the app to the general public. In our case, our apps are for the accounting professional and fortunately for us, they have been very well accepted.
XOJO was easy to migrate to because it allowed us to not just duplicate what we were offering but enhance it with new features. The only stumbling block we ran into was creating reports. We invested heavily in DynaPDF and have found it to meet our reporting needs.
if you have a potential client for your expert knowledge - then you can write software for them in whatever language you know how to write it - in case of Xojo it is a relatively easy task. I have seen many people who can program but their expert knowledge was programming itself - you will start earning money when you effectively combine knowledge outside of programming and programming itself into one.
Hello Mr, Fatte, I have XOJO for now a long time and tried ARGEN, and want to port my VFP 9 Apps written with VPM9 Enterprise or Visual Extend 18. It’s not about FoxPro , its about I want to have something like VPM9 or VisualExtend 18 for XOJO. Maybe u can give me some tips, so I can completely move to XOJO. Thx Rainer Greim
Not sure I even remember what Visual Extend 18 is. All our development with VFP was with free tables. Never did like their database container stuff. Made it too complicated to move data around. I did some modifications to a nutritional application (Nutriform) that was written in VFP and used the database container and it was a PIA.
One of the first things I did when moving to xojo was to create a Module (VFP calls the procedure files) that duplicated a lot of the functions that I used in VFP. For example, xojo doesn’t have a STRTRAN function or a SUBSTR function, so I created some methods that provided some of the same functionality that I had with VFP.
I ended up writing a database management application in XOJO that allowed me to maintain and update files structures used in our applications.
As I’ve stated the most difficult thing to over come is the generation of reports. Xojo is very weak in this area and we eventually turned to DynaPDF to generate our reports whether previewed, printed, or saved to PDF.
Monkey Bread Software has some of the most useful plugins that you will need to create very robust applications. The third party support for xojo is out there, you just have to look for it.
Have you created any simply applications yet? Have you switched to API2 or still learning API1? If you don’t understand that last question, just ignore it because you’re probably working with API2 if you just purchased it.
Start small and work your way to larger apps. I sort of focused on little utility apps till I felt comfortable with the language.
I’ve made ~100% of my income from Xojo (or its older versions) since 1999.
There was one year that I was not primarily working on development but I still did side hustles in Xojo.
There were a couple years where I was paid to do management work, but I still wrote for internal projects, which I think added to the value.
Now for the last 8 years I’ve been 100% Xojo with zero exceptions.
I do all my work in color quality control and analysis.
If you have an area of knowledge where you can write solutions that would have helped you when you were doing it, then the only problem is marketing.
Container vs free table : this also the way promtrix does it. Today you have cursor adapters generated by code or wizard to use remote dbs, because normally this stored and tied to the database containers.
Modules etc. Same was done for Servoy (to bring vip developers to servoy)
When I have started with VFP 3.0 as moving from FP 2.6 , one of the 1st things I did ,was having a framework, so I could concentrate on DB work.
Today my life is easier, as I work as a DevOps Manager and the part of a app ist to bring many things together in a ALM as requested by ASPICE and functional safety for ECUS.
And with a lot of things now are build in and with the extensions by Christian, Tim and many other one could do the same cool things and many things more : crossplatform even on M1.
Youre right, start simple, btw. my 1st thing was BASIC on a mainframe and then BASIC Compiler on a IBM PC with MSDOS.
One other bit of advice is that I made the mistake of writing a couple apps for the Apple app store. We sold a few copies but we soon realized that it is really hard to get attention in the app store. Most of our applications are accounting related and so didn’t fit into the scope of the app store. We still sell those applications, but we sell them directly and just advertise them on our website. If someone is looking for an application such as those, we’re easy to find.
For reference, I actually started programming in dBASE II, then moved to dBASE III, then to Foxbase+, then when Foxbase got purchased by Microsoft, we went to Visual Foxpro. I still believe that the only reason MS bought Foxbase+ was to incorporate many of its technologies into VFP and then take many of the technologies in VFP and move them into SQL Server. Once that was done, they dumped VFP because it was too good and perhaps kept some users from moving to SQL Server.
We still have a very large company that is running VFP applications that we wrote back in the 80’s and 90’s. Eventually, these will get migrated to xojo, but it will be a multi-year re-write.
You mentioned Servoy and I know one of the long-time MS VFP guys - Ken Levy - went to work for Servoy and tried get a lot of VFP developers to move to Servoy. Have you looked at Servoy, and if so, what did you think of it?
My sole income for the past 20 years has been software development. Most of it comes from client/server software that includes a Xojo console app. The rest is from an app made exclusive with Xojo.
As others have mentioned, making money will depend on what VC’s call product/market fit. If you find a good niche, nobody will care about the platform in which the app was built, only if it’s well designed, responsive and meets their needs.