iOS What was your startup cost?

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$100 iPhone developer fee
$40 Cocoa Programming book by Aaron Hillegass
$60 Books on forming an LLC
$50 LLC filing
$30 Business checks
$50 Business cards (not necessary, but nice to have)
$40 iTunes gift certificates for promotion
$100 Google AdWords advertising
$230 iPod touch

$700 Total

I think that covers all the actual expenses. Costs are rounded up. I've owned Macs for a long time so I wouldn't count that. I already owned an iPhone as well, but I recently bought an iPod touch so I have a testing device I can "abuse" a bit more (deleting and restoring as necessary).

For me the "real" expense was the time it took to learn Objective-C/Cocoa and create my app. I started out taking my time, but once someone released a similar app I had to put my graphic design business on hold for about a month. The app easily paid for the work I missed out on, but it was a struggle to pay the bills for a couple of months while I waited for the money to come in.

The advertising money was basically experimenting, that's something I don't have a lot of experience with. I was paying more per click than my app actually costs, so I didn't want to spend too much on it (yet, anyway). I do plan on putting more into it at some point, but I wanted to improve my app more before I spent too much promoting it.

 

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Missing a lot of incidentals. Nobody is an expert in everything, the business side of things is where the expense comes in.

$1000 / yr - Accountant, to create your quarterly Fed and State taxes, among the other 10+ filings you have to create. The nice thing about having an accountant is that you can write off your startup costs against the income if you have existing assets (Desks, Furniture, Computers, etc.). I'm in NY, everything is expensive here. You may be able to get it cheaper.

Don't forget Unemployment / Disability Insurance if you pay yourself or have any employees.

$300 - $500 to create an LLC unless you buy the books and do the homework to do it yourself. I'm more comfortable having the lawyer do it, but you can actually apply using on-line web sites that manage it for you. This will protect you from losing your house / car / dog in the event you do happen to get into trouble.