The coolest part of this post, IMO, is that by finding that niche you freed yourself up to work on whatever you want to work on. Legitimate residual income.
Thanks, and yes and no. When I realized I'd found a decent sized niche I had to make a decision: do I let it sit and coast/build something else, or do I invest more here?
I've decided with the latter, which will play out for at least the next year. Jury still out whether it was the right decision.
If you completely abandoned the project as it currently exists, do you think your income would drop off sharply?
In other words, how much of an ongoing effort is it to ensure your income stays high? Does search favor apps that are being updated constantly? Or is there any reason not to eventually just stop working on the app?
It wouldn't drop off. In fact there's many apps in the App Store that haven't been touched in years that continue to bring in money.
My thoughts are that I have so much to improve upon, and there's a lot of low hanging fruit left for me, so it's likely worth the additional investment.
I compared investing more time/money in this niche, vs in other unvalidated ideas I have and it made sense to stick with this for now.
