I’m sure by now everyone who has an iPhone 3G or 3GS will be on iOS4 (I hope the 2G and 3G folks don’t feel left behind). OS4 is really cool for users in many ways. Multitasking, home screen customization, camera zoom, new mail handling capabilities etc etc. So that’s for the users. What about developers? How is iOS4 going to help developers? As Steve Jobs had announced back in April, iAd is going to “revolutionize” the way that application developers will be making money from Apple. I will be first introducing my readers to what iAd is all about and then will follow up with a post on how to integrate iAd into your applications.

As I was looking at some of the Google Adsense ads on Malaysian Tech Blogger I came across this site called MyPhoneRiches. The ad promised $$$ by making iPhone apps easily and quickly. Out of curiosity I visited the website and what I read totally amused me. Being an iPhone application developer for more than a year I have actually come to learn that creating iPhone apps is not a piece of cake and it needs a lot of dedication and patience to learn it up.

Here is what the product promises:

Rake In Up To $27,249+ Per Day On

Complete Autopilot With An iPhone

App Business – Guaranteed!

What does this product comprise of actually?

After writing quite a few applications both for myself and my clients I started wondering about what really makes sense – free apps or paid apps? I mean its pretty straightforward when you think about paid applications, but why the heck would someone spend days or even weeks to create an app which is ultimately free for download? And why would a client be paying me big bucks to create one for him?

It’s been almost 3 weeks since I wrote a blog post on Malaysian Tech Blogger. Its not that I have been ignoring the blog, but recently I’ve been really busy setting up my own software solutions company – Inspiretech Solutions. The initial work has been done and I guess I can get back to blogging once again. The website is still work in progress though!

For those who are reading this blog for the first time, this post is a continuation of a three part series on How to become and iPhone app developer. In the previous post we saw how to sign up for an itunes connect account and also setting up the banking and tax information. This post will basically discuss what the next steps are.

This is the second part of a three part series of how to become an iPhone app developer. If you have not read the first part, you can read it here: How to become an iPhone app developer – Part One.

In part one, we saw how to setup an iphone developer account in the Apple website. Pretty easy stuff and you should have breezed through it if you know what you are doing. Now that you have your account setup, you should be able to login to the iPhone Dev Center. Once you have logged in, the first thing that you need to do is to download the SDK and install it on your Mac.

Google Adsense has recently introduced a nice new feature for adsense ads – expandable ads! Pretty nice feature to have as it is really non intrusive, but its really going to be something to look forward to for a while for us Malaysian bloggers since it is available only for North American and European publishers. Isn’t it weird that Google actually makes it available for publishers based on their location rather than the reader’s location? Something wrong with the marketing team perhaps.

What are these expandable ads?

Here’s what Google has to say:

Expandable ads will be served as third-party ads and will be created by Google-certified rich media vendors for the top display advertisers in our network. And like other Google ads, you’ll earn based on whether the expandable ads on your site are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis. Keep in mind that you’ll generate earnings from CPC expandable ads when a user visits the advertiser’s landing page, and not when a user simply clicks to expand the ad.

This is the first part of a three part series on the steps to take to become an iPhone app developer. My brother and I have written 21 apps in the app store and they seem to be doing quite well at the moment. If you are able to nail the right idea you could be on your way to make some big bucks considering the customer base for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is especially enticing for us Malaysians considering the fact that you get paid in USD.

I’d really like to think that we’re somewhere near the bottom of this awful recession but my peers seem to think otherwise. I’m always an optimist and this has helped me get through tough times in my career and personal life too. So as I thought about what I intend to do to ride this freak wave of economic uncertainty, here are some things which came to mind: