How A Magic App Made $20,000 Daily

I want to dedicate today's story to all the magicians who complain about the cost of $30 magic apps, comparing them to $2.99 non-magic apps, and neglecting the fact that these magic developers are following their passion and making apps for magicians when they could be doing so of the much much bigger broader market.

With a simple method and a viral visual, the magician in today's story was able to generate $20,000 per day (that's right, 20k per day) with a magic-themed app for the broader market that targeted the broader market – and the number one best selling app was only $2.99.

In today's edition of the newsletter, we'll take a deep dive into his story, why so many magicians find their fortune by stepping beyond magic, and why magicians as a community need to work to find a way to reward and incentivise creators to developed new magic tricks and actually stick around long-term.

Back in 2008, Apple launched their App Store and 500 apps made to show off the iPhone's tech was born. One app found a virality like none of the rest – in fact, I'm almost sure that if you were around during the late naughties, you probably watched someone pretend to drink out of their phone at least five times.

In the year running up to the App Store launch, the team at Apple began scouting and reaching out to developers they believed could build the best early iPhone apps. They were looking for creative but straightforward ways to show off what the iPhone can do.

One of the people they contacted was a 37-year-old magician named Steve Sheraton. Apple had seen a viral YouTube video Steve made, in which he made it look like an iPhone was a drinkable glass of beer. He tipped the liquid back and forth on the phone screen before tilting his head back and appearing to drink it.

Even though this earlier version of the trick involved technology, it would likely still fall under the umbrella of methods consultants refer to as "analogue"; the method is analogue in that it reliably happens the same way every time, like an analogue ticking clock.

Stene originally built the method into an app for the Palm Pilot, and all it was was a simple pre-recorded video with which the performers had to time their actions. Long before touch screen was a thing, magicians would use the same method to make it look like they could interpret and pull stuff from screens, timing their moves with a well-prepared video.

The original video would play in full-screen view on a Palm Pilot, filling the phone with the visual of a liquid beer. Then, if you timed your actions correctly, alongside the pre-recorded video, you could make it look like you were drinking from the glass.

Ten years later, when the iPhone was released, there was no approved way to build apps for it, but Steve decided to shoot and upload a video of him drinking a beer from his iPhone.

He said this in an interview with Mel.

Steve began selling the beer-drinking video file for $2.99. People still had to download it and add it to their phone via iTunes on their computer while it was plugged in. But he says that he made around $2,000 per day for the longest time just by sending people this video.

When Apple got around to working on an App Store, they thought it might be possible for Steve to build the concept into an easily downloadable app. The new method could use the accelerometer, which is the unique thing inside the iPhone that senses any tilting motion.

The app would be called iBeer, and Steve set about creating the needed assets. Instead of trying to animate or fake it, he decided he needed to create looped videos and image sequences, to make it look as realistic as possible.

The logic behind the app was pretty simple. It would display a looping video of the liquid, which would tilt back and forth based on how you tilted your phone. Then, if the tilt went beyond a certain amount, the video would switch between different loops to make it look as though it was emptying.

The app was a huge hit. It was the number one paid app on day one and stayed there for about a year at the same $2.99 price point.

During the early period, the app was generating $10,000 to $20,000 a day.

What did magician Steve Sheraton do with the money? He spent it pretty dam fast, saying that he'd rent exclusive spots for $6,000 a month and buy expensive items from antique stores to fill the house with.

Somewhat ironically, given the theme of the app, Steve admits that he also had a problem with alcohol during this period of his life, which exacerbated things.

And then, Coors Beer developed an almost identical app called iPint. Goddamit, Coors. Steve's company sued them for $12.5 million, and the case was eventually settled confidentially.

If you're wondering what happened to all the silly little apps we had on the app store back in those days – well, most of them got replaced in the charts the following decade by apps like Facebook.

Fruit Ninja stuck around for a while, though – let's hope that app was animated and not filmed in a developer's living room, too.

Steve now lives on a farm in Spain, and while he decided to stop performing magic professionally, he continues to create and build new projects for magicians. One of his magic apps, called Replica4D, has received great praise from magic reviewers like David Penn and Steve Faulkner.

Oh, and Steve hasn't had a drink since 2019 (it says so on his website).

What does this all mean for magic? Well, I think it speaks to a few things. It echoes what we've been saying for years about how for magic creators, the money can be found outside of magic. Take theory11, becoming a gifting company for Disney and Harry Potter fans, or Dan & Dave switching to high-end puzzles.

The magician market is small.

It always amazes me when I see magicians spending a year of their lives developing a product and shovelling their savings into it in the hope that they'll only sell 300-1,000 units to magicians and get countless abusive messages from magicians.

The same effort put into a product outside of magic, like a game, gadget or gizmo, could yield millions of units.

I only fully understood this when I Kickstarted a trivia game which is now available on Amazon. I sold four games today as I write this, and no one has sent me an abusive message about it or doxed me on a forum for it.

There's even one typo in the game, and I've decided the next reprint needs more questions in it. Can you imagine what would happen if Vanishing Inc. had a typo in their book and decided to add some extra pages to a reprint? People put the same level of work into books like the ones they produce and sell 100,000+ units.

So, anyway. I think my takeaways from this are that we should probably be a lot more grateful to the magic creators who put crazy hours and money into their products (provided the product actually works as advertised). Almost all magic producers are in it because they care and not for the money.

And if it is for the money, eventually, they'll realise the bigger picture and leave the industry like so many before them.

I think the second conversation starter is how we encourage more creators to produce incredible magic products. Currently, the only winning business model is to sell low-risk magic tricks made of paper for $34.99 (it's either that or a low-risk control+p magic book).

I do believe we're seeing a drop in the level of creative output in our industry and that magic creators are not investing in their ideas as much as they have done in the past. With it harder and harder to monetise magic and with magicians seeming to become worse and worse customers – the good people are leaving.

Don't get me wrong, for the most part, I believe the magic industry needs a big shake-up. We do need to exit this weird economy of secrets. Customers should be buying well-produced courses with expert teachings, or they should be buying well-made props.

I don't believe the bullshit people used to spout about buying secrets. The only reason you don't want people to know the secret of your product is because it is, in fact, not a product at all.

However, the insane levels of piracy and rip-offs in our industry will keep the level of secrecy in magic products very high. People get into this industry because they want to know how a trick is done, to the point that they jump through a bunch of hoops to learn it – some of those people are lovely, but if that's the way we qualify our community members, well – its no wonder so many of them pirates and rip off each other. With wholesalers not keeping people in check, and a vast number of magic buyers happy to buy a rip-off whenever it's cheaper – magic companies have a financial incentive to keep their products very secretive.

The only obvious answer is to buy direct as much as possible and put money into the hands of the original production company or creator.

But then again, maybe there's already enough magic. There's a trick with almost every object imaginable on the market. Ten years ago, most discussions when I was working on TV shows were all about original methods and brand-new ideas. Now, people seem much less interested in what's new – perhaps because the internet rewards quantity now much more than quality.

Oh, by the way – if you feel like adding thousands of followers to your TikTok next month, try this for me. Shoot 30 videos of you performing the same short visual magic trick in different locations. Then upload each one at the same time every day for 30 days. The reason comedians who do crowd work are seeing the biggest career boosts of their lifetime is because they're able to upload a high quantity of videos that look and feel almost identical every single day.

Feed that algorithm, baby.

I'm happy for Steve, not only because he's sober, but because he brought joy to millions of people, including me, with my first iPhone, showing my grandparents the novelty of me drinking my first digital beer. It was a net positive for magic.

Thanks for reading what became a quite winding and swerving post about all sorts of things that are on my mind about the magic industry at the moment. I try more and more to look at the big stories that matter to how magic is perceived by the world, but the truth is, so much about magic is set by the tiny magic market ecosystem.

This silly little magic app for the winder market did impact the way magic was perceived globally, and it also says a lot about our community – especially the ones who get upset when magicians share free magic tutorials but also get upset when magic producers want to charge money to keep the product within the community.