Christian Selig may no longer be working on Apollo for Reddit, but he seems to be doing well. Since shutting down Apollo due to potential API pricing costs based on Reddit usage, Selig has poured his energy into Pixel Pals, a widget-focused app that takes advantage of many iOS features in surprising and charming ways. According to Selig, the app is also proving lucrative.
As an example of what Pixel Pals is capable of now, look no further than Language Pal, a language learning widget. which has just been released for free. With Language Pal, you can practice vocabulary in 10 different languages (including, interestingly, “Canadian”) through a guessing game widget right on your home screen.
Language Pal is just one of many widgets you can choose from. There are more traditional widgets like calendars, clocks, and battery percentages. You can take care of cute pixelated animals as part of a virtual pet game similar to a Tamagotchi. I’ve been impressed with the other games – you can play a full version of 2048 like a widget, although it is a bit finicky. And there are more widgets in the works too; Selig counts The edge hopes to launch a trivia widget (“Trivia Pal”) by October 27.
Pixel Pals is free and you don’t have to pay a cent to use the vast majority of what the app offers. However, there are a few ways Selig makes money from this, including an option to pay real money for virtual food for your pixel friends and a premium subscription ($1.99 per month or $14.99 per year) that gives you access to things like more pixels. animals.
Pixel Pals has been a huge success for Selig, and he says it was even before Apollo closed. “Pixel Pals does it strangely well,” says Selig The edge. “Even when Apollo was at its peak, Pixel Pals made up about 40 percent of my total income, and it’s only gone up from there now that I’ve had more time to focus on it.” He says he could see Pixel Pals approaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year, “which would definitely surpass Apollo.”
