A few months after the release of his first application, Mr Bavage is still waiting to break even. Part of the challenge is that his Cholesterol Coach lacks the conspicuous appeal of the many games and novelty apps that crowd iTunes most downloaded charts. His $2.49 health app allows iPhone users to keep track of their cholesterol levels and provides information and tools to manage the particular lifestyle factors that influence it.

But Mr Bavage anticipates a profitable future even for niche applications like his that are presented and marketed effectively, and he expects to turn a profit within four months. "I did an awful lot of research on it before I took this leap," he says. To help fund his new line of work he has a part-time job as a computer salesman, but one of his greatest challenges is preventing Cholesterol Coach from fading into obscurity. Although the application has already earned several thousands of dollars in revenue, Mr Bavage says a large proportion of that was made when it first listed and featured prominently among the new listings.

"A new application very quickly slips off the first page and the big question is what happens after that. Continued visibility is very hard to achieve unless you get hundreds, if not several thousands of downloads, which will make your application appear in top downloads list." His saviour has been Google's AdWords platform which allows him to target his application to a captive audience.

"With Google AdWords you can adjust the bid rate and spend as little as 1 cent. That is the reason why Google AdWords make sense. If an application is being sold for 99c you can't pay $1 per click through," he said. Others have tried more drastic methods to boost the profile of their wares, illustrated by a recent news report in Wired of an online advertisement that appeared to promise $US2 to anyone prepared to give its application a five-star rating. Another way to top the charts is to get a plug directly from an Apple executive, says Mr Bavage.

"One of the best things that can happen is someone at Apple sees and downloads the application and loves it. So if Steve Jobs had high cholesterol, it could provide enough revenue for the next few years to fund more ambitious projects. But for the majority of people that doesn't happen." Another popular strategy is to slash the price of an application a few weeks after its launch.

"There is constant downward price pressure and so many apps out there that launch at $5 are available a few weeks later at 99c. This is because a lot of people see a massive peak at the start when it launches, and then downloads drops off to about two per day. When you look at it from a monetisation perspective you have to be really careful with development costs." "Developers need to avoid throwing their application into the apps store and then leaving it. I managed to avoid a big drop off by been spending time and money on marketing," he says. To manage the hundreds of applications it receives each day, Apple communicates with developers like Mr Bavage via email, but in spite of this the road into iTunes was fairly smooth one, he says, with the initial approval of his application turned around in just a week.

The company undertakes its own user testing for new applications and accepted his work on the basis that he fixed a bug it identified in testing. More time consuming was the bureaucracy required to set up shop on iTunes which involved filling out US tax forms and signing off on various non disclosure agreements, he says.

He is also exploring the option of expanding Cholesterol Coach to other platforms such as the Android operating system developed by Google, but has found its development kit a little less comprehensive than Apple's. The cost of entry is also higher with Android. While there are only a few handsets to design for, there is likely to be a wide range coming to the market in coming months. "In theory a developer should buy and test his application on all of them and for a big developer this would be no problem," he says. In the meantime he is preparing to launch his second application for the iPhone. Called Sick of Smoking it offers support for iPhone users wanting to quit cigarettes.

Because he has a marketing background, Mr Bavage hires a software developer to code most his applications, but is also dabbling with application development. But he insists that his understanding of the creative side of the process will be more critical to his future success. "lt doesn't matter how good the programming is or even the marketing of the application. If the creative work isn't very strong it's just not going to do very well," he says.