Flightradar24: Wie zwei Luftfahrt-Enthusiasten den weltweiten Flugverfolgungsdienst bauten

Flightradar24 was not started as a product. The two founders were already running a Swedish flight price comparison service, and the flight tracking page was built as a search engine optimisation project to pull links back to that service. It outgrew its parent, and in 2009 it was moved onto its own domain as a separate service.

“this was like an easier search engine optimization project to get more links to this price comparison service”

The first users found a plain webpage showing screenshots from the founders' first ADS-B receiver, published alongside the price comparison business they already ran. Nothing in the founder's account describes any promotion of that page.

“we put the screenshots from the SBS1 as the first receiver was called on a webpage”

The first money did not come from the website but from the Apple App Store. Flightradar24 shipped a paid iPhone and iPad app in 2010, and in August 2010 the founder account posted the numbers in public while defending the price to angry data feeders: about 2,600 downloads of the Pro app at roughly 3 euro net each, about 7,800 euro in total, against roughly 32,400 euro already spent on the app developer, two servers, twelve receiver setups and hosting. In the same thread he adds that Google AdSense on the site, which only became meaningful after the April 2010 ash cloud traffic, was by then covering the monthly bills.

“we have had about 2600 downloads of the PRO app. We get about 3 euro for every download”