I've been an Android developer for years now and I've had small little apps on the Google Play Store since late 2009. I started out with paid apps and then moved onto free ad supported apps. Now back then these apps were nice a little entry into the app world and while none were very successful, they did pay for a few dinners a month. I was happy but I wanted more so I started working on my first shot at a high quality app. Months later I published a paid version of that app as well as an ad supported version.
At first the results were disappointing but over the months the revenue started to trickle in, mainly from ad revenue. When I first started I was happy if I made $50 a month, ecstatic if I made close to $100. Now with my new app on the market for months, I was starting to make $200 - $400 a month. I was thrilled, my hobby was helping my broke college self survive through college. But again, I wanted more. So I set out to adding in app purchases to my game. With that my revenue jumped again, I crossed the $500 barrier.
But still even with this slight success I was somewhat disappointed. I had worked my a$$ off for months and the results were in my opinion not worth the time investment. I got lazy and I stopped working on apps altogether. I got a "real" job as an Android developer and I thought that I'd never truly reach financial freedom on my own. So I let my apps sit and collect revenue passively for months, content with the $400 - $600 each month.
Then randomly in August of last year, my ad revenue started to jump up again. Suddenly I was having days where I was making $30 from ad revenue and $10 - $20 from in app purchases! At first I thought this was just a temporary spike in users downloading and my demeanor towards indie app development was unchanged. But after a few months I noticed that the revenue had continued to increase slowly. That coupled with an email from my ad network provider stating that full screen ads where about to become available for my apps convinced me to give my indie app career another try.
I reworked all my 10 apps at the time to include full screen ads. Almost instantaneously after pushing the updates to my users, I started seeing revenue of over $1500 a month from ads alone! With my in app purchases, I was starting to see nearly $2000 a month! I was amazed. I realized that I had potentially found the road to financial freedom!
But I was missing a piece of the puzzle. My "high quality" app that was making me most of my money had taken months to develop. I realized I couldn't just rely on that one app, I needed more baskets for my eggs. But at the same time, there was no way I could make another app of that quality in the same amount of time now that I had a full time job. The solution came to me, app cloning!
I knew I had a well liked app on my hands, it was fairly well reviewed and consistently generated revenue. I also knew that the number of Android users out there was massive, literally less than .1% of all Android users had ever even heard of my apps! So I figured that I could simply re-skin my apps and target different keywords to reach a completely new and untapped market!
And that brings me to today. I've started cloning my popular applications, adding further monetization methods to them (more in app purchases, new advertising networks ), and also publishing my applications in third party Android app stores. All this combined has allowed me to see some months with over $2300 in ad revenue and hundreds from in app purchases!
I've decided to start journaling my progress to help keep myself motivated and just for fun as well. So going forward hopefully I will have additional reports document success on my road to $3000+ a month from Android apps. Currently I'm still averaging around $1600 from advertising and a few hundred from in app purchases per month.
My objectives to reach my goal are:
-Release all my apps on third party app stores ( I have a list of 13 other popular Android app stores )
-Continue cloning my most popular application until I have 50 versions of it on all stores. Currently I am at 14 clones which are averaging about $10 a day.
-Release additional clones of some of my other popular apps.
-Long term, I need to figure out what app I will either develop or purchase source code for next.
Thanks for reading, I'll hopefully have another entry in the near future!
At first the results were disappointing but over the months the revenue started to trickle in, mainly from ad revenue. When I first started I was happy if I made $50 a month, ecstatic if I made close to $100. Now with my new app on the market for months, I was starting to make $200 - $400 a month. I was thrilled, my hobby was helping my broke college self survive through college. But again, I wanted more. So I set out to adding in app purchases to my game. With that my revenue jumped again, I crossed the $500 barrier.
But still even with this slight success I was somewhat disappointed. I had worked my a$$ off for months and the results were in my opinion not worth the time investment. I got lazy and I stopped working on apps altogether. I got a "real" job as an Android developer and I thought that I'd never truly reach financial freedom on my own. So I let my apps sit and collect revenue passively for months, content with the $400 - $600 each month.
Then randomly in August of last year, my ad revenue started to jump up again. Suddenly I was having days where I was making $30 from ad revenue and $10 - $20 from in app purchases! At first I thought this was just a temporary spike in users downloading and my demeanor towards indie app development was unchanged. But after a few months I noticed that the revenue had continued to increase slowly. That coupled with an email from my ad network provider stating that full screen ads where about to become available for my apps convinced me to give my indie app career another try.
I reworked all my 10 apps at the time to include full screen ads. Almost instantaneously after pushing the updates to my users, I started seeing revenue of over $1500 a month from ads alone! With my in app purchases, I was starting to see nearly $2000 a month! I was amazed. I realized that I had potentially found the road to financial freedom!
But I was missing a piece of the puzzle. My "high quality" app that was making me most of my money had taken months to develop. I realized I couldn't just rely on that one app, I needed more baskets for my eggs. But at the same time, there was no way I could make another app of that quality in the same amount of time now that I had a full time job. The solution came to me, app cloning!
I knew I had a well liked app on my hands, it was fairly well reviewed and consistently generated revenue. I also knew that the number of Android users out there was massive, literally less than .1% of all Android users had ever even heard of my apps! So I figured that I could simply re-skin my apps and target different keywords to reach a completely new and untapped market!
And that brings me to today. I've started cloning my popular applications, adding further monetization methods to them (more in app purchases, new advertising networks ), and also publishing my applications in third party Android app stores. All this combined has allowed me to see some months with over $2300 in ad revenue and hundreds from in app purchases!
I've decided to start journaling my progress to help keep myself motivated and just for fun as well. So going forward hopefully I will have additional reports document success on my road to $3000+ a month from Android apps. Currently I'm still averaging around $1600 from advertising and a few hundred from in app purchases per month.
My objectives to reach my goal are:
-Release all my apps on third party app stores ( I have a list of 13 other popular Android app stores )
-Continue cloning my most popular application until I have 50 versions of it on all stores. Currently I am at 14 clones which are averaging about $10 a day.
-Release additional clones of some of my other popular apps.
-Long term, I need to figure out what app I will either develop or purchase source code for next.
Thanks for reading, I'll hopefully have another entry in the near future!
