[Need Advice] Earning with apps, uploading somewhere else rather than playstore

Hello people. I have been looking for years how to make money online, since that is one of my dreams. I have been around for 5 years in this search, and I still hope that I will achieve it. The fact is that recently I came across a post on how to make money making applications, and I am very interested. I started looking for programs to use and what-other, and I'm already learning with tutorials. But I have a small problem: I do not have a developer account to upload my app in the playstore. I do not have any money, not even the minimum to upload the application (which is 20 dollars) and just I searched if I could upload the apk somewhere for free, and I found that I could. Now is where I have a question: Can I keep making money on another page other than playstore? that is, upload my apk to another page, advertise it and when people download my app, could I still earn money? The app would be free, I would earn with advertising. Does that affect if I don't upload it in the playstore? Or not? Eventually, if I do well, obviously I would pay for the developer account in the playstore and IOS I just need to clear these doubts, if you all agree to read and answer.

Thank you for reading this and sorry for my English, since it is not my native language.