

Developer Income Report #16 - kreci
http://www.kreci.net/reports/developer-income-report-16/

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tmcneal
I love seeing these posts every month. They're great inspiration for
developers who might be thinking about going off on their own, and a reminder
that Rome wasn't built in a day.

Congratulations kreci on reaching your income goal!

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kreci
Thanks! It looks like a time for reaching another one... but still hard to
imagine making more... But as they say the sky is the limit... need to rethink
my future goals.

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ryandvm
I'm curious what kind of boost you see just from posting these Developer
Income Reports. Is this a Schrodinger's Income Report kind of thing where
posting about the experiment affects the outcome of the experiment?

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mkuhn
I think you mean Heisenberg. Schrodinger is the guy with the cats.

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jackowayed
Though that's not actually what Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says
either. It's really the observer effect
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)>

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steve-howard
This may be off-topic, but where do you draw inspiration for your apps? I am a
fairly decent programmer, would love to write some Android apps, but I'm sort
of at a loss when it comes to what kind of apps I would want to write. It
seems to be something you just have to draw out of thin air or get via
spontaneous inspiration. Usually I think about what kinds of problems I want
to solve, but there's almost always an app for that already!

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wx77
Kinda looks like he leaves that kind of question to be answered by his ebook
see here:

<http://www.kreci.net/android/make-money-on-android/>

<http://www.kreci.net/android/make-money-android/>

Which just goes to show he can do marketing on more than just android. I guess
I'll support it because I really like these income reports but I can't comment
on whether the ebook is any good.

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ja27
Congratulations on achieving your target.

Is there any chance of you getting apps into the Amazon store or are they only
allowing U.S. developers? I know techie bloggers aren't loving the Kindle
Fire, but I know a ton of normal people buying them. That's a lot of Android
tablets, none of which will ever see the main Android store.

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kreci
I have submitted my apps to Amazon Store. One of them is on top of rankings in
its category. Still it is just a little percent of downloads comparing to
Android Market.

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ja27
I know of almost a dozen Kindle Fires that parents are holding onto to give to
their kids at Christmas. I think the Amazon downloads will pick up quite a bit
in the next 3 months, especially for apps that could appeal to older kids. But
it'll be interesting to see how the Amazon numbers compare to the Android
Market.

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incosta
I understand why the author is not willing to share much specifics (such as
which free apps get him 4k+ a month in ad revenue) but he still at least could
get a number of installs published.

I am skeptical because I know for a fact that some people don't tell the
truth. We can only speculate about the reasons..maybe it's to generate more
traffic or interest towards the non-free products they offer. I know a fellow
(who used to publish a competing product to mine) who boasted online in an
article about making quarter million dollars a year after just being a year in
business. The same fellow just was trying to sell me his "quarter-million a
year business" domain name for 1K a few months before:) In this case, numbers
are much more moderate and believable, but still I am not taking this just at
the face value, unless there are some facts I can verify, or compare against.
The number of active users, for example, and in which countries (mostly) are
generating 4K+ /month in ads?

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kreci
As usual comments welcome and strongly desired! =)

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GFischer
Congratulations for reaching your goal ! . I've been following your series
since they started, and they give me hope for starting out on my own.

I'm stuck in a job I've grown to hate, and I've set my own goal to quit in
April (with a small economic cushion while I start my own freelancing career).

While I don't think I'll do any Android development, your posts give me some
insight on what you can do with effort.

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kreci
I have been in very similar situation. Hated my day job and boss. But as you
may see you can change it. There is a lot of money in online development. Not
only Android.

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soapdog
Dear Kreci,

Thanks for all the reports and the book. It is a great read and full of good
advises, I recomend it to anyone entering the mobile market.

I have a question for you. How do we go to redownload the book? I had a major
crash here and lost the PDF. Can I give you the PayPal ID for the transaction
and you will send it back to me?

I send you an email about this couple weeks ago as well.

Cheers and thanks for all the help Andre

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kreci
Hello. Please use my contact form and provide me your transaction id.

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ja27
Any idea why your iStockPhoto income dropped just for this period? It seems
like a fluke / outlier, not a long-term trend.

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kreci
I got less downloads than usual. Maybe because of xmass time (I do not have
xmass niche photos in my portfolio). Hope it is temporary.

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raheemm
Nice post. What country are you in?

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kreci
Poland. High taxes but income let me to pay all of them and make a comfortable
living.

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radicalbyte
Yet again an interesting post.

There's one thing I'd be interested in knowing: do you make more cash from
your toy apps (x-Ray/cracked-window) or from the more useful ones such as your
WordPress stats app?

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jyap
I think the cast majority of the income is from ad clicks on the toy/joke
apps. The demographic which downloads those apps is pretty big as are the
download numbers.

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startupcto
Being in the app business for more than 2 years, like any other business,
there's a cycle. It's a definite trend that mobile ad spending increases
towards the end of the year and so publishers will see higher CPM and more
impressions. Come January, that bump in ad revenue might reverse and newbie
developers could be in for a surprise drop in their ad revenue.

The key metric to measure is DAU, and checking that you are generating more
impressions from more active users.

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mksreddy
What kind of drop have you seen in past years? 10/25/50% ?

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startupcto
50%

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kreci
It looks that some moderators do not like me. This post was on the main page
and suddenly disappeared like many of my previous ones... Little not fair...
Thanks...

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michael_dorfman
It's at #12 now. The ranking algorithm is very sensitive to early votes, so a
few votes in the first hour or so can make a noticeable difference in where
the story ranks.

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kreci
Yay! It is really back! Strange things happens ;) Thank you to all voters!

