

Developer Income Report #5 (Gave up a day job) - kreci
http://www.kreci.net/reports/developer-income-report-5/

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mgkimsal
Congrats. Glad this is working out for you and that the income is better than
previous pay. I first saw $2k and was a bit disappointed, but didn't realize
you were in Poland, and that this was double your earlier money.

Keep up the good work!

Plug: This is the sort of thing we'd like to see more of at the next
indieconf! :)

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axod
Nice to see some success with advertising revenue.

It always seems like HN and several other places are heavily skewed towards
charging end users directly. But that's only one option open (And IMHO, it's
not quite as scalable and fun as advertising income). If you look at what
business models 'power' the web, it's still majority earning their revenue
through advertising.

Well done :)

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nhangen
Not quite as scalable as premium? I'd argue that premium is far more scalable
than free. Open? Maybe not, but scalable for sure.

As for fun, money is money. I'll take it in any form.

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axod
The number of people who want to pay directly for something is far smaller
than the number of people willing to view an advert. With advertising, you get
more visitors, you get more revenue. And the number of visitors available is
billions.

So with advertising, you can get 10x the traffic, and not need any more
resources. It's truly scalable. With a 'paid for' offering, you're more likely
to need to scale up customer support, handling charge backs payment issues
refunds etc etc.

My comment about 'fun' was more about the overhead and pain required in
managing premium payments. Cancelations, mess ups, people wanting refunds,
credit card issues, etc. That's not fun (IMHO).

I've always found making money from advertising ridiculously easy compared to
trying to charge people.

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kreci
As usual comments are welcome and very desired!

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T-zex
Why can't you have payed apps?

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kreci
Google policy do not accept developers from Poland (and some other countries)
to post paid applications on Android Market. I am allowed to post only free
apps...

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spot
why not just make a deal with someone in USA to post your Apps for you?

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kayoone
it seems to work out with advertising, as it is for more and more app
developers because you just get so much more installs without a pricetag on
it. Most devs dont have any marketing muscle, so free apps with advertising
often is a good approach.

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russell_h
Do you do any marketing/promotion at all, or just stick your Apps up on the
Market?

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kayoone
You do the best you can with the resources you have to promote your app, even
if its free, since that cant hurt. Even with free apps you still need a good
app and luck, its not that any free app will generate tons of ad revenue.

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trotsky
Thanks for a new update kreci - I love your attitude and always look forward
to your blog.

One question I have I haven't seen answered. Most would agree that some apps
are more ad friendly mediums than others. Since you're targeting ad income and
making a variety of applications, are you picking application types or making
design choices based on their ad potential? Any thoughts to share along those
lines about designing for ad revenue?

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ruslan
Did you pay your taxes already ? I wonder what would be your after-tax income
? Again, $2.5k is still very low even for Eastern Europe.

From my own experience, I strongly recommend NOT to quit your day job. Try to
run it at least for a year, then you will make a way better decision.

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jasiek
After-tax would be around $2k (the effective tax rate for the self employed is
19%). You can live very comfortably on this in Poland.

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petercooper
Or even in western Europe. My regular household expenses, mortgage, etc, are
around $2k and I live in the UK, have a kid, a mortgage, a gas-guzzling car,
give my wife housekeeping each week (she doesn't work), and we are more than
comfortable. I could even make some big cuts into that.

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ohashi
Nice to see you doing well. I am curious about the Freelancer income, does
that mean you referred yourself and are taking commissions on your own stuff?

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kreci
Nope. I can commission when someone I have refereed pay commissions to
freelancer portal.

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tocomment
What are his android apps? (I didn't notice them listed on his blog but I'm
operating from a first generation iPhone so I do miss a lot. )

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chc
He mentioned them in his last income report:
[http://www.kreci.net/reports/android-developer-income-
report...](http://www.kreci.net/reports/android-developer-income-report/)

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bemmu
Thanks Kreci, I've been refreshing your site in anticipation of this post =)

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iepaul
Great to see some one successfully generating income from advertising.

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alnayyir
Thanks for sharing this, it's extremely rare you see people willing to share
the nitty-gritty of their efforts in going independent as a programmer.

Cheers and good fortune!

