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! :)
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
I don't know which Eastern Europe you live in - but $2,500 per month (even if he ends up paying 50% taxes on it) is considerably higher than average income in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Hungary.
And if we are talking about non-EU member like Ukraine, Russia, Belarus or Moldova $2,500/month puts you firmly into the ranks of the higher class (except maybe in Moscow).
It is my total income. I need to pay taxes from it. But when I get full time job I need to pay similar taxes so it is still over 2x more that I would make on day job.
I am always a fan of a safety net but in the case of kreci the upside of continuing his path surely beats dedicating his resources to a full-time day job.
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.
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?
Keep up the good work!
Plug: This is the sort of thing we'd like to see more of at the next indieconf! :)