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!

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.

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?

It gives me a lot of feedback and help from community and increases my revenue from other sources (ads).

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

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)

Reports of these kind give developers like us to continue working and at the same time analyze how in this very competitive market can sustain.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

How did you get in the amazon store? Any advice, I'm based in Germany, can anybody help me submit my apps top the amazon store?

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?

As usual comments welcome and strongly desired! =)

Out of curiosity, why is this your best day job? What things do you look for in a job? Do you enjoy the work, or is the goal to make a decent salary with as little work as possible?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Nice post. What country are you in?

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

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?

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.

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.

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

50%

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...

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.

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