Investing the money you Earn from Android.

So lets say you make a few (or a hundred) apps and lets assume you were very much successful with android, now you are earning more money than you could have imagined. It feels totally great, doesn’t it? Feels awesome! Feels like you are on top of this world. But everything that has a beginning has an end. There comes our problems. It won’t last forever. I see a lot of people earning very good amounts of money from application development, but most everyone is pretty young and aims for stuff like cars, which are liabilities rather than assets.
Don’t you think Investing your money somewhere would be a better idea than buying cars or expensive thing you don’t even need. Don’t think am an expert on all this stuff, I am just as much lost as everyone else here, maybe even more.
So I am starting this thread in the hope that we can come up with some ideas about our investment options. I don’t know about you guys but I don’t want to go for a job again.
I would rather sit in a peaceful place somewhere in the world and build a game, even if only 100 people play it in total. And please try to not deviate from the topic.
So the question is what do you need to do before you can finally retire.

I would pump the money back so as to earn more. I shall do the following with the earned money.

  1. Hire freelancers to write content for my website
  2. Hire freelancers to create videos for my youtube channel
  3. Hire freelancers for creating software/tools/libraries for windows/mac

Basically will start a virtual company without any deadlines as website/apps/games/videos/music don’t have those strict deadlines that we have in corporates.

I went straight into Android after leaving University and have never looked back. The revenue potential over a normal job has been mind-blowing, especially when you work your own hours etc etc.

  1. I’m about to get a great car, which is actually a worthwhile investment for me as I have a family etc and I’ve had enough of driving crappy old cars.
  2. Pay off student debts/upgrade some home contents/higher marketing.
  3. Build up enough savings to hopefully purchase a home outright and not have a mortgage.
  4. Anything after that will go into savings accounts for the future and guaranteed investment returns.

Your point about it having an end is very true. The key is to adapt in changes in the industry and even branch out to other industries that operate online. I’ve got two potential new avenues to pursue and I am working on getting them set up over time. I honestly think Android will be around for years to come though. Consumer technology can only develop at a limited rate due to civilian budgets, governmental development limitation rules etc.

i’m 21 years from Egypt 3rd year of Communication & electronics engineering i started to develop for android since last April the beginning was pretty hard cause i had no programming experience at all . i had no expectations to earn anything soon So i created few simple applications as start to learn and apply in these apps nowadays after 5 months of development these applications became so successful and currently i’m so close to reach my goal 3k per month which is too much here in my country about 21k L.E
so being developer is the best thing ever happened to me and i’m having fun doing it so much than anything i have ever experienced and i think that field is meant to me .
i got 1 year left in my college to graduate so if i could earn about 30k~40k during that year i will try to get a scholarship in mobile platform development field outside of Egypt. and probably then after few years of experience i might establish my own software company.

I’m 20 years old doing my Under Graduate in Computer Science (3rd year). I started developing apps from March 2013. I have 4 apps now that made $300 last month. First I am planning to publish all my apps to Apple App Store so I have to buy an iDevice, a MacBook and Apple Developer License ($99). Then I’ll use the revenue I gain from my apps(Android+iOS) to get better education and maybe start my own company? I have lots of things planned! It will be an exciting journey. :slight_smile:

I post about my journey on my blog: Mad Logic Dev | Journey of an Independent Game Developer for Android and iOS

nice to see so much enthusiasm from youth.

i started to publish my own apps to google play in 2011, just after graduated from the university. i got my first job and worked as a software engineer(android). the job helped me a lot to understand the things which you can’t learn in the university. things like managing good code, business discussions, project management etc. so even if you are earning a good money, it’s better to have some good working experience. after 2 years of working, 2 months ago i quit my job and started to work as a full time dev.
about the investments, as many of you i bought a good car. however i think it’s a good investment. also i have saved some money in a fixed deposit. last year i bought a mac book, ipad etc and started to learn iOS programming. next month im planing to publish my first app to the appstore. also im thinking about to start a virtual android development company and make some more money but my target is to make 10K stable revenue from current apps.

after i left from my job, i feel quite lazy. some times i waste my time by playing games and watching TV series. do you have the same feeling?

That’s the reason I am not quitting my job. Money is not everything, you need human interactions too to survive. Doesn’t your family members get sick of you sitting at home and working on laptop all day long.

Let’s be realistic…Apps will be around for the next 7-10 years. If you can’t become a millionaire in that time span…then I’m not sure

If you could work for someone for example for $3000 per month instead of free lancing for $10000, in my opinion the choice is easy : )

you are absolutely correct. im thinking to join to the University as a research assistant and get busy :slight_smile:

I quit job before even starting with Android because I hate 1) working for someone, 2) working for 8 hours a day, 3) sitting 8 hours a day in some office with dumb people, 4) getting up early. :slight_smile: It was a huge success. Right now I’m working 4 hours a day and am free as ever, started studying again, reactivated almost all of my hobbies and spend much more time with my family.

Lacking Google Payments, I went so far as to signup for Apple Developer - but have not done ANYTHING on the coding front yet.

What has been your experience with Apple - is it harder (with Objective C etc.) - and the usual code idiosyncracies (for example with Android sometimes to do something - not everything is that well documented - but you find out ideal way to do it through stackoverflow, or a workaround if there is a bug in that feature - is it the same with Apple - or is it better documented etc. or the forums/stackoverflow better at dealing with such bugs/features and workaround etc. ?).

I’m 20 years old. I quitted the school last year to focus android. And I’m studying to exam for computer engineering. I hope I can earn 1m$ + in 2013 to make better my life.

I love this forum, i feel like i belong to a family here. You helped me alot to get where I am today.
Just finished payments for my mortgage and preparing for daily job quitting. Next is a startup company like every other dev I assume.
Luv u guys :wink:

Yeah, actually atmosphere on this forum is really nice : )

Actually, I think I’m the youngest person here ^^ I’m starting school in one month but I really, really don’t want to - I’d rather continue making games on my own and I won’t probably have much time for that. However, I don’t have to pass this semester, right? : )

Great thread. Nice to see young developers all over the world with ambitions. I am still in campus, doing my masters in SE. I started making apps when i was in my final year doing bachelors. In the past three months, i have been investing purely on real estate. I have bought 3 maisonettes, 2 bungalows and an acre of land. All of them are under monthy rent and lease. I decided to invest in fixed assets due to good Returns on Investments several years down the line. Now, I am now motivated more than ever to even make more awesome apps, move to iOS development and also set up a company after i complete my masters. So, all the best to you guys and invest wisely. Awesome cars, phones and other stuffs are just short term. Think about the future.

This is my dream since year 2009 doing part time blogging + adsense but I failed to reach the target. It’s not easy to become full time self employ when you have a lot of commitment (cars, mortgage, parents) to support. However, that’s also train me to become better investor. I do invest in properties, forex and fixed deposit. Car is not consider as investment because it didn’t generate any income. If I have extra time and money, I will invest into iOS and Windows Phone while at the same time will top up my previous investment :slight_smile:

Apps are becoming the next software business that was big 10-20 years ago on Windows PCs. Its still not too late to get in today!

Apple have done some tweaks to the latest xcode versions so it’s not that hard like in earlier days. but when i started to learn it, i found many similarities with Android. unlike google, everything is well documented but i do search on google/stackoverflow to save time. also i found that developing UI is lot easier than Android.