App income - Spend, Raise or Invest?

Hey guys. Just wondering what you’re doing with the money you make from apps. I’m still not sure what is the best way to go with the remaining money(if any) after you pay your bills, food and other standard expenses.

Spending - buying a car, clothes and stuff like that. Not sure if it’s the best way, but it’s not a very bad either, because you get at least some goods from it + pleasure :slight_smile: I’m currently allocating 10% of my earnings just for travel with my gf and hopefully this summer to go into some mini-trip)

Raising - this is what I’m currently doing, but still not sure what for exactly)) I want to exchange my car for a better one, but not sure if there will be any benefit(except the psychological) from this expense.

Investing - well this is the part I’m bad at. I’m very stingy when it comes to invest back some money from what I’ve earned. Even if I know that there will be a 70-80% success rate if I invest in a new developer account + new apps, I’m still afraid of this 20-30% of possible failure. Also one of my wishes regarding Android business is to have a great game of my own. I can’t create it myself but I think I can afford to hire a developer+designer to make it. But again, I’m afraid to get scammed, I’m afraid of getting my game reskined and published by my own developer :smiley: and I’m also afraid of a possible failure that my game might not get as popular and at least earn my money back(although I have some nice ideas regarding the game).

So please let me know your thoughts, experience and advices. We all might learn something new from this :slight_smile:

Are you at a stage that you can set some money aside? Or like me still struggeling earning money with the apps…

Currently I can afford to set some money aside. But with all the bans and changes lately I’m kinda preparing for something fast and painful :smiley: That’s why I wanted to know people’s advices and thoughts.

Save. I’m aiming for 50k. For a base. Then spent what ever is over that. That is 2 years for me at a comfortable budget. Maybe you can do a year

Save, always save. In my opinion, the best thing money can buy is tranquility . And all the money you can afford to spend, spend it travelling, having adventures, never on cars or clothes…

Exactly, I see it as though. Once you have the money. You can buy what ever car or clothes you need. You will realize, you really don’t need it. It doesn’t change anything. Knowing you have the option to anytime is great tho.

Thanks guys for your thoughts and ideas. I agree with you, although and I’m a big fan of cars, traveling is way better. Nobody can stole from you the memories of a nice trip(or crash them as you can do with a car :smiley: ).

I’m still more between Saving vs Investing. I’ve never done yet any serious investments(expenses-yes, investments-no) because I’m afraid of risks and commitments :smiley:

To not do too much offtopic: do you think it’s something real to find a good game developer that will be able to create a nice game(based on my ideas) and not being robed by him?)) Because when working with freelancers online, it’s really hard to monitor all their work, so you must trust them. Unfortunately in my country I could not find any available game developers, found only one who was charging x3 freelancer’s prices))

I know many of you are doing the apps by themselves, is anyone here who outsourced some big apps/games to freelancers and got success with it?

Thanks again, guys :slight_smile:

I bought 3 Cars already from Income 2012 Mazda 3, 2013 Scion FR-s and a 2013 Ford Mustang, also bought a ton of furniture to furnish a house, tons of dates eating out with the wife, bought tons of clothes, tons of video games. I was living the lavish life style until BAM!!! Google cut out notifications at the end of 2013 and all my earnings dropped because my account got suspended, Struggled and struggled for a few months, I had to sell most of my stuff including my 3 cars just to get by and pay my bills and rent.

New adnetworks came in and now pay per download of apps, now I am starting to make great money again and I am now starting to live a great life again, not $20k a month with notifications, but a nice 5-6k a month comfortable life again. Now I am saving up to buy a house so I don’t have to pay rent again.

I have earned about $250,000 since December of 2011.

I am now learning the value of money and buying expensive things don’t always make you happy.

My whole outlook is to avoid debt. I don’t want to owe anybody but myself a good time, so if something does happen. I can get a simple job to maintain without struggle.

Making new games,
You have to take the risk. No risk, no gain. Finding a good developer that’s cheap is almost impossible.
Out sourcing,
I spent over 3k making some games. Plus promoting.Takes a while to earn it back in my experience.
Anybody can see your game and copy it. Dev only is not the problem.

The best thing is to avoid investing in depreciating assets. Laptops, Games, Cars are depreciating assets whereas house/land is an appreciating asset.

I only try spending on things which are essential first. My target was 6K per month by march end but still hovering on 3k-4k range and downloads of apps are going day as they have become old. On top of that, few popular apps got banned. So I too second saving first so that I can quit my day job.

I’m always wondering "man, why I didn’t have all this knowledge 2-3 years ago? I could’ve been a millionaire(or half) now :smiley: " . And now I’m wondering what I’m gonna think 2-3 years from now and what’s the best way to go to not regret my actions)). But overall yeah, saving is one of the best ways.

Thanks again for your time and thoughts, this is really very important information for me to know :slight_smile:

Don’t be afraid to invest, it’s only money :slight_smile: I know from first hand experience, don’t invest in something you don’t understand 100%. I was fortunate enough to come about great amount of money, and invested carelessly into friends, family and other things. All was eventually lost after few years. I tried stock market but day trading is a job, and wasn’t for me, lost money there as well.

I bought my share of fancy toys, brand new s-class and british exotics but all of that devalued quicker than push notification revenue…

One area I invested in that kept me afloat was other smaller websites and online ideas. Made profit from almost everything I got into, so my advice to you is to invest into what you understand, no one will make money from what you’re good at making money from.

I will also never buy a house in cash like many people here dreaming of. Imagine if you had $250k, if you took a mortgage out for 30 years, you would pay $1500 a month (roughly). Now if you bought that house in cash you would effectively get rid of your $1500 monthly bill, but how many apps can you buy/build for $250k that might bring you $1500 a month? Maybe 10-20… Buy/develop apps and sit on difference of +10k per month

Borrow the money if its cheaper, and don’t be afraid of risk. Remember, we were all afraid when we made our first app.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, really appreciate it :slight_smile:

I will definitely consider investments with some bigger amounts($1-5k) for some better apps. The thing is I’m not a developer myself, all I have are my ideas for new apps and some marketing strategies(since at university this is my specialty). However, it’s my ideas that brought me the first “big” money from Android, I found a developer here in my city, gave him instructions on what exactly I want, paid him around $100-200 and now the monthly income is much more than the investment(and even my expectations :smiley: ). Now we’re working on new apps and splitting the profit(50/50). Although he has a day job in a office as an Android developer, what he earns with me in less than 10 days is more than his monthly salary and his day job)) The good thing here is that he’s very thankful to me for showing the other “side” of the Android market and how to make money with it :slight_smile:

Of course I’m aware that it’s Google who decides the lenght of our winning streak)) But I’m pretty sure there are plenty of good developers out there who work for $500-800 per month working 8-10 hours per day in an office, although they can earn much more by working alone or in small teams.

One of the investments I think of is to rent a office, buy 4 computers and find/hire 4 developers to work full time. For the hardware part I think $2000 is enough, but also I would like to have the money I’m gonna pay my workers for at least 6 months ahead(to give some time for my new apps to make some money). So if paying each of them $700(which is pretty good for our country) then it’s a $3000 expense per month * 6 months it’s $18k. So this business requires at least $20k to start and run for 6 months. And making $20k with 4 developers in 6 months is very achievable I think.

I just had the feeling that I need to write down this stuff :smiley:

Thanks again to everyone who shared something here :slight_smile:

ok $20K is one lump sum you need and just curious to know how much you earn monthly now?

Lately(few months) the revenue is around $5-7k per month.

You got the right idea. However don’t spread yourself too thin. One good developer is worth 5 not so good ones.

Instagram was built by only a few people before they sold it to Facebook. I think it was just 2 people actually.
Clash of clans has small teams too, no more than 5.

Every decent product is basically done by a core of 3-5 people, every body else is just “fillers” to run around, send emails, pay bills, write blog posts, deal with ad network relations, getting coffee and other crap around the office.

I work from home for the last few years, I never really needed an office. Now I have a handfull of good developers, and my challenge is coming up with work for them because they finish it before I have time to think of the next idea. LOL

Another positive thing about hiring good developers is that they have other developer friends, they are usually good as well.

If and when you need to expand your engineering team, you can make your developers “manage” their friends and that way create a great management atmosphere and everyone will be happy, it will always show in your final product :slight_smile:

Thanks for the input. How exactly do you monitor your developers? I always thought that the physical contact with your workers can bring better results, meanwhile the online hiring process can transform into a pain because you can’t really contact with them in the real world and it’s hard to squeeze maximum from their potential :smiley:

Do you interact with them just via the internet and how often?