Android business

In someways you could describe my little app I have created in android as a little mini business. Some might say a micro business, although based on earnings it would be more appropiate to call it a Femto business

I don't earn very much from it. My earnings equate to about the cost of a very cheap take out meal for my family.

From one view point this means I am running at a massive loss. That is if I billed my time at anything near to what get during my day job things would not look good for spiderflock.

On the other hand since January my earnings have steadily been growing a little bit each month. With time spiderflock could grow into something that generates a reasonable side income. Plus it is fun creating apps for android so time is not really billable in the way a job is.

To grow spiderflock two things are obvious.

More apps are needed. Yep I need to knuckle down and create some more applications. Gimmickry little apps are not worth the effort, the app I make have to be something that people want to use. I have experimented with little 4 hr apps as I call them and the ones I create have limited interest to people plus I am not sure I enjoy creating them that much. They serve a good purpose in that they helped me to learn about the android API's. Other people may have different experience with little apps they create but for me I am concluding that if the app is going to take less than a weeks work (40hrs) then I intend to skip it and do something else.

I may review this later in the year but for now I want to experiment in a different domain when it comes to quality.

The other obvious thing is while free apps with advertising works selling app for who want to avoid the ads is something that need exploring. The capitalist part of me does not want to leave money on the table and if I can provide something people want to pay for why not sell it. Obviously an app that generates more money will improve in quality compared with an app that is not popular so users do benefit.

It is loose change amounts and I don't want to come across as only being in it for the money but one of the reasons I started coding for android was to gain some experience in the more commercial side of development even if it is at a femto scale :)

I am fairly private when it comes to financial stuff so won't be divulging precise figures but equally I appreciate the as I talk about spiderflock in this blog having a rough idea of how I am doing is going to make the context of my discussion easier to follow. So I will divulge rough amounts by giving a roughtly comparative value of what I can by. So expect comments like this month we could afford to by a weeks worth of food for family or a slap up meal for them. Hopefully I wont have to report we had to share a single starbucks coffee this month!

Last month would have been a cheap meal our for the family...