Earn Money from Making Apps
Almost everyone owns at least 1 mobile phone. Each mobile phone has many software applications both created by the companies who made the mobile phone and those created by 3rd party software developers. They are more commonly known as “Apps” and they now number by the millions.
If you are interested in making money from apps then you can make mobile applications by yourself or pay someone to do the app for you. There are many app development companies that are financed by investors who share the profit of their app revenues. You can try for example AngelList as they both have job seeker and investor opportunities for not only making apps but other softwares.
The app industry is very competitive however and the chance of earning big or even living standards level earning are very slim. It is now a very mature industry with mainly the established and well funded companies thrive.
If you ever make money in making apps consider that both the Android and Apple stores take 30% off your earnings as their commission which further diminishes your earnings.
Android
You have to pay a one time fee of $35.00 to Google to register as a developer for their app store. This is cheaper than Apple which charges a yearly fee and has more expensive rates. Registering and uploading your app in the Android store is easy as compared to Apple but you have to be very careful in following their policies.
You will usually see the approval status of your app within days. Google took between 3 days to 1 week to either approve my app or inform me if they have problems approving my app.
Be aware that the Google frequently updates their app policies. Be sure to take action as soon as possible to comply once they informed you via e-mail to continue to make your app available in the Google store.
There are also other app stores for Android Apps such as the Samsung and Amazon app stores but they are nowhere the size of Google’s store. Check them out if you have the time and maybe you could get better profits using them. This is because you have lesser competition from other app creators.
Apple
You have to pay an annual fee of $100.00 to continue being a registered developer for the Apple Store. Take note that Apple by default will auto debit your account unless you turn off this option before the renewal date of your registration. This option can be found in the Apple developer website.
Registering and uploading your app in the Apple store is very difficult compared to the Android Store. Apple requires you to log in the Apple developer website to get “Certificates” for your Apps. This is done by Apple to secure your App from nasty people but the process is so tedious that it takes quite a while to be familiar with it.
Apple also manually reviews your app once you have uploaded it to Apple but this process can be very long especially to beginners. Apple gives limited documentation to this process and you would mostly have to depend on 3rd party sources like Apple forums and Youtube instruction videos to manoeuvre this process.
The process of uploading your app to Apple is also buggy. I needed to consult help forums on the internet just to be able to know what is going on during the uploading process and how to fix the uploading errors happening. You will experience that your uploading process will get stuck and you will wait for a long time and wonder what is happening.
While this is happening the Apple software you are using which is named Xcode will not display any system status or error notifications. This can be very frustrating that is why I am informing you this potential uploading problem to save you time and emotional distress. I am not anti-Apple. I am only sharing my experience between Google and Apple’s systems.
Conclusion
I would advise you to start creating apps for Google store first because of the ease of use of their system and low registration cost as compared to Apple store. There are those who would point out that Apple apps have higher payouts than Google apps. That may be true during the past but Google app developers have more opportunities now and are earning at par with Apple developers.