There is a question of what constitutes a "small" app. For my purposes I'll assume small is - "can be made in a month @ half time". I know someone making a decent salary on about 8-10 of these types of apps. they vary in technical difficulty and a couple required coming out of pocket a small amount of money for rudimentary design work. But it's definitely doable.
Yeah, its definitely a weird calculation I know. Was just curious if an average "small" app makes anything at all or not...
My definition of small is even stricter than yours :) I'd say something that you'd be able to make in 2 weekends - like lottery/weather apps (of course both of these have been done to death - but in that general direction). I'm not expecting those to make anyone rich - just curious if something like that could make nothing, 10$ per month, 100$, etc...
Like just from appstore exposure and no marketing... but lets assume that all the apps would be decent looking and programmed to work nicely - just with a limited feature set... and maybe a mix of appstores if I develop them in something thats able to do cross-platform compiles...
I'd say that if you copied 10 common "small" - "utility" apps that have already been done to death and worked hard on moving them up in search rankings and whatnot you could make ~ 100$ a day.
Small games would be your best bet, though I have a feeling that the indie bubble is bursting. In saying that, ultra niche is the sure way to go for small projects.
It's super competitive, and small games (that are financially viable) probably take longer to make than you realize (Super Hexagon took more than half a year to make, I was play testing early versions of it).
Yeah totaly, I'm working on a game right now that has been in development for 8 over years! But again, some amazing stuff is built at game jams though most need at least a month or so of polishing.
