Study: Most app developers earn less than $500 per month

Mobile app developers may spend their days toiling away on apps hoping to create the next blockbuster consumer app, but the reality is that many struggle to make money from their efforts. In fact, a new GigaOM Pro study reveals that more than half of the app developers they spoke to make less than $500 a month from their paid apps. And for developers that develop free apps that are funded through advertising, the picture is even grimmer. According to the study, those developers make less than $100 a month in ad revenue.

Not surprisingly, most of the participants in the study moonlight at mobile app development. In fact 75 percent of respondents said that they have another job or do app development only as a portion of their main job. 

However, for the rare developer who finds success, the payoff can be quite good. GigaOM Pro reports that about 5 percent of mobile app developers in the study make more than $20,000 per month. These developers tend work for big application development firms.

GigaOm Pro's study is similar to one released by Vision Mobile earlier this year. That study, which interviewed more than 1,500 developers in 83 countries, found that the average per-app revenue is in the range of $1,200 to $3,900, depending on the platform. Vision Mobile also noted that an app has about a 35 percent chance of generating only between $1 and $500, and most developers cannot rely on app development as their sole source of revenue.

For more:
- see this GigaOm article

Related Articles:
Vision Mobile: Average mobile app revenue is under $4K
VisionMobile: One-third of developers lose money on apps
Making money in mobile apps isn't easy: Majority of app developers are moonlighters
Can developers make money in Android Market?
Survey: Half of all mobile developers building apps for tablets