When looking back on 2012, it was a pretty successful year for both myself, and Google. They released a hot new tablet, and their app store has done remarkably well. One of my personal successes was the open sourcing of all of my android apps and other software back in April. Now, at the end of 2012 I feel that in the spirit of open source software I should share all the metrics about my apps on the Play store. The bottom line is, things are going pretty well. Installs are on the rise, and I love sharing software with people.

You can view or download the embedded spreadsheet below. I’ve highlighted some interesting findings in the list directly below.

• My apps have been downloaded from the Play store a total of 223,872 times.
• My apps have (today) 27,508 active installs from the Play store.
• The average number of installs per app is 3k.
• The average active installs per app (today) is 410.
• During 2012 I received 10 total emails from users of my apps requesting bug fixes. I responded to every one.
• During 2012 I received 15 total emails for feature requests, I implemented 8 of them.
• Since becoming a Play store developer in May 2011, I have published 68 apps. I have pulled one app and had one app suspended due to DMCA request by Atari (custom pong.)
• All of my apps have crashed a total of 63 times. That’s less than one crash per year per app on average.
• The #1 most downloaded app is ‘Easy Cat Whistle‘ with 48K, followed by ‘Easy Pest Control‘ with 17k, and a three way tie with ‘Easy Side by Side‘, ‘Easy Graph Paper‘, and ‘Easy File Split and Join‘ each having about 10-11k.
• The app with the most active installs is ‘Easy Side by Side‘ with 3860, followed by ‘Easy Cat Whistle‘ with 3459 and ‘Easy Inventory‘ with 2629
• The average rating for one of my apps is 3.6 (out of 5). The average number of people who actually rate an app is ten.
• My one paid app (Super Whistle) took about two hours to complete and has been purchased 53 times, netting me ~40$
• I make about 50$ monthly on in-app advertising during the summer months, and 100$ during the winter months (this is not captured in this document, only through my bank statements). That’s about 2 times as much as I made from my monthly book sales in 2012, but only 1/150th of my monthly salary from working 9-5 jobs in 2012. Do note however, that most of these apps haven’t been updated since I initially published them in 2011, and advertising revenue continues to slowly rise. This slowly increases the return on those hours spent writing the apps initially.

As you can see, as an Android developer, I still get significantly more financial return from my time investment by working for an established organization. Not that money should generally be the driving force in your career, but for most of us it weighs in significantly. Mobile developers are the hot commodity right now, and companies can’t hire them fast enough or compensate them highly enough. It’s a volatile and exciting market that once again won’t be the same in a year. It likely won’t even resemble what it was a year ago. Those who know how to navigate the choppy waters of new technologies can, as usual, write their own checks. That said, it’s always good to have another revenue stream.

There’s also something incredibly satisfying about sharing software with people, especially when it is open sourced.

Download (XLS, 6KB)