How realistic is it to make money by putting your indie toys on google play or app store?

Well, the question is more than one year old, but I would like to answer it all the same.

It is quite real. Leonid wrote everything correctly, but there is a nuance. These 5% receive huge revenues in the form of several thousand or even tens of thousands of dollars. Basically, these are large studios, although there are also indie developers. But even staying in the remaining 95 percent, you can get as much as enough for a comfortable life and how much you would earn in the same office.

I have personal experience in this matter. It's been almost 3 years for my application, but I was engaged in updates and its support only for the first year, then I scored, and there was no time. The number of common installations for all the time at this point has reached about 370 thousand. The number of active installations is about 12 thousand, gradually falling (six months ago there were 15 thousand). Income in the region of $ 120 per year. Real pennies, of course, but money is never superfluous. I suppose if I took it seriously, invested in marketing, then the results would be higher. If it were not an application for entertainment, but a full-fledged game with in-game purchases (taking into account my number of installations), the income would be 10 times higher. So anything is possible.

The eternal question from the category "is it possible to make money as an artist." The short answer is yes you can. You can certainly make money on indie toys on mobile platforms, and there are many examples of this. But the 80/20 rule here is probably even more pronounced in the 95/5 ratio - that is, 5% of developers receive 95% of the income (and maybe even less).

The question is how much effort, time and money will have to be invested to get into this 5%. It is definitely impossible to make a simple game and hope for thousandths of income - you will need to study not only and somewhat programming, but also marketing, design (including games), psychology, legal issues for communicating with publishers, and even break through everything. And this is all despite the fact that you will receive guarantees for the release of a successful game.

As a result, you can waste years and still not achieve any noticeable success. Absolutely, "on average in a hospital" it is more profitable to work for hire in some game company and there, in practice, study all the above issues, and then decide whether to go to indie developers.