My experiment was this: spend 3-4 months doing Android App development, and see if I could make enough profit to justify continuing down this road of freelance development, professionally. The answer is no. The hard fact of the matter is that in 1 month of active use of my first free app, it has made back 1/25th of the money that I sunk into advertising it. Also, in a little under a week, with $50 sunk into advertising, my first for-pay app has 3 installs at $1 each.
While I'm sure that I could continue to put out apps and would eventually see more revenue than this, it is increasingly unlikely that I will see revenue on which I could make a living wage.
Failure is part of life, and I've learned a new programming language and a fairly complex platform in the process, so I don't feel the last 3 months have been a waste, but now is the time to go back to work and start making some money again. I'll leave my apps out there and submit bug fixes from time to time. Who knows. Maybe at some point, there will be a surge of interest...
Fail forwards. Well done, and good luck on your next venture.
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