David Smith, long time indie app developer:

I’ve been thinking this past week (as I often do) about the ever-changing landscape of the App Store. This year has seen some of the biggest changes in policy and structure that I can remember. We have new subscription pricing models , search ads, a substantial purge of older apps , new requirements for app names and a variety of little changes to the App Store app itself in iOS 10.

I won’t know how the sum of these changes will impact my business until probably later this fall, but it seemed like a good time to look back at the last several years and examine the path that brought me here.

And:

The App Store ecosystem today is wildly different from what it was back then. I launched my first app into a store of around 90k apps, today we have well over 2 million. Back then we didn’t have advertising networks, in-app purchases or subscriptions. You were free or paid, and if you wanted to make a living you pretty much had to be paid.

Today things are quite different. Paid apps now make up a vanishingly small proportion of my income, and nearly all of my recent successes have come on the back of free apps. The transition between the two ends has not always be straightforward but I’ve focused hard on being adaptable and open-minded during the transition.

This is not a post about how difficult it is to make a living as an indie app developer. Rather, it is a recognition of the current reality facing developers and the shift that one seasoned developer has made to keep on doing what he loves.

To me, the core of this post is the Combined Revenue chart embedded in the middle of the post. If you look at that chart, you’ll see how David’s revenues shift over time from paid (about 4 years ago) to almost all ad-based (current).

Great post.