I don't doubt that advertising and IAP are more successful monetization strategies than selling your app, but if I got into indie app development it would be because I wanted to make apps which I myself liked, respected, and would want to use. That immediately precludes advertising and makes IAP very challenging.
I tend to have a visceral reaction when indie devs proclaim that paid software is "over". (Which is not what David Smith is doing, but what a lot of commentary in this genre tends to look like.) It's not that ads are <i>inherently</i> bad — podcast sponsorships, The Deck, and affiliate links tend to be decent and respectful — but what kind of software future can we look forward to if the only way to make money is to sell our UI real estate to the highest bidder? There are many ethical lines that are all to easy to cross in the pursuit of profit. This is the same path that has turned mobile games into exploitative, IAP-driven casinos — and the web into a murky bog of autoplaying videos and 10-second load times.<p>Here's my opinion: pay-once software will never disappear. Not now, not on an infinite timescale. For things like Twitter clients or text editors, sure — it'll be very difficult to sell your wares at a premium when there's so much free competition. But certain pieces of software are just too unique to be cloned. Nobody minds paying money for Model 15[1] because it's the only one of its kind. Maybe instead of spending years and years working on a single productivity app, we should focus on building stuff like <i>that</i>.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.moogmusic.com/products/apps/model-15-app" rel="nofollow">https://www.moogmusic.com/products/apps/model-15-app</a>
The key is to offer something in exchange for the ad view. Like in Sim City and Abyssrium, they actually give you something. When it becomes a choice, it becomes a willful transaction, and not only do users willingly and repeatedly watch ads for you, they don't mind it.<p>Unlike streaming content, in a game it's easy to reward the player. In fact, it's much easier than making the player pay for the game upfront, or pay for the reward.
Thanks for sharing! Can you tell a bit more what ads (and ads networks) you are using for monetization?<p>Do you plan to use subscription models in any of your apps?