How to make $250 a day (and get banned from the Android Market)

Damn. Talk about targeted content.<p>The guy writes an article on a failed Android experiment, makes the front page of HN. I click on the link and I'm on a blog with 32 articles in the last couple of months, all highly-targeted at Android developers. Android book ads on the side. All very nicely put-together (I know some folks would consider my analysis an attack. It is not.)<p>This guy is either going to make money on Android apps or make money advertising about them!<p>I like the app idea, but the story shows something really sad about these app marketplaces -- there's so much social engineering it's not funny. The right name, the right logo, the right first customers, the right momentum -- if the die come up the right way, you're on a roll. But if something happens to mess up one or two aspects of it? It can all fall apart. Or to put another way <i>people buying the app are the number one signal for other people to buy the app</i>. So it's kind of a weird little high-stakes popularity contest, at least as far as I can tell.<p>I just think it's cool that the author took the failed app idea, turned it around into a blog entry, and then might make a few bucks on that. Having the targeted blog to go along with your app efforts was very smart. If nothing else, as long as you keep trying, even if you go through a hundred ideas which never pan out, you could end up with a nice ebook out of all of it one day. Call it something like "How to win by failing"

This is a really scammy website - I really don't like it.<p>The goal shouldn't be to make money with Android - it should be to make interesting and high quality software products for your customers.<p>I should also mention that I make more than $1000 a month, the site's goal, by selling Android apps.

Here's a simple rule: Don't use someone-else's trademark as the fist word of your product name.<p>The first word is typically used to imply endorsement or officialness. So for example Microsoft X or Google Y.<p>If you build a product based on a third party service, you can generally use the trademark in your name for example "Bob's invites to Google+", as long as it's clear it's not an officially produced or endorsed product.

"Big corporations don’t understand, even if you’re 'trying to do the right thing'."<p>Really? This guy was making money by offering a dubious service leveraging someone else's brand. As he admits, it was an experiment and the way he conducted it was very ill-advised. Own up to it, don't whine about not being "understood".

By attracting developers like this guy, Google is going to have a very hard time competing with Apple. The Android Market is filled with apps like this. More so than the iOS App Store by far.

Another possible motivation for google suspending the app was that it abused the google plus invitation system. That probably isn't explicitly against the rules of the android market place, but it probably is against the rules or at least intention of google plus, and there has to be some protective bleed over from other google properties.

Sounds like this would make a better web page then an app.<p>With the web, it's easier to share, there are far fewer rules, larger user base and if google has a problem with your logo, they can send you a detailed C&#38;D letter which you can take care of without losing your existing work.

Nice hack, and a cool way to get your feet wet with developing Android apps as a business.

You are crazy. Why didn't you do this through a bloody website? I'd be happier to get a G+ invite through my PC, easy and fast, rather than grabbing the phone, praying for the battery to be still alive, turn on WiFi/data connection, fire up Market, search for an app, download it, and THEN get my bloody invitation... yeah, I'd stay with the PC way.<p>(originally as a comment under this blog post)