These ideas were not original to start with; 4 pics 1 word (which is, imho, incredibly boring) somehow got a lot of attention, downloads and money but was never original. Then 100s of devs copied it in some way or another. All these 'games' look / work the same. I made one for a client and the 24 hours sounds plausible including artwork but excluding the actual levels. That would take around another day. Making a few $100 / month constant for a few days work is ok in my book, although it's not the work I would want to do; like you say, it's uncreative and actually boring.
However; for these kind of games there is no 'support'; people like it or don't like it, but you don't get support requests; people who experience issues with the software just uninstall it. It's not worth actually fixing it for a few outliers with crap white label phones. So you don't actually have any work with these things and that beats Taco Bell.
I think the reason he is not killing it is the nature of these games; they are very easy to make so there are 1000s of clones in the Play Store, people usually cheat (look up the answers) and those who like them have more than 10 installed on their phone. So the ad exposure is very short lived. Installs are not a very good metric; play time is; you're not going to keep apps like this active for a long time.
If you make an app which gives value to people or games with fresh content every week , you will make a lot more money. But that's not automatic; it's a job :)
Seems to me someone with this much skill/ability could easily make $100k/year ($100 x 1000 successful app months) plus pension/benefits just working for the government. 10x easier work with 10x the pay and more stability. And "mobile apps" is supposedly the promising, high-tech growth segment of the economy everyone is harping on. What's wrong with this picture?
Well it depends on what apps; these are not brilliant examples of app and app economy. There are people making that kind of money you are talking about with games like this (4 pics 1 song is top free in the Appstore for instance at the moment and that is known to make quite a bit of cash), but the things you don't see 'in the Appstore' are apps which save companies money, for instance, by optimizing their internal HR or support workflow. Or for instance an app helping chronically ill elderly managing their meds so the on call nurses and doctors have a significant % less workload thus saving money and lives.
These apps will not be in the store, but they are making or saving companies millions. These kind of apps are already critical to a lot of enterprises and are a real opportunity for developers to make your $100k/year and much more.
The promising factor can be in games, but then rather games people stay engaged with (Minecraft, Plague, Plants vs Zombies; not saying if they are good or bad; saying they are liked for years in a row because they are better gameplay and polish wise). Next to that the aforementioned apps either to save or make money; mobile, unlike laptops/desktops, brings apps to everyone, all the time and there is a lot of money to be made in all market segments because of that difference. Both for devs as well as companies hiring these devs.
Oh and, this is definitely a matter of taste, but I rather make $2k/month from home than $10k/month in some gov job in an office. Where I live, you are allowed to work from home in some of those jobs, but they do expect you to be in the office at least 2 days/week and that is definitely something I wouldn't do very unless there is really no other way out.
But I value my work at $50,000/h, so I need to focus on my startup 100%, that's why I didn't want to spend more than 10 days in sustaining myself (10 apps a 24h).
However; for these kind of games there is no 'support'; people like it or don't like it, but you don't get support requests; people who experience issues with the software just uninstall it. It's not worth actually fixing it for a few outliers with crap white label phones. So you don't actually have any work with these things and that beats Taco Bell.
I think the reason he is not killing it is the nature of these games; they are very easy to make so there are 1000s of clones in the Play Store, people usually cheat (look up the answers) and those who like them have more than 10 installed on their phone. So the ad exposure is very short lived. Installs are not a very good metric; play time is; you're not going to keep apps like this active for a long time.
If you make an app which gives value to people or games with fresh content every week , you will make a lot more money. But that's not automatic; it's a job :)