A stupid app, called That's Not Funny, that I wrote in 2008 or so to teach myself Android programming (when v1 came out) continues to make around $40 a month from ads.
I wrote it, released it, then to my surprise, it got a pretty massive amount of downloads. Over the years, I've updated it to new versions of the OS, but very minimal work.
Not a lot of money, but it wasn't a whole lot of effort either. It covers the internet bill.
That's a pretty nice app. I think with these simple apps you have to be at the right time in the right place. When I wrote That's Not Funny, there was only one Android phone on the market (HTC G1) and the App Store was fairly tiny. So the app made a bigger splash.
I made a very simple word jumble app, I get some dollars a month from ads. The one thing that blows my mind is that people still download it, how do they ever find it? :-)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vbrad.andr...
I wrote it, released it, then to my surprise, it got a pretty massive amount of downloads. Over the years, I've updated it to new versions of the OS, but very minimal work.
Not a lot of money, but it wasn't a whole lot of effort either. It covers the internet bill.