How do online job apps work?

Besides contract work and a salaried job, how else do iOS developers typically earn at least $50k a year?

• We all know that most iOS devs would likely reject any job offers under 50k in the US... And doubly so in silicon valley. Some people even say they could make over this amount writing their own apps for themselves. I personally have never achieved this unless I was doing contract work... What other options are there that most iOS devs have had success with?

• Answer:

  I completely disagree with your statement concerning the salary of iOS developers. As of October, there are 1,000,000 iOS apps on the App store. That means there is at least 200,000 developers (really low side, as that means each dev makes 5 apps). If we do the math given that there are 200,000 iPhone app developers, and they each earn your minimum of 50,000 a year, that means 200,000 * 50,000 ==> 10,000,000,000 The developers in total are paid $10 billion. Last year, Apple only paid $5,000,000,000 ($5 billion) to iOS developers, less then half of what we just calculated, which means iOS developers might not be all that willing to turn down a $50,000 a year job. Read my answer to a similar question It's pasted below Assuming you will need at least $40,000 to live a year in America, that means the app you develop will need to give you $60,000 (30% to Apple, and then another 20%+ to various taxes, local, state, and federal). 60,000 at $0.99 means that at least 60,000 people bought your app, which is fairly difficult, because  you will have to make 60,000 people feel that your app is worth them  spending their money for, especially when there is a free app in the iOS  market that offers the same, or close to similar services as your app  does. That will be very difficult, because you will have to think of a  revolutionary app that people will want to pay for, and make a gorgeous  interface that people will want to pay for to use. It's easy to assume  that 60,000 people will just pay $1 for your app, but then think about  how willing or good an app would have to be for you to spend $1 for an  app. If you plan on making money on advertisements, your app  would have to be used by a lot of people and for a long time. Companies  that pay for advertising will not pay that much, estimate that they will  pay $1 for every 30-60 minutes their advertisement is shown per person.  You would probably take home $0.60 after taxes and Apple fees for every  hour your app is used per person/device. Now think about how good your app game or service would have to be to make thousands  of people use it daily or weekly so that companies pay $1 to display  their annoying popup/banner ads for 30 minutes but still love the app so  much that they ignore the annoying ads and keep coming back. Difficult, right? Other free apps like tumblr, twitter, Facebook etc make money because they are able to analyze your data and sell it to advertisement companies without having pop up ads. But you'd have to build a whole company, with databases, and algorithms for that to happen. Difficult, right? Bottom  line: Assuming that $40,000 is your goal to survive (the Annual Average  American salary), it will be insanely difficult to make that money. You'd  actually need to get $60,000 In revenue, in order to successfully pay  your fee to apple (30%), and pay other taxes to local, state, and  federal governments in order to bring $40,000 home. Making that $60,000 will be very difficult, you'd need 60,000+ people to buy your app for $0.99 (just think about how great an app should be to make you pay $1.07 for it, and then factor in 200+ people to give the app free to so that they give good ratings which will encourage more people to buy), the amount of time people would have to use your app through the  annoying popup/banner ads so that you can make money through  advertisements, and then the level of set up your company would need to have to sell consumer data for money (ie Facebook, twitter)