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by pilot_pirx 5290 days ago
No, you are not allone :)

I actually work in a company that runs a small side business with writing apps. Most of them are free and only drive money by adds. Actually I don't understand why people download those apps at all. And I have no idea, why anybody should click any of those adds. Still we make some money with it. Enough anyway to keep our devs busy between larger app projects we do for customers or to get new devs into app development.

But then advertising is expensive anyway. Companies pay a lot of money only to have their names and products appear on tv or in magazines. So the main idea here is not necessarily to sell something right away, but to have a first contact and keep a faint memory of you brand name in the users memory.

Just by chance I hit the website of my internet provider today. They offer you up to 150 euro if you get somebody to make a new contract with them. That's what they earn in the first six months with such a contract. Obviously they expect to start making money only after a longer period of time.