Car Locator: The little Android app that could

It must be a great feeling when you can sit back and watch something rake in $13,000 big ones a month. For Eddie Kim, he is already experiencing that ever since popularity of his Car Locator Android app increased tremendously in daily sales. However, it wasn’t always netting thousands of dollars a month, there were some days when he would be lucky to make just $80 a day!

Eddie Kim, creator of Car Locator, posted on his blog about the popularity and profits he has accrued since the app hit the Android Market. He offers some statistics on the app such as 70,000 free downloads, 6,590 paid downloads, and it once reached #4 top paid app in the travel category. Through the app’s lifetime, the price has increased from $1.99 to $3.99, but that does not seem to deter most Android users from downloading the app. Despite the positive numbers, it began only generating $80-$100 in revenue a day, until it became featured in the Market where it began reaching $400 daily, with a record of $772 on Valentine’s day alone! Kim suspects downloads increase enormously on weekends and holidays, cited by the nearly doubling in profit on Valentine’s Day.

Even though his app has been displayed on the featured apps in the Market, Kim claims it alternates top apps daily, and his app has been found through searches as opposed to featured apps. Unfortunately, it is hard to stop piracy on the Android platform, as Kim finds out through Twitter that it is quite possible to get the .apk file online. However, that does not take away from his achievement: $13,000 a month with room for improvement.

For ambitious Android developers, he offers this piece of advice:

If Android development is something you’ve been mulling over, I encourage you to make the leap. Though my experiences are clearly not typical, I definitely think Android is the ideal platform to be in for an individual developer.

Read [EddieKim]