156
10 min 25 sec

Army Veteran Makes $650,000 Advertising Apps

A Wisconsin native hits the jackpot with his smart approach to blogging, bringing in multiple six figures with nearly zero overhead costs.
Affiliate App Blog High Profit Programming

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What It's About

How a programmer earns a massive passive income advertising apps.

Business Model
Affiliate
Skills Required
Logistics & Programming
Complexity
Medium
Profit Potential
High

Words of Wisdom

Outside of his full-time gig, Steve had been experimenting with designing mobile apps. He launched his hustle—called One Zero Apps—in 2013. The work primarily involved buying source code, changing the graphics, and re-uploading them to the App store. This is a little bit technical, but the point is that he was able to creatively reposition existing apps, modifying them a bit and calling them his own. This is acceptable to some degree, especially if you modify the app in some significant way.

Fun Fact

Paper company employee Steve Delarwelle struck it rich through mobile app advertising and acting as an ad company affiliate. One example of app advertising is when you are prompted to download another app when you open an app on your phone. If you do, somebody makes money off of that. Somebody also makes money if you connect to an app advertising company through one of their links. And Steve just happened to be one of those somebodies, at least for a year.

Notes from Chris

Episode 156
Steve Delarwelle was working at a paper company when he struck gold—earning an unexpected $650,000 from his side hustle in one year. Born and raised in the small town of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, Steve had served three overseas tours in the Army before returning to his home state, getting married, and getting trained in computer programming.

Steve decided to start a blog to document his attempt to make money from apps, along with his trials and tribulations in the App store. The blog cost him about $20 a month, but apart from that, he had no setup or ongoing costs. He used the blog to publish revenue figures for all of his apps, separated out by publisher so readers knew who he was making the most money with. In ad revenue from his own apps, Steve was generating a steady $600 to $900 per month.

Good story so far, right? But then things got really crazy. One day in 2015, Steve woke up and discovered $13,000 sitting in his PayPal account.

And it didn’t end there. The money just kept rolling in. The next month, from the same source, his payout was $35,0000, then $45,000, then $60,000, and so on. His highest month was over $100,000.

When it was all said and done, Steve had brought in $650,000 for the year. No overhead; all profit.

You could say this was a lucky break, and perhaps it was, but Steve contends that if he hadn’t invested an entire year in consistently publishing for his blog, or had the foresight to become an affiliate, it wouldn’t have happened. So, he worked hard for the returns, and… perhaps he also got a bit lucky.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Steven Delarwelle's App Page: Some of the apps Steve sells in the Apple App store
  • RemoteJobr: The job aggregate site for Remote Tech positions that Steve now manages
  • Revmob: The ad company that hosted the affiliate program Steve signed up for
SEE ALSO:

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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Quote of the Day
"I would advise anybody that wanted to start a side hustle to take a look at yourself, determine what skill you have and leverage that to the max. Learn about anything; watch successful people and emulate them."
—Steve Delarwelle #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau