I'd consider his apps novelty apps, but I don't see why that's a problem. You can buy smiling rocks and fart scented candles in stores, and nobody cries fowl. Many apparently find his apps rather delightful, and though they aren't for everyone, there appears to be a niche.

His posts get upvoted because he quit his day job and he's following a dream. It's inspirational at its core, not to mention he's being transparent and vocal about it.

I don't know what's in his ebook. That's my only hesitation when replying.

I think he's scrappy, and I love how a man can pull himself up by whatever boot straps he can find.

He might not be making a killing (yet) or making anything you care about (yet), but he's making stuff by himself and making money. How many can say the same?

The thing I like best is how he's hitting lots of revenue channels at once and tracking them. Something I learned from his posts that I never even considered was selling stock photos.

But talk about multi-faceted! It's entrepreneurship at it's finest!

I've been working for myself for quite a while, and I even made some apps that were along the same lines at one point and did well off of them. (much better than this)

But I wasn't shoveling them out, I was spending some time on them and making them great.

There are lots of ways of making money, lots of ways to work for yourself, but that doesn't mean they should all be lauded.

There are a dozen broken screen apps in the Android market, I bet there are a dozen for all the apps he's made. I mean this is just spam in the market man.. come on.

I don't like to call another person's work spam unless there is a big reason to do so. As far as I can tell, he's an honest developer trying to get by. FYI, I have what I would call a thriving app business on iPhone/Android, much bigger than the OP. However, I don't think my work makes his work any less meaningful.

If you want to go rag on some spammers, there are plenty of people actually spamming people with their websites and email campaigns. I don't see how a broken screen app is comparable to stealing an email address and sending viagra spam. Or even on the same level as Honestly.com, which tricks users into giving over contact info.

It's not that his apps are innovative, but it's not up to you to decide if they are spam or not.

Why don't you show us your apps as well ? I bet I'll find something to criticize

Don't worry. Recently HN is just a place for mediocre people. Nothing to see here.

That was uncalled for. OP is from an ex-communist country, probably with a not very business savy culture and he is limited to ad-supported models, as Google won't let developers from his country to sell on the market.

Yet, he manages to make more money than working for the man. His story is much more outstanding than most of the HNs users.

I am from ex-communist country. Nothing to say more.

Really? Downvoting? Please comment on why you think this is frontpage material while you are at it.

The apps are crummy, there's no denying that. How does that fit in with typical HN content of trying to build good, no, great, products?

And an ebook on how to do it? sigh

You didn't ask "Please comment on why you think this is frontpage material while you are at it." on your first comment. You are saying something like "You stupid HN crowd, this shouldn't be on front page and it's useless".

You are not the one who decides things that get to the front page, but I don't bother answering if you asked why I upvoted it: It's interesting.

Point is that it doesn't matter if the apps sucks (haven't bothered to look at them) - he has made something people want, which is what we are talking about here on hacker news.

Sometimes what people want is very, very complicated -- real-time collaborative document sharing and sometimes it is hello word with a random number generator attached (bingocardcreator.com).

Make something people want. Not "build the next Facebook". Not "be the next Andrew Mason or Mark Pincus". Not "prove your mastery of social UX by founding the next Quora". Nope, just make something people want. You never know where that will lead to.