[eLobato]

I no longer make that kind of money through any side project but I did during ~ a year of college. It was one of the worst projects (coding wise) I made, and I made it all through ads.

It was just an Android soundboard app for a very popular TV show in Spain. You could tap a button and it'd play some funny sentence from a character from this show. Long press, you could share that sound.

Revenue model: a little ad bar on the bottom of the screen.

It grew from 60$/month to > 1000$ in around 6 months, only through word of mouth. That lasted another 6 months or so until the show became less trendy.

Probably not very sustainable as I was piggybacking on the popularity of the show, but it taught me that making money was 100% not about writing 'the bestest codes'.

[GavinMcG]

IANAL, nor am I in Spain, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. My sense, though, is that in the US the TV show owners could sue me for copyright infringement, and I'd be on the hook for up to $150,000 in damages for each "infringing work" – I'd think that means audio clip, in this case.

There's a "fair use" defense to that (where I'd say that the clips didn't impact the market for buying the original work) and they might not go after me anyway, since it would presumably reinforce the popularity of the show.

Was any of that stuff you ran into? Or is there no similar copyright concern in Spain?

[eLobato]

There was an eventual copyright complaint and cease&desist which I had no intent to fight. I talked with a lawyer (friend of my family) who said I could probably win or find a settlement in court.

They only went after the app a few years after the show was in its prime (it was making ~40$ a month more or less) so I just removed the application from the Android Play Store as that was all they were asking for.