Developers don't usually pay, but you don't have to make money off of that project directly.
In internet/affiliate marketing this is what we called a "lead in" to the back-end offer (typically training or a consulting gig).
We would typically write an ebook and give it away for an email address, then over the coming weeks send tips and tricks leading into a soft sale of a product or training that would completely automate everything they just learned in the ebook.
Mobile games are hard, especially since one will make a billion dollars, but a billion of them wont make even a single dollar. And the app store ecosystem makes gathering personal information to attempt to sell them something in the future even harder.
For monetization, I would probably stick with the shitty micro payments. Or use them as resume fodder to pitch consulting gigs.
That said, I only recently got into mobile development and have been doing only enterprise distribution, so I don't have to worry about what Apple/Google allows or not.
I don't understand the down voting. I guess it is shooting the messenger for his recommendation to use "shitty micro payments". But what is the problem with this recommendation? It is just the truth, anything else doesn't work, apart of some statistical irrelevant corner cases.
I didn't downvote, but it might have been the mention of using Enterprise Distribution to get around "what Apple & Google allows". Enterprise distribution isn't meant to be used that way and has the potential to get your developer account closed & blacklisted by Apple if they find out. Even worse, Apple may revoke your developer certificate so that even the software installed on user devices stops working:
I don't use it to get around anything, we have in-house iphone and ipad apps that Apple would never allow in the store because they are used to collect leads at our various physical properties. We are well within our terms of our Enterprise account.
