There are a few advantages to writing apps for iPhone / Android, one lots of people are looking for consultants, when people hire consultants they want to see a

There are a few advantages to writing apps for iPhone / Android, one lots of people are looking for consultants, when people hire consultants they want to see a portfolio, so you can increase your skills and possibly make some money building a portfolio while there is the chance of making money. It's much better than doing spec work. So what you do is to write trivial apps, when you get consulting gigs you can say "30 apps in app store", and have a portfolio of apps that look good, also, you write apps around features so you teach yourself the feature, etc, GPS, Gyro, Camera, BUMP API,FB Connect, etc. This is also an important part, spend time making your app look good. Customers can't see code quality, but they do see graphics. To customers good graphics == good code quality. Now if you have 30 apps and one happens to hit a niche you've got a great way to promote your other apps and don't have to do consulting BS anymore, and because you have lots of apps in the app store and lots of experience writing against the various features you can justify a much higher hourly because you'll be delivering their app faster. I definitely agree with you that writing a single app to try and strike it rich in the app store is foolhardy, unless you already have people signed up to buy it.