I've said this before but I'll say this again because it's keeping us more profitable than most. Run your own ad system, use LinkShare for your links (earn 5% o

I've said this before but I'll say this again because it's keeping us more profitable than most. Run your own ad system, use LinkShare for your links (earn 5% on sales), advertise your own apps for free, add a few banners for apps/games you think your visitors will like b/c you'll likely over-expose your visitor if you only have a few ads running. Our # of downloads and usage is about 10x's less than this case study, but our advertising revenue (5% from LinkShare) is roughly the same. And, we've correlated that roughly 25% of our premium app sales is due to the banner ads in our free app (which we pay $0 to advertise through). I love AdMob for what they are trying to do, but the economics of the AppStore (as stated by many people) is broken for most indie shops who don't have a bankroll to throw at advertising/customer acquisition. The 30% apple takes off the top is traditionally a healthy marketing budget, without it most devs are left to "AppStore-marketing" after bills/costs are paid. The ROI on admob just doesn't make cents (:P) for most people.