I made $481.27 freelancing online this month. So that was interesting. I made more money from that than from my shareware release. I think most people who self-publish software (shareware, trial ware, App Store, MAS) are in the long tail. I have some ideas for software that can be written fairly quickly that might also actually sell. To get it on the MAS still requires me to pay another freelancer $300 or so to do a retina resolution icon set. So icon designers have a guaranteed income from app programmers.