cyberspidey

What are your thoughts about the mobile app market in general? I'm learning game dev as well, and I sure as hell know that I wouldn't develop mobile first. The first reason being, the number of submissions on Mobile app store is too high, so unless one's lucky (imo), going viral requires a fair share of luck, or a decent marketing budget. Apart from that, there's certain publishers who rip off lesser known titles and make clones which go on to become bestsellers/top downloads.
And Freemium seems to be the only decent way to monetize, I may not have a good insight but, it seems to me that people prefer to buy media (books/movies/music), productivity apps or spend on microtransactions, rather than purchasing standalone titles.

Thanks for doing this AMA Justin, your responses have been amazing. Since you already mentioned that a lot of Indies lack funds, being an indie dev, I can't hire folks because I can't afford them. I was lucky and found a composer who's also a passionate gamer, but a dedicated sound designer is still absent from our team.
To rookies or Indies like me, what would be a decent way to produce average or above average sound when we can't afford/obtain permission to use stock sound effects?

Thanks for your response!
He's more of a musician than a sound engineer. We've been using some stuff bundled with Computer Music magazine, and some online sound generators to generate retro sound effects (to go alongside 8bit/pixel art style).