It depends on the market he's working, Yahoo does not have the same volume that google has and chances are that he does not get the same returns on his time there because of that. Niches are tough. Once you have one it is a little cash cow but if anything bad happens then you find out fast that a niche is fragile. A single competitor that works a bit harder than you, a drop in your traffic... Chances are that somebody is simply outbidding him.

He's spent 12K on ads to date according to the piece, that means that he's had to sell at least 400 licenses to break even.

Apparently his market is to sell $30 software to create bingo cards, hardly a mainstream market.