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AppGameKit Classic Chat / thoughts on inneractive and app low earnings

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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Feb 2013 17:53
I\'am going to remove all free apps with inneractive ads system because earnings are really too low (2.93$ after many months). I suppose that you have got to publish tenths of apps with thousands of downloads to hope to reach some success.
Moreover the free version of the apps prevent people from downloading the paid version, maybe they decrease the visibility of the paid versions. I have got 2 apps with 100+ free downloads and 0 paid. Considering that for other apps without free version, I have got some paid downloads. The games are perfectly playable, I play myself with them, and I have some positive comments.Anyone knows about other ads systems more \"lucrative\" and compatible with AppGameKit?
Of course I have got no idea of investing money on paying Google to leverage the rank of my apps, I have not ever recovered the costs for AppGameKit, only the subscription fee of 25$ has been recovered, but it cost me 1 year of work to produce 8 apps (during spare time, of course).
There is something that must be tuned before I start again to make apps...waiting for stable AppGameKit 1.08.
DVader
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Posted: 17th Feb 2013 18:48
I have earned a bit more than that in about 6 months(not much though), but most of the revenue came from iphone users, not android. Still considering the google fee, agk, website etc, at the rate it is going I may never recover the initial outlay. That is if I can ever get the total anywhere near the $200 limit before they will pay you. If I had paid for an iphone account I would be even worse off.

I have noticed ad revenue has dropped to very low amounts now, even after adding in an online high score, and extra features/ bug fixes to the game. It's a difficult market, by the looks, especially if you can't really spent huge amounts on advertising of some sort. Iphone definitely generates a lot more traffic than android or at least has for me. Downloads being in the thousands rather than about a piddling 100 or so on android.

MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Feb 2013 19:13
Thanks DVader.
I have been contacted by some guys on my gmail account, promising a lot of visibility for my apps, but I rate them as spammers and I have never answered to their "invitations".
Maybe the in-app purchase could raise the sales: at the game over phase, the software could ask you to upgrade, offering more levels, weapons, bonuses, bosses, etc. The same is done in well-known commercial apps.
Do you know if in-app purchase is available only for Apple?
DVader
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Posted: 17th Feb 2013 19:52 Edited at: 17th Feb 2013 19:53
Not tried anything as I am sticking with 1076 at the moment. I have heard they are in the beta, but not sure how complete they are. Also, sounds like there are more complications compiling your app when using them also. Still, in game purchases could make a bigger difference with the right type of game.

Edit - I didn't add that I meant android, rather than apple, but both support it in the beta version supposedly.

Jimmanator
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Posted: 18th Feb 2013 07:30
I Have Gotten Only A few Downloads On android and Intel AppUP but all of my free playbook apps get a few hundred downloads a day,
I wish they would update Agk For BB10 because Your Apps Don't Get Drowned by all the other apps. I think we are missing out on the most Profitable market
bjadams
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Posted: 18th Feb 2013 10:43 Edited at: 18th Feb 2013 10:45
Marco, I receive emails from advertising services all the time!

The end result is that you end up paying hundreds of $ and the download increase is only very marginal.

For IOS I found out that the most effective things is to get some reviewer services from Fiverr

This proved to increase the exposure of your app and get some more people to download it. No idea about android apps.
xCept
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Posted: 18th Feb 2013 21:22 Edited at: 18th Feb 2013 21:24
The latest AppGameKit also supports AdMob directly, you may have more success with that than going through Inner-Active.

Of course, until you have a large number of downloads and repeat users it is unlikely you will get many clicks regardless of service. I have had a lot of success this past week after releasing my first free ad-supported app on iTunes with a paid companion app to remove the ads (it wasn't developed in AppGameKit and the paid version has been around for a couple of years).

In that app, I used AdWhirl, which allows you to custom configure many different major ad networks and your own house ads as well (e.g., to point the user to the full version). Unfortunately it currently only has an SDK for iOS and Android or else this definitely would've been my recommendation for AppGameKit instead of Inner-Active. My free app gets around 2,000-3,000 downloads a day and makes approximately $35-50 in ad revue daily between iAds and Admob. Plus my paid version is selling more each day than it did before making the free version.

P.S., I agree with bjadams that any solicitor that tells you they can promote your app for a fee is not worth it. I know first-hand of a couple video review services that charge $150 to $300 and the end result is only viewed by a few real people on YouTube and tweeted to what seems like fake followers, it does nothing for sales.
xGEKKOx
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Posted: 21st Feb 2013 11:00 Edited at: 21st Feb 2013 11:06
I wanna give 3 suggestions (for Apple Apps, maybe good for Android too):
- Don't use FREE GAME and PAID GAME if you are not a big developing house (the risk is high if your app is not a high level app)
- Don't use INAPP if you are not doing a MMORPG/CASINO game or you are not a big developing house
- Don't base your developing on FREE/Advertised apps if you are not a big developing house or your app is not a MMORPG/CASINO with INAPP

If you wanna start to earn from apps, do apps and chose the lowest price and have patience until they will raise the ranks.
Also don't change the category and subcategory cause the rank will start from 0.
Give some codes periodically on the most populated App forums and build your own site.
Another important thing is to code a personal server side with users database, and make own graph to calculate the traffic.

Another tip is:
When i do a paid app i add anyway the AD but i add a checkbox in the settings where to shut down or re-enable it. In this way i can pay the year fee with the AD money. Of course you will receive reviews with : "I paid app and i don't wanna ads, xxxx", but there are too many users don't look at settings in a game, so don't mind.
In this moment my paid apps earn very much as they are very high in rank on Apple Shop, but AD give me about 300$/year to pay the fee.

Long life to Steve!
MarcoBruti
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2013 21:26
thanks for the advices. I have already removed the free version of my paid apps because I have noticed that people downloaded only the free version.
BTW, inneractive is a complete flop.
Naphier
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2013 21:47 Edited at: 23rd Feb 2013 21:48
Marketing in a market flooded with products is extremely difficult.
Most apps seem to use a pestering technique to get you to rate/promote/buy the app. I think that this is a pretty annoying method, but can be done right if done with finesse. Also it seems to be more acceptable these days.

I'd love to see some stats from the devs here. I know people don't always like sharing their sales data, but in a community such as this, I'd hope some may be willing to do so.
It'd be great to see # of downloads, # of app purchases, amount of ad revenue per download, average rating, # of ratings, ad service used, etc.
That way we can start to analyze what is working.
I'd be happy to share my sales data once I've published some games.



PS - Having a link to your games as your signature line here in the forums lets people find your games when you're talking about them.

Cor
AGK Developer
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 00:11 Edited at: 24th Feb 2013 00:15
For me inneractive has been hit and miss. I have noticed my ios apps seem to do quite well with their system but my android apps tend to earn about half (with the same clicks).

Where I get frustrated is when it comes to support and trying to create house ads...

For example I created a house ad and after it sat in review for a week I contacted their support which took a few days to respond. After my house campaign was approved I thought great its all ready to go now!

I was wrong. The house ad didnt appear on my devices so I contacted the support again. another week later they said they would look into it. about another week later they said they fixed it and all should be good. I go to the portal and my house ad is reporting many times the amount of impressions it should be. EX: it should say it was shown 100 times instead their system reports about 10,000 impressions. Which is impossible because i get good fill rates.

I think their support is sometimes slow and their house campaign system is very buggy at the moment

Oh i forgot I cant pause the campaign because if i logout it starts it back up! lol
xGEKKOx
AGK Master
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 02:29
Anyway, don't surrender....
Believe me. Put your game/app in paid "mode" and wait.
Don't mind if don't sell, just go to the successive app, and while you work on the second, you will start to see some sell.
When you arrive at 3/4/5 or 32 like me, you will say to yourself that you didn't worked for nothing.
Don't waste too much time around 1 app.
If the app raise, update it to get the raise constant.

I have also much bad adventures with the "REVIEWERS", i hate them!!!!
Sometimes you catch the fast and all go well.
Sometimeeeeeeesssssss youuuuu catch the impossible reviewer!!!!

This is the last adventure and the most funny i ever got with the reviewer:

Reviewer : "Sorry, your app doesn't match the Apple bla bla bla..... cause your button is ON/OFF but it moves to OFF/ON"

Gekko : "Dear staff, the on/off button is not a slide so it can be written on/off or off/on cause you press it"

Reviewer : "Oh yes, you are right! But why you wanna use the location gps on the Mac version?"

Gekko : "Dear staff, cause on the iOS version there is a map with annotations to see where all the users are in the world".

Reviewer : "Ahhh, ok. Butwhy i can't talk to nobody? This app don't work in our opinion"

Gekko : .... I look the server log and see he connected with 1 device....
"Dear staff, you need 2 or more device to communicate on the CB Video Box"

Reviewer : "Hmmm, but we are unable to start a chat. App status completed! Closed!" (no published)

Gekko : "Dear staff, are you kidding me? You wanna start a chat in a CB Simulation, where all users talk to all users without pressing buttons??? With 1 device????? regards."

I "developer Rejected" and sended immediately again, hoping to find a better reviewer!!!!!
LOL i hate stupid reviewers!!!!!


Long life to Steve!
xCept
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 05:22
I hear you, Gekko. I had an incident recently where I released a free version of an app with half of its features available (the other half were 'locked' and tapping them would alert you to purchase the full version). The review rejected it claiming that it appeared to be a beta, trial or demo app. It didn't make much sense to me, considering similar free apps with much less available before purchasing were approved just fine and even featured by Apple. Then when you submit it again for review you have to wait for another week or longer to hear back, it goes right to the back of the queue
MarcoBruti
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 13:12
Hi,
here are my stats, nothing to hide

Number of paid apps: 7
Period: March 2012-January 2013
Net Income: 26.38€
Monthly Average: 2.64€
Average monthly paid apps purchases: 4.5

Considering the 25$ for Google developer account, I can say that I have recovered that fee, of course no means to recover the 75€ paid for AGK.

My top selling apps are "App-In-Ball", "ReadMusic" and "The Black Hole", that were my first apps. The subsequent apps do not sell anything, apart the free version I removed. This is very strange. My platform game is very complex (6000+ lines of code), the RetroBikeRunner and the SudokuWare game (including both classic Sudoku, an arcade breakout game and a Sudoku puzzle game -original), are not worse than the other apps that sell.

So I assumed that all apps should sell something (little but something).

My conclusion is that there is something strange in the ranking system of Google. I only changed the category once for one app, but I do not think that the problem is there.

To be honest, I have a full time job in a telco company giving me a real income to live, for me game developing is an hobby, so I do not hire artists to improve graphics, spend money on ads, etc.

I would like to hear from people that make their living by app developing, what are their selling and ads stats.

From what we see, Gekko is one of the most successful, but he is focused on Apple. I would like to hear from people focus on Android, that is for sure more "critical".
Digital Awakening
AGK Developer
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 18:50
What are your thoughts on lite/demo versions of games? My game is going to be quite large and I think I will sell it for something like $3. I think a free test version before you buy it is a good idea. Comments?


Demo 3 is out now!
The Zoq2
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 19:20
As long as the demo is long enough to not feel like a demo, but short enough to want me to play more, I think demos are a good way to market. Also, don't throw it in the users face that the free version is a demo. Personaly I am much more willing to pay for a product that I have enjoyed in the past and want to support, than I am for paying for something new.
Naphier
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 19:50
I think demos are underdone these days.
There is nothing that frustrates me more about a game other than spending money on it to find out it has a compatibility issue or is just not what I was expecting. My strong suggestion is that if you are going to charge more than $0.99 for your game then give out a short demo for free. At the end of the demo encourage the user to buy the full game.
I'm very cautious about buying games even at the $0.99 level now because of spending money to only find out they are junk.

xGEKKOx
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 20:21 Edited at: 24th Feb 2013 20:22
Well, i'm going to release my first free game (with in app purchase).
They will be able to buy "GG Coins".
The game is : "Hackers Online", a MMORPG without much graphics and much terminal sessions.
I shown it in the showcase too, but now is the moment to complete it.

I wanna do this test of free game with in app.
When i will publish it, we will see how much it will be able to earn.
Anyway now with 30/32 apps, we sell about 80/100 (average) paid apps every day.

Not bad.

Long life to Steve!
bjadams
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 21:34
Why release free games?
So users can rate them low and complain?

This is really sad, after you offer your game for FREE, some people have the face to complain and write bad reviews!

They spent $0 and complain!

If you don't like it, just delete it, you wasted nothing!

I don't think I will ever release anything for free in my life!
The Zoq2
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Posted: 24th Feb 2013 22:56
Personaly, I do programming simply for fun, and if someone downloads and ejoys my game, im happy. I have not realy had any negative comments on my apps, and the ones that hinted at something negative pointed out something that I could inprove in the app. If I would make some money of the apps, it would just be a bonus
MikeHart
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Posted: 25th Feb 2013 06:19
You gotta be kidding, right? 100+ downloads and you complain about no ad income? 100+ is nothing. For decent ad income you need much higher download numbers. Make a better game and more people will download it.
xGEKKOx
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Posted: 25th Feb 2013 14:25
Well Zoq2 maybe you have already another job...
My job is this, the coder, since i was 10 years old.
If in 2011 i wasn't able to discover Apps, i think i would change my job.
So i thanks the god... in italy is very hard to find a job, and working for someone (not indy), is under paid with no contracts.
In italy we didn't have good software house, tax are very high, so none invest in our country.

Long life to Steve!
MarcoBruti
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Posted: 25th Feb 2013 23:39
@MikeHart: I think that you have not read the entire thread. User experiences suggest that, even with many more downloads (1000+), with Android ads earnings are very low, and Inneractive seems not very satisfying from this point of view.
About the comments on my games, please have a look at
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=texasoft+reloaded
buy one or more of my games, and then you are in the position of judging.
The problem is that it is often easier to criticize other people's hard work than to produce an app.
bjadams
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Posted: 28th Feb 2013 23:46
today's app market is so saturated with thousands of app, that even 99c games have a hard time selling.

unless your game has addictive playability, great variety & replayabliity, and super gorgeous graphics, it's not going to sell big time.
MarcoBruti
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Posted: 1st Mar 2013 17:54
Quote: "unless your game has addictive playability, great variety & replayabliity, and super gorgeous graphics, it's not going to sell big time."

I know that I cannot sell a lot, I am not EA, Rovio, Gameloft, ecc. I have a full time job, so I do not make my living by programming games, otherwise I should do as Gekko does, i.e. do a partnership with an artist, buy or make a decent music tracks and sounds, and publish A LOT OF APPS. He have published 32 apps, I know the Rovio published 50 apps before Angry Birds and so on.
The point is that for an average hobbyst as myself and many others, that would like at least to recover the costs, it is very difficult to produce a top quality app, but it will be enough to earn that 100$ or 100€ or 100 pounds a month. On Android there is very few people available to buy a "medium" app, on Apple there are many more, but even with iOS market is saturated and you have to do as Gekko does. Otherwise an alternative could be BlackBerry, but TGC does not support it at the moment...and even the 1.08 release of AppGameKit for basic platforms is far from being stable. So I have suspended for the moment game producing waiting for better times.
bjadams
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Posted: 1st Mar 2013 22:34
making 100€ a month after cutting all the expenses needs lots of work and investment, at hobbyist level!
MarcoBruti
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2013 22:28
For Android market, it is probably as you state. For Apple, definitively not because some people on this forum make a lot more money, without doing huge of investments (at least according to what they say), but for sure doing more investments than on Android.
It is also a matter of market type. For this reason I am waiting for AppGameKit support for Blackberry: a Blackberry playbook (BB10) is a good bargain, the market is rather "virgin", no subscription fees, a simple PC (no costly and closed MAC/iPAD/iPhone stuff) and few apps.
But I am very skeptic: the 1.08 stable version is being very late because TGC resources are objectively too limited (in term of numbers, not quality of course), so the hopes to have a working AppGameKit for BlackBerry are nearly equal to 0. Now I am writing on book on Javascript, doing this book I am trying to gain experience on HTML5 (that is for sure the future for gaming on mobile devices as soon as it matures). I will publish it on Amazon, and in meantime I am watching what happens in AppGameKit and game development arena.
MikeHart
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2013 23:55
Good luck with your book writing. I did that before too. A lot of hard work. Hopefully it will pay off for you.
3d point in space
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2013 03:48 Edited at: 3rd Mar 2013 03:52
Well at least you earned some money off it. I stopped making apps because i think it needs to be more of a corroborative effort between the members to make a super app, and I am going to grad school . My piano app gets downloaded the most. I got about 500 downloads off it I think I need to redo it though. because I made that app in one day. I think that i have a very basic design to play music also which helps it be downloaded a-lot. Shows you that apps that are easy to play with are often downloaded the most sometimes and not the games.
Any way I guess this really doesn't help you, I just program when I have time know which is not very often. Especially when I have a 10 page paper due every week.

Developer of Space Chips, pianobasic, zipzapzoom, and vet pinball apps. Developed the tiled map engine seen on the showcase. Veteran for the military.
MarcoBruti
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2013 12:11
@MkeHart
doing a book is a really hard work, especially if you have to publish original contents,not copying as some authors are accustomed to do . My book features simple Javascript-based games, with detailed explanation. So I have to first invent the game, then develop and test, write the chapter with detailed explanations, and so on. Javascript is not only Javascript, but also HTML5, CSS, Ajax, jQuery, etc The risk is to do something like an encyclopedia, and there are a lot of huge books on this computing issues, and according to my experience, the more pages the book has, the more useless it is
Then I would like to publish it on Amazon. After some googling, I discovered that Amazon ebook market has many similarities with Google Play Market: no costs but high royalties (30-70%) on sold copies, a very crowded offer, little or no earning on the average, etc. There are some tricks, as promotion campaigns and so on, but on the average earnings are very little.
If you like, pls share your experience about your book? Which topics did you focus on? What publisher did you choose? What about the sales?

@3dPoint. You are an hobbyst like me. My master degree in Information Engineering is rather old, it dates back to 1994, I have not weekly paper homework to do. But since then I have a lot of priorities: full time job (with long car traveling to and from the workplace) , family and the normal duties of a normal medium man living in "civilized" world with the disorganization of south-European countries. To do "state-of-the-art" apps is not compatible with our daily duties, so I agree totally, to find something simple to use, focused on something useful to propose, that can catch the interest of casual gamers or casual smartphone/tablet uses. For this reason I have looked at AppGameKit with great interest, but unfortunately, after 1 years of experience and 8 apps out on the market, I draw the conclusion the AppGameKit is not yet at the right point of maturity to be compliant to our targets. Too many bugs, too few support, scarce resources focused on wrong projects (FreedomEngine), many platforms not supported yet (Windows Mobile, Blackberry) and no news at the horizon about a really stable release. So, as you, I have frozen my apps developing, focused, and let's see what happen in 2013.
MikeHart
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2013 14:06 Edited at: 3rd Mar 2013 14:09
Quote: "If you like, pls share your experience about your book? Which topics did you focus on? What publisher did you choose? What about the sales?"


Please head to my website, there you see my book. Click on the cover and it brings you to the publisher (PacktPub). I am not sure about posting about it on the forum so it is better this way.

The publisher was actively searching for an author of a book they wanted to have. I was a beta tester for the product so I applied and we came to a deal. They told me what they wanted to have in the book and how it should look like. Plus they gave me 2 weeks to write each chapter. I was pretty restricted of what, when and how I could write it.
The positive things was that I got some money out of it. The bad things were the limitations. I had to leave stuff out to meet the boundaries (page count, style, etc.) this book had. And dealing with some of they editors was pretty stressfull.
MikeHart
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2013 14:08
About sales... I knew that the market is very small for a book like this so I am not expecting anything else besides the advance I got.
bjadams
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Posted: 3rd Mar 2013 16:55
Personally I got $0 profit from iOS apps so far (and a few thousand $ investment in hardware).

I am making much more $ from helping other app creators with low budgets, publicize their apps and getting more attention to them through user reviews.
3d point in space
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Posted: 4th Mar 2013 18:10 Edited at: 4th Mar 2013 18:23
Oh, I forgot to tell you what my paper that I currently wrote was about. It is about the cognitive development of veterans, or veterans transitioning to civilian life. So maybe I write an app that basically you try to drive someone crazy by asking them questions, and then play annoying games and see if the app will cause stress in their lives, because that is what we all need stress. Especially combat stress. Maybe write an app that sees how much stress or PTSD you can stuff in a person before they hang themselves that would be to realistic though, and only a veteran could write such an app, because if you have someone how is not a veteran write that app then people out of the military might take ad-fence.

Developer of Space Chips, pianobasic, zipzapzoom, and vet pinball apps. Developed the tiled map engine seen on the showcase. Veteran for the military.

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