I want to see success stories of B4a devs!

So my question is: are there rules on this market? Rules that we can play with.

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hi fred

first i want to tell you that your app is really good and my kids love to play with it
what i think is the reason why you dont success with this app is because its for kids

you have today so much free games and apps for kids why should someone pay for it

the second thing is you have released a free app that paid apps cannot compare with it
everything is inside to keep the kids for some minutes on screen and also without ads

What I'm concentrating on today is to develop tools to help people in their day
i think that a simple tool that can save you time is much interesting then any games that after a while
everyone forget about it

take a look on the keyboards nr1
backup tool nr2
smart tools nr3

apps that i think you can do with one hand

ask your self why people pay for those apps? the answer is it save time, its simple and its powerfull
and its in daily use
build and app that is in daily use, my latest app "My salary" is about 3 month on air and has about 12000 downlaods (free app)
and one of my games for kids "animal sound" about 1.5 year and only 1300 installs

thats open my eyes, focus on tools leave the game developing for EA sport and there friends

but dont give up u are very talented

LucaMs said:

(Informatix, the actor in question is perhaps G.D.? Russian citizen for not paying taxes in France? )

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It's Lorànt Deutsch, a famous french actor.

ilan12041981 said:

what i think is the reason why you dont success with this app is because its for kids

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Oh, my little story was not about my case and I was not complaining. I am in the very comfortable situation where I can do the applications that I want, without worrying about their profitability. This is why I don't feel the need to put ads in my projects or to increase my visibility on the market with numerous small apps. My next app stays in this trend and aims no commercial success; being a game with a long development time, long matches and many rules, it does not comply with the ideal Android model, which I don't care. So my question is only motivated by curiosity. The Android market seems to be driven by new marketing rules and a lot of randomness. I try to understand these new marketing rules. I know for example that big actors on this market use the same questionable practices that online shops use to attract people on their site: they buy positive comments, reviews on blogs, artificial downloads,... Does this work also for you, at your level? Is Facebook a real plus to make an app popular? And how should it be used efficiently? Is it really useful to be present on alternative stores? Etc.
Sometimes I wonder whether the Android market is really profitable because prices are very very low (and you have to give 30% to Google) and cracking an app is very easy. Companies have to sell a lot (or have a lot of users for their ads), but numbers show (and I thank DrD for his work on this subject) that your app will rarely be downloaded more than 10000 times during its lifetime, which is not enough for a company whatever its business model is. That reminds me when I traded currencies and futures. My broker said me many times that for one client who is profitable after one year of trading, he has five clients who had lost a lot of money (if not everything). I think that success stories on the Android market hide also the huge number of (professional) failures. This market is not conventional and that's why it's interesting to discover how it works.

I have to agree.

The prices of the apps are absurd (although this should discourage cracking, at least).

I begin to think that there are two ways to earn in this "area": work for software houses that customize mobile solutions for medium/big customers or ... create tools like B4A

During the gold rush, those who have made fortunes are wheelbarrows vendors

I must agree with Ilan .. and other member
You must give users what they ask for ... I have an app that got 1 000 instals in one month and another that in the same period got only 2 installs
me and my wife the idea was ok , but users put a label in this app ... We are not interested ! We want something else !

It your choice how you want to present your self on the market ... either you want to build small app or make one big. I agree with Informatics but play attention when developing an app that you have worked on this 12 month .. you may get the negative result from the market..
I dreamt of this app ... but users are not so interested in my subject !!
Other b4a member said that if you are not an army developer you should stay small .... and you might want to think about it ...
On the other hand ... think that your chance on market would be to hit the tops with .. the greatest app your life that most of the time this can not be done with an app you have build in one week .

Hope to come back one day in this section to tell you my succes story

Computersmith64 said:

I know I posted somewhere else on the forum a while back, but thought I'd post an update here as to my progress to-date with apps developed with B4A. So, I have Yahtzee! Free, Yahtzee! Paid (99c), Yahtzee! Plus Free, Yahtzee! Plus Paid (99c) & BallBuster!

Yahtzee! Free is by far the best performer with almost 60,000 downloads since August 2013 - of which almost 34,000 are still installed (so over 50% retention rate). I am still seeing daily net increases of 500-700 installs, with it going to over 1,000 per day for a few days over Christmas (in fact on Christmas day, it was downloaded 1,992 times! - I guess a lot of people got Android devices from Santa...). This app is being played about 45,000 times per day & generating an average of about $30 per day in advertising revenue. Yahtzee! Paid has sold a little over 500 copies, while Yahtzee! Plus Free & Paid have around 3,500 & 60 installs respectively. BallBuster has been a bit slow to take off & has been downloaded about 1,200 times in a couple of months, with a retention rate of only about 30% - but it's a bit of a silly app.

So overall I'm pretty happy that an app I originally wrote about 15 years ago for Windows is now played by 30,000+ people & is making me close to $1,000 per month - although I must say that I have put considerable time into developing it & increasing functionality & playability since its initial release.

- Colin.

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As an update to this post:

Yahtzee! now has ~136K current installs from a total of ~280K & I'm still getting a new nett install rate of between 400 & 600 per day from a gross rate of over 1,000. In May, I switched to AdMob for advertising on all my apps & since then have made over $25K from between 80,000 & 100,000 impressions per day (mostly interstitial ads) - about 90% of which is coming from Yahtzee! & I'm regularly seeing over $300 per day now. If the trend continues, then pretty soon I'll be earning more from my apps than my real job. Poopy Sheep, BallBuster, Bubble Tap & Yahtzee! Plus are all contributing small amounts, but the real winner for me has been Yahtzee!.

I've also taught myself Objective-C & ported Yahtzee!, Yahtzee! Plus & Poopy Sheep to iOS. Yahtzee! is doing the best over there, but only generating about 2% of the ad impressions of the Android version.

So with 8 apps across 2 platforms, I know first-hand that it's a bit of a crap shoot as to whether you can make money or not, but there's always the hope that you'll develop something that has some success (& when you look at Yahtzee!, it only has to be a tiny amount of success as compared to the top rated apps) & make some decent money. I know for sure that if it wasn't for B4A I never would have ported that old version of Yahtzee! I wrote for Windows all those years back. I think what Erel has done for Android developers is easily as significant as what Microsoft did for Windows developers with Visual Studio Express & I'm sure that B4i will be just as significant.

- Colin.

Great work Colin!!! Very impressive numbers (and I even don't know how to play Yahtzee! ).

wow !!

you earn 300$ per day and still its not more then your real job?? thats very much !!!
you made 25k from the switch to admob? how much did you earn until now from your apps?

what would you recommend me to promote my app and get lots of downloads?
i have an app that has about 160 downloads per day and has now 12.7k installed device and i am making from it about 500$ so i think it got potential.

if this app would have about 100k installed device then i think i wont need to work anymore ! because here in israel a salary of 3000$-3500$ is not bad at all !

do you have any ideas? how to get more downloads?

ilan12041981 said:

wow !!

you earn 300$ per day and still its not more then your real job?? thats very much !!!
you made 25k from the switch to admob? how much did you earn until now from your apps?

what would you recommend me to promote my app and get lots of downloads?
i have an app that has about 160 downloads per day and has now 12.7k installed device and i am making from it about 500$ so i think it got potential.

if this app would have about 100k installed device then i think i wont need to work anymore ! because here in israel a salary of 3000$-3500$ is not bad at all !

do you have any ideas? how to get more downloads?

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I feel the smell of lies.

To earn $ 300/day with advertising, even though I do not know those kind of ads, users should be many tens of thousands/day.

Also, there is 30% for Google and the taxes.

you dont pay 30% to google (as i know) for ads only for sales

and why should he lie?? i belive him..
it is possible, and even more then that is possible, the flappy bird guy did every day about 50k $ from ads

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26114364

ilan12041981 said:

you dont pay 30% to google (as i know) for ads only for sales

and why should he lie?? i belive him..
it is possible, and even more then that is possible, the flappy bird guy did every day about 50k $ from ads

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26114364

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I've always thought of do not use advertising but sell apps, so I've read in passing these topics.

It seems to me that they are of two types:
in a type you gain even if the user does not tap on advertising, the other not.

But I think that in both cases, to earn those amounts your app should be used by tens of thousands of users every day; is it in the possibility of a single programmer? I don't think so.

I do not know the story of that "flappy bird", I'll find out.

Just one question:

do you think that Erel would not be capable to develop a dozen apps per month?

This to me is a confirmation.

i sent you the link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26114364

what i can tell you that you make much more money via advertising then selling (at least on android)

if you have an ios app maybe selling it will make you more profit i dont know

but it is possible !! forget selling apps try to make good apps and put some ads in it you will see how fast you will start make some $

I wonder how Google can keep paying these millions of apps that have ads?

Maybe that's why they trash accounts with unclear reasons?

I don't know whether it's true or not but I sincerely hope such a success for everybody. Personnaly, I wouldn't feel good by earning money with a licensed game of somebody else. If Hasbro decides to sue you, an important share of your $25000 will go directly into the lawyers pocket, trial expenses, etc. And if you lose, you'll regret having created this game. Don't take this as a threat (I don't work for Hasbro) or as a jealous comment. It's not even a moral advice, just a personal opinion. As US companies are prone to sue anybody using their copyrighted products, you take a risk that I couldn't take.
Lately, a french music band was sued by King (Candy Crush, Farm Heroes, etc.) because the band name (Bubblies) was too close to Bubble Witch, one of their games, despite the band had this name years before the game. It's stupid and revolting but true.

Were they successfully sued? If so, madness?!!?

each king should sue them for abusing their title

eps said:

Were they successfully sued? If so, madness?!!?

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The band asked everybody to support them in this case and there was a popular mobilization against King on Facebook, so the company quickly abandoned the legal proceedings.
Reference (in french): http://www.01net.com/editorial/619230/lediteur-king-exige-dun-groupe-de-rock-francais-quil-change-de-nom/