Who here makes a living off writing mobile games?

andymc · Jan 27, 2020

Haha, I get a lot of reviews complaining my Space invaders clone isn't close enough to the original, my normal response is something like "thanks for the feedback, but I'd get sued if I made it too close, but you can buy the original on the play store for £4.99 if you wish"

Peter Simpson · Jan 27, 2020

andymc said:
Haha, I get a lot of reviews complaining my Space invaders clone isn't close enough to the original, my normal response is something like "thanks for the feedback, but I'd get sued if I made it too close, but you can buy the original on the play store for £4.99 if you wish"

Now that is a brilliant response to comments Andy.
A well known saying comes to mind, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't...

Jack Cole · Feb 3, 2020

I have done pretty well in the app game business. It is down to ~$150 per day now. But my best day was >$4000 several years ago. That was a bit surreal.

ilan · Feb 3, 2020

Jack Cole said:
I have done pretty well in the app game business. It is down to ~$150 per day now. But my best day was >$4000 several years ago. That was a bit surreal.

i would expect much more from so many donwloads you have. 1 app more then 18.000.000 but only 150$\day?

sorex · Feb 3, 2020

It's not that all 18.000.000 people are still playing it. then he would earn a few dozens of that $4000/day

$150/day is already surreal for 99.99% of the forum users

ilan · Feb 3, 2020

sorex said:
It's not that all 18.000.000 people are still playing it. then he would earn a few dozens of that $4000/day

$150/day is already surreal for 99% of the forum

i understand that most people already have deleted his app but still, we are talking about a number of downloads that most of us won't reach in 100 years and still you can see that so many installs still make a very small income if you compare it with other apps that has much less installs. so there is no simple math. 100k does 50$/day, 1m does 500$/day. i wonder what is the active installs number of that 18m installs game ?! maybe @Jack Cole is so kind and let us know the active number of users he has

sorex · Feb 3, 2020

What if 17 million was reached in the first 2 years and the next 1 million in the next 1 or 2 years?

what counts is the active users. even active installs doesn't mean a thing it just tells how many devices it is still on but as long as they don't play they don't make money.

even with 100 users you could get $50/day if they click almost every interstitials generating a high boosting CPM.
too bad the same ads show up all the time so that's unlikely to happen. (this is maybe the invalid traffic? clicking the same ads by the same user?)

so indeed there is no exact math. Good point there, ilan.

sorex · Feb 3, 2020

I checked one of my apps...

When it made the most (€20-30/day) it had <25.000 installs.

2 years later is should be somewhere besween 45.000-50.000 (I can't find the right figure in Play console) with 4.075 active installs.

But only creating 3-10/day. if 25% or 1.000 play it every day and 19.700 weekly request out of which 9.800 imressions were done one can say an average of 9-10 ads/WEEKLY sessions is met. (this results in 1.90-5.90/day and €18 over the entire week)

Which ain't bad as advanced player need minutes before an ad shows up.

on the other hand, one player can get 25 playing easy to solve levels and another one just 1 or 2 playing hard levels.

so it's hard math.

I was hoping that games like your spider game and turn left would do good. I like simplicity games.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I disabled videos in my interstitials. you can probably earn a lot more if you enable them but you scare away your audience aswell as they hate it.

ilan · Feb 3, 2020

sorex said:
I was hoping that games like your spider game and turn left would do good. I like simplicity games.

no, they don't. i even removed them from sale (unpublished them) because they don't get any installs. i did a lot of games but did almost no income from them. if i calculate the time is spent on games and the income then it may be around:

i made 35 games (ios+android). each game took me around 2 weeks (average). let say each day i spent around 3-4h x14 days = aronund 50h/app x35 = 1750h * 60minutes = 105.000 minutes. and made in ALL those years (6-7 years together) maybe 200-300$. so 0.002$/minute ?

LucaMs · Feb 3, 2020

sorex said:
It's not that all 18.000.000 people are still playing it. then he would earn a few dozens of that $4000/day

$150/day is already surreal for 99.99% of the forum users

Maybe 18,000,000 downloads, not intalls - it's not the same thing, I have to repeat.
Exactly... for 99.999% - only him ?

Zynga Poker - 50,000,000+ downloads (Android: how many iOS? And how many players on PC-browser?) - 117,000,000$ one year! (2017? 2018? I don't remember)

sorex · Feb 3, 2020

That's indeed not good for your motivation, ilan.

Let me tell you something... I once did that Manic Maze game which was a unique version of the maze games.
Unfortunately it only has 55 active installs today.

When there was this Ugandan Knuckles hype a year later I just took the same game added some crap to it and uploaded it to Play.
I added a free compaign for it on Tappx and it now still has 873 active installs.

It's either pure luck or that tappx thing actually works to get some traffic/installs.

in figures of last month it's €0.67 vs €2.96. so that's x 4.5 for the same thing. still not something to get rich from tho.

sorex · Feb 3, 2020

here some stats about both.

you can see that the promoted one goes up a lot over time.
the logic must be more installs = more tappx impressions = more impressions for my game in other apps.
and tappx interstitials is just backup for in cases where admob can't deliver ads.

LucaMs · Feb 3, 2020

sorex said:
That's indeed not good for your motivation, ilan.

Not really true; when you read those things, you understand that "you" (we) should go fisghing ?

ilan · Feb 3, 2020

LucaMs said:
Not really true; when you read those things, you understand that "you" (we) should go fisghing ?

i am sure i will do better with fishing then with game making ?

the truth is that i really like making games and i am sure i will do more in the future

LucaMs · Feb 3, 2020

ilan said:
i am sure i will do better with fishing then with game making ?

the truth is that i really like making games and i am sure i will do more in the future

I am also very sure that my app that I have in mind for at least 5 years will allow me to earn a lot; but I don't know why I spend time on it ... 30 minutes every month and in 25 of those minutes I restart from scratch ?

udg · Feb 4, 2020

so 0.002$/minute

I could ask one of my bosses if they're willing to at least double that and make you an offer
Their apps are a bit boring (business apps) compared to games but they like the gamification technique..

I'm joking; I wish you the best success with your games and apps.

andymc · Feb 5, 2020

Even active installs is not the same as daily players. I have a game with 61000 active installs but only 300 daily active users. I aim to increase this number by adding more content to the game and reasons to open it daily, like daily quests and bonuses for getting up to higher levels in the game. Firebase is really good for tackling this stuff.

LucaMs · Feb 5, 2020

andymc said:
Even active installs is not the same as daily players. I have a game with 61000 active installs but only 300 daily active users. I aim to increase this number by adding more content to the game and reasons to open it daily, like daily quests and bonuses for getting up to higher levels in the game. Firebase is really good for tackling this stuff.

Zynga Poker notifies (or notified, I uninstalled it a long time ago) every 8 hours that you have an "internal game" (slot machine) available again to get more money.

This could disturb the user, who may not know that there is a way to prevent the app from receiving these notifications and uninstall the app, although I don't think he would do this if he likes the app.

ilan · Feb 5, 2020

andymc said:
Even active installs is not the same as daily players. I have a game with 61000 active installs but only 300 daily active users. I aim to increase this number by adding more content to the game and reasons to open it daily, like daily quests and bonuses for getting up to higher levels in the game. Firebase is really good for tackling this stuff.

this is the hard part of game making. how to bring the users back to your app.

LucaMs said:
Zynga Poker notifies (or notified, I uninstalled it a long time ago) every 8 hours that you have an "internal game"

i hate apps that send you notifications and ask you to log in. i usually or remove them or disable the notification. so i don't think it is a good way to bring users back to your app

LucaMs · Feb 5, 2020

ilan said:
i hate apps that send you notifications and ask you to log in. i usually or remove them or disable the notification. so i don't think it is a good way to bring users back to your app

This is exactly what I wrote before but there is no other way; maybe you can just write in the app that every 8 hours...

Another, less effective, way is to use "numbers on icons"... what is this feature called? Badge? But if the icon is not in the "home" of the user's device...!

Who here makes a living off writing mobile games?

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