Home > Affiliate Marketing Forum >

---

How i'm making $XXX,XXX with mobile apps. [My Story Inside] (32)

---

My Story
I’m a partner in a small app company. We focus on quality apps, and we’re taking the ‘branded route’ rather then ‘throw a bunch of apps in the app store and cross promote’ route. Both work very well, and i’ll explain the details and benefits of both. Most of our apps are designed for iOS only, some are crossed over to Android as well but our initial design focuses on iOS. Going the branded route and focusing on iOS was just a personal choice. There is no right and wrong.

So far we’ve made 2 good apps. I don’t want to go into full details, but I’ll give some info on them.

1. Business App
This was a random idea we had for a long time, and it’s how we decided to start the company in the first place. We sat down for months designed the whole UX, hired someone to do the UI and program it. We only hired quality people to work with who had a reputation in the industry. This helped with promotion and building a very stable/quality product… but it cost a LOT. After running into 100+ hiccups it turned out pretty well! We made a lot of mistakes, and could have made a lot more money, which we now know for the future.

Time: Took 12 months to make
Cost to Develop: Mid $xx,xxx
Total Revenue: Low $xxx,xxx
Biggest Mistake: Could had sold it for 3x the price and probably sold around the same amount of units

2. Game
The game was a totally different approach then the first app. We tried to re-construct a popular game, add a couple spins to it, better the design and then go freemium.

Whats Freemium?
Freemium is when you make a app/game FREE and then hope you get 100x the downloads you would get from paid, and have 3-10% of those users/players buy an “In App Purchase”. It can be anything from a new character, new weapon, more powerups etc…

Turned out this was a horrible decision. We didn’t know enough about the freemium space. It was very hard to compete with all the big boys like Candy crush, and another 10,000 popular free apps.

Time: Took 10 months to make
Cost to Develop: Mid $xx,xxx
Total Revenue: Mid-High $xx,xxx
Biggest Mistake: We could have sold it (instead of going free), and made a lot more. Another issue is we lacked launch promotion.


A couple major factors help with your apps success

1. The Launch:
For these types of apps, it’s ALL about the launch. From our experience these apps make the same amount in month 1, then they do month 2-12.
ex: Make $30,000 in launch month (January), then you’ll make another $30,000 from February - December. For $60,000 total.

2. Quality Apps:
A quality app that feeds a demand and is built by pro’s will ALWAYS have a much better launch then shittier apps.

3. Network Connections:
Knowing other people in the industry, especially blog & magazine writers etc is crucial!

Combining the 3 things above is the plan for success and big money within the App industry if you’re going the ‘branded’ route.

There’s a bunch of other routes, 1 route i like to call the ‘affiliate style route’ which is making MANY apps and cross promoting them all.

PART2 will explain how you can get into the App business and make a lot of money by explaining all the other app routes to take.

Current state of the app stores

- You can’t just launch an app put it in the app store and hope for the best because you think it's a good app. It’ll get swallowed in the app store. Whether it’s iOS or Android. You need some sort of promotion plan. Bigger the better!

- Having your apps professionally translated in other languages is crucial. It’s becoming a lot more popular now to completely re-develop your app for all foreign countries. There’s companies now that take your apps and completely re-develop them for countries like China and Japan. It’s totally worth it and we’ll be doing it in the future.

- Choosing if your app should be paid or free is a MAJOR decision. You need to decide it early on in app development, and if you’re going free, you better be an expert in freemium apps. Just having a couple nice in app purchases won’t cut it anymore.

- Quality apps get the press. You’ll very rarely see a low quality app get any press. There’s too many good apps developed by industry pro’s these days. If you plan on finding someone on Odesk to make your app for $6k, you better have a VERY good promotion plan, otherwise it’s unlikely you’ll app will be seen by more than 1000 people.

Lets talks money

- Did you know the top apps in the iOS app store make $5million A DAY!? Candy Crush and Clash of Clans have reported ~$2.5mil in revenue a day from in app purchases, and ~2.5mil a day from in app ads.

- Free apps (usually games) generally make the most money. The top ones have VERY good in app purchase strategy’s alongside $xx,xxx+ a day in advertising.

- Other types of app still make tons of money. A scanning app (take a photo of a document, replaces a scanner) just released they’ve hit 3 millions downloads, and their app cost $7.

I’ll end on one note. These are all examples of the most popular apps. There’s over a billion apps, and 99% make $0/day. So it’s not all sunshine and free money when making apps, but apps are a new industry thats here to stay and has it’s obvious advantages.

PART 2 coming soon…

---

Awesome info mate. Sounds like this was a success given that it was a brand new industry to you, you've gathered a lot of data.

Question tho, did you monetize your own ad space and run affiliate offers, or sell it to a broker? I'd think if you designed the app around a niche you could capitalize on app installs and carrier billed offers for more revenue.

---

Would you say that a first approach to Apps' business is to buy good/promising Apps with 0 success (due of lack of marketing skills of the coder), improve it and relaunch it ?

---

This is gold! Definitely planning on getting into the App business. Thanks for the share.

I always wondered why there is no advertiser/merchant section in here

Cheers

---

It's a nice thought, but selling things directly in your app is the main goal, or selling the app itself (it sells to all countries, carriers etc.. + direct easy 1 click billing). You can pair it with your own affiliate advertising, but you get such a mix of traffic from all countries etc.. that advertising your own offers would be pretty hard. Also you'll get a lot of bad reviews.

Nope, i don't think thats common. I would create something from the ground up even if its improving on another apps ideas.

---

How many hours did you think you put in for each app? I know you mentioned they took 10-12 months to build, but I'm guessing that is mostly building time.

---

How many downloads?

---

Ever think about making google glasses apps? Could be big when those things take off.

---

Personally I'm not sure, 2-3 discussions per week usually lasting an hour each. The first one was more work though because we sat down and designed the whole UX on paper, which wasn't necessary but its something we wanted to do since we had a really good idea of it in our heads.

1st app = low xxx,xxx downloads

2nd app = mid xx,xxx downloads

Never crossed my mind, i'm not really a fan of them classes. I got to wear them for a bit this year in Cali. Think they'll take off?

---

I think they have a good chance with google backing them and integration with androids. or who knows they could go they way of the segway. But whoever comes out with the first good apps for them will probably make $$$.

---

How are you generating your rev. Currently i have launched FREE android game app.And its ranked top 10 in top new games/apps in the country that i launched in.But the ECPM's from the ads that i have is pretty low. We launched 2 weeks ago and already have 5k installs but the reveneue that we get is like $0.30-$1 ECPM. So around 10$ for 5k installs. Its completely free app. Maybe we should add in app purchases hmm. So from the game app u generated $XXXXX from XXXXX downloads is taht from only in app purchases or also ads ? Tnx for this thread

---

I've done 2 games for iPhone to date. I've been going it alone and its a huge learning curve. If you want to go that route, my advice would be to not spend too much on your first game. Its VERY competitive and I agree with Jordan - you need a marketing plan otherwise you will bomb out. My first game is pretty good but it only did about 2000 downloads. Its now dead in the water. If you don't get traction in the App store early on then you probably won't ever. With games you really have to study successful games and figure out why they are successful.

Its an expensive exercise of you want to make quality games. There's always a very real chance that you might not get close to making back your initial investment.

The most important thing you can do is to network with people who are already successful with games. If you get your monetization strategy right, then you can use your AM skills to buy traffic and be profitable.

---

thats unbelievable.. do you think that when they were designing and programming these apps that they ever thought it would bring in this kind of cash? I doubt it.. just goes to show that taking action and putting in work can pay off more than you would ever imagine. and you'll never know if you dont try.

ps. props on the successful apps stackman, diversity is always good for the cash flow

---

wow I didn't know apps were in the millions of $ daily revenue. definitely so many opportunities out there. especially as mobile technology advances I'm sure people will really be able to develop some crazy apps soon.

---

http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstens...any-supercell/

These guys know what they are doing. They where all working for Digital Chocolate and Clash of Clans and Hay Day are "copies" of Galaxy Life. Same game style & economy. The genius is that Hay Day is aimed at women and Clash of CLans at men. In theory they could double their reach with the same game just using different graphics/style. LOTS of games copy their model now so there is definitely a "formula". Monetizing is a BIG part of freemium games and these guys have it down to a science.

---

A quite funny story (from 2009)

iPHONING MY WAY TO RETIREMENT $.70 AT A TIME

---

1st app was sold (iOS users pay for apps a lot more than Android users)
2nd app was free with in app purchases, and it would have done better if it was paid

---

Yep, the 2 things can definitely be put together. You need to work a REALLY good game though with an even better monetization strat

Yep, it turned out well. I put a ton of hard work into it though, lots of mapping things up on paper, solving hundreds of problems we ran into etc.. It's a fun area too, and it's just starting

---

part 2?

---

Interested too..

---

Will have it by end of next week, promise

---

I am also in mobile app business. I created an app for blackberry.

It's doing $200,000 a month. I never put anywork in that. Created it in free time after job hours.
Cost of development and maintainance is $500 a month. I have no team.

Thanks for your insights. I will borrow some of your ideas to increase my app revenue.

---

What app ?

---

Part 2?

---

OMG were is part 2 ????

---

I think Stackman is on it!

---

All right, i'll stop delaying. I'll have it by Tuesday. Working on it now

---

Thread turned epic after david wikes posted in it.

---

Do it do it!

---

Part 2 plsssss!

---

DONE

Part 2
>> http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...rt-now)-Part-2

---

David Wikes, you have thrown a bomb into this thread...could you throw some light into what kind of app and what strategy you are following?

---

Home > Affiliate Marketing Forum >