$XXX,XXX with mobile apps (How you can start now) [Part 2] (24)
$XXX,XXX with mobile apps (How you can start now) [Part 2]
[PART 1] >> http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...y-Story-Inside
This final part of the guide explains the 4 most popular app launching strategies.
If you took every app in the app store and categorized them into how they’re making money there's probably 6-8 main strategies. I understand some of the biggest strategies very well and i’ll explain them below.
1. The Branded Route
- This is usually a business app, workout app, photo related app or an indie game. 90% of the time they’re paid apps, and they get continuous press for the quality of their app. This keeps them in the app charts and makes these apps anywhere from $1million to $20million. Some examples with public figures:
Camera+: $8million
Scanner App: $21million
Badlands (game): $14mil - $21mil (they released number of downloads, but had some free promo days)
You need to focus on a great idea, and quality app build for this route. Can’t go finding someone on Odesk to build this.. you need quality, even 1 hiccup or error proves your app wasn’t built by a greatness. To get featured in the iOS store specifically they need to know your company/app is flawless and makes quality innovative products.
2. The Big Branded Freemium Game Route
- This you 99% of the time need a big team of experts on monetizing your app with a wicked in app purchase strategy. They don’t just say “upgrade your power ups”. It’s a endless funnel of things you need to purchase to excel within the game. Usually based around MMORPG style games. Think of World of Warcraft. For all these games you need to build up your empire, farm, house, boat collection etc.. and it’s endless.
- Sometimes it’s another genius style of monetization such as Candy Crush which only allows you to make 5 mistakes, if you make anymore you have to pay to continue playing or wait 30 minutes.
The majority of these games figure an average amount of $ they make per player, and then have advertising budgets well into the mid $xxx,xxx a day.
Clash of Clans: $5million /day
Candy Crush: $5million /day
(both are the top grossing iOS games for a long time)
.. The popularity of these apps are slowly being fazed out right now by higher quality indie games
3. Free Games w/ 'Sneaky In-App Purchases'
- Here you make a game, it must be challenging an addicting. A popular current style for this route is making bike games, where you fly down a hill, jump through hoops, etc.. It can be made for $10k - $30k, and can make you a LOT of money (keep in mind most companies fail because their game never catches on). The idea here is you make a game thats challenging and then offer in app purchases to make the game easier + more fun. So you’d make the bike keep falling down this 1 specific jump, then you have a popup in your game that automatically pops up 4minutes in and says “Buy the Magic Bike for $3.99 and never crash again”.
The missing ingredient is getting people to download your game.
I don’t have any figures on these games, but i’ve seen many of them in the top grossing section of the app store for months. A rough guesstimate would say they can make well into the $millions.
4. Funneling App-App Route
This route is similar to the one above. You can vary how good/challenging you want to make your game, and how aggressive your in app purchases are. The main catch here is once you figure out how to get people to your first few apps, then you scale big time! Repeat your launch process, and then start cross promoting your apps. Some game companies now have 150million+ players across all there apps. Then you can start cross promoting your free apps with paid apps etc… We’re talking mega millions of dollars.
- A great example of this is the company behind the promotion of 2048. The game was made by another company, but 2048 owns 50% of 2048 and a bunch of other games and cross promotes them all.
FINAL TIPS:
Biggest one is, you need a marketing plan. If you just make an app and put it in the store it’ll likely disappear forever. All apps have different marketing strategies.. some include SEO, SEO within the app store, Youtube advertising, in App bonuses for sharing the game, affiliate advertising budgets etc..
Networking in the app scene, but even more importantly networking with Apple and Android directly. You can contact both app departments and talk the talk with them if you have an interesting app. They will respond with insight, info and even ask to meetup if they see you’re making something GOOD.
It’s been a while since i wrote the first guide and the app store rapidly changes just like affiliate marketing. A new trend is emerging in the iOS app store where quality apps are more liked and talked about (via press) than free apps. I think this is the way of the future as shitty apps like Candy Crush get fazed out. A good example is 'Angry Birds GO' (Go cart racing game) came out and the game itself was great, but had a ton of freemium bullshit preventing people from playing it. It disappeared within weeks of launching and no ones heard about it since.
I know this isn’t a step by step plan on what you can do to make your first good app, but hopefully you can feel out the right path for you.
That's cool and all, but I have some real friends, who are making real money, not from 1 big branded app/game - but 100s of tiny, little apps that took less than a day to create each.
You gotta ask yourself, do you want to make money.. or do you want to make money? 
$XXX,XXX with mobile apps (How you can start now) [Part 2]
Great thread Stackman! I've been building a few myself, inspired by a few simple apps which have gone BIG!
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
You gotta ask yourself, do you want to make money.. or do you want to make money?
Originally Posted by 1eliotpapageorgio
100s of small campaigns = stable, diversified
google can nuke your app for no reason from the app store, whenever they feel like it - what if u have only one monster app -- u are F*&***
i roll the diversified stable way, less stress, i sleep better
but for each their own
$XXX,XXX with mobile apps (How you can start now) [Part 2]
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
You can build a nice business with a solid, branded, good quality app. What is even better you can sell it for crazy multiples.
Originally Posted by 1eliotpapageorgio
I am also an active member of the top android developers forum and there are countless threads of people complaining and sharing stories of big apps getting delisted from Gplay for no reason at all.
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
You gotta ask yourself, do you want to make money.. or do you want to make money?
Everyone's got a friend doing everything.
I take pride making quality apps with 5star reviews that people love.. that get featured by Apple, and praised on Tech blogs and Wired magazine.
With that said.. 100's of smaller apps CAN make a ton of money, but it's more common on Android, and we focus mostly on iOS. Also the "can" is a very important word in this process. You could easily make 300 smaller apps and have less than 5000 players total across all your apps. You need a promotion strategy.. a good one. Like every business it's not just as easy as creation.
Google nukes shitty apps that border copyright and apps with false claims... Another + of make good quality apps.
Good post! I'm interested in hearing why you're saying that Candy Crush is getting fazed out via a new trend besides just natural depreciation over time. Something like Angry Birds GO would be more so at fault in the actual type of freemium model it employs which always gets gripes with people - basically making it unplayable without paying for something. In affiliate terms its like they are TOO aggressive with the upsells and it turns people off. Games like Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans have a tonne of different variables that made them as successful as they are, but at least for Candy Crush, while its somewhat hard on an upsell its not that aggressive overall - you can definitely play the game without purchasing anything at all.
And by the way, I completely agree with what stackman is saying re: where the real money is being made. Not only do Google nuke those shitty apps, they will nuke any other apps associated with that account, and try and link up any other accounts and then blanket ban them all. If that happens you start from the very beginning. And really, there's a tonne more money being made employing the strategies that stackman is saying above, then just making really basic apps that capitalize on something - eg Justin Bieber Wallpapers. While you're somewhat right in saying that ultimately Google holds the power, its still in their best interest to keep something up of high quality since a popular app on iOS that is being ported, or only an exclusive on Android [they can dream], is a huge selling point for their system. I mean, imagine if the Facebook app was delisted from the Google Play Store because they're a direct competitor.....
Stackman - great post!
Are you doing games yourself, or more general apps?
Originally Posted by lavish
Originally Posted by caurmen
Stackman would you mind sharing the title of one or 2 of your apps?
I think it would be a good hands on for many of us to see exactly what your talking about...when it comes to apps
I'm going to keep them private, but here's a few that are very similar.
- Fantastical 2
- GoodReader
- Notability
..for games checkout
- 2 Dots
These are all on the iOS store, and most should be for Android too.
Apps like Fantastical 2 (a minimalistic but very useful style calender) have made around $3million - $6million in the year. It's also the most popular calender on iOS and has a Mac + iPad app.
Originally Posted by stackman
Much respect for making games work!
I usually advise people to steer clear of games if they're looking to make serious money, because it's such a competitive segment. Any specific tips for making games that actually engage and make profits?
Originally Posted by caurmen
There's 2 ways to compete unless you've got $few mil to spend setting up a company.
1. Make 5-10 games, and hope one takes off. Focus on the idea, and try partnering with companies (publishers) that can 'release' your game for you that take a cut. There's a bunch of popular ones and they help you get press, all they require is a cool game that works well.
2. The Indie scene. Something that focuses on SUPERB quality + uniqueness within the gaming industry. You really need to set yourself apart here with not only the idea, but with the artwork as well.
I think you forgot to mention another strategy - Blue chip incent bursts (with the philosophy: no matter what type of product do you have but you have $$$ marketing budget) which is still pretty huge for a guys with big bucks (I was previously working on 1 big burst bi-weekly for the advertisers for the worth of around 10-50k depending on a country - obviously non-US as it would cost much much more).
At the end its not relevant for STM, but this is the route what usually all the corporates who discover mobile apps are going 
I think for each gaming incent install you get 0.9 of organic user if the app makes it to the top chart in the category and 0.5 for non-gaming segment.
@Caurmen - I recently noticed huge upswing in core games as opposed to the trends of previous years (Casual game focus - Candy Crush type of games targeted on 30+ women in LatAm).
Check Fates Forever for instance (Tablet MOBA) - amazing product, amazing customer support and I think they are going on the way for big bucks
Ah yep for sure ^^.. just not an area i know super well
Good stuff. It's cool to see some folks around here working in the app space. I've been in the app business for about 2 years and I had success in building quantity games related to the games that are spending big money on advertising (i.e. candy crush a year ago). More recently switched to quality apps as the market has matured and gotten more competitive. I'm looking to expand into the traffic side of mobile gaming and getting up to speed around here.
For anybody in here taking the 'Branded route' for a game, Apptopia released a pretty insightful report recently.
Their conclusions were:
• Gamers are relatively insensitive to price in purchasing mobile game apps. Their willingness to purchase an app decreases slower than the increase in revenue
caused by the price increase.
• Price insensitivity must be balanced against loss in IAP’s and the impact of a larger user base to determine the optimal price to charge for an app.
• Arcade leads the pack in market size as measured by raw daily downloads, followed by Puzzle and Casual.
• When estimating market size based on daily download revenue, Arcade is at the top of the list, followed by Role Playing and Puzzle.
• Role Playing has the highest revenue per download and users are willing to spend almost 3x the average for one game app.
• If an app developer lands in the top 100 apps, on average they would expect less than $400/day in revenue, and closer to $200/day depending on which subcategory they are in.
• Puzzle is the most saturated subcategory with app developers and distinct apps in the Google Play Game world, followed by Casual and Arcade games.
• App developers wanting to create a quick and easy app with decent monetization should invest in Puzzle, Casual, and Arcade games, as they have lower barriers to entry and users spend quite a bit of money in those subcategories.
• App developers willing to invest more time and resources into development should invest it in creating a Role Playing game, as they have the highest payout per download and a high revenue market size.
• Simulation is an extremely profitable subcategory to enter, as it can be developed quickly but return high ROI due to user price insensitivity.
Check out the full report here:
https://apptopia.app.box.com/paid-game-apps-report
Originally Posted by imdutch
A rough example of how we played around with price VS downloads. For 1 of our paid apps.. we noticed a stable amount of daily downloads once the "launch" was done. Lets say it's roughly ~3000/month. That's 100 a day. It looked something like this when we edited the pricing.
Sales price VS amount of sales
$.99 x 100 sales
$1.99 x 80 sales
$4.99 x 50 sales
$9.99 x 25 sales
.. Then we found a sweet spot in between.
As you can see price increase correlates to more money with quality apps. We almost tried $49.99 once but just couldn't justify it!
it's a little bit old now but this video from a game developer in China was super interesting
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An
he talks a lot about the markets switch to freemium, and the cultural differences between pay2win in the east / west. Also a lot of insight into how to monetize in game using gambling / cosmetics / mechanics.
Another great watch is "Indie Game - The Documentary". It's a great doc if you have any interest in games/marketing.
Great thread guys! I've invested in a gaming studio a while back and we are releasing our first game soon. We are focused on pixel art, arcade like games. We are def focused on marketing and I will let you guys know what the results are soon.
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