Tapjoy has now started showing video ads as well - however those only pay $0.01-0.02 according to tapjoy and they are not that common (i.e. not huge inventory).
So I guess you cannot rely on there always being a good/fast way to earn $0.01-0.02 by having user just see some ad. Though realistically, user clicking on “Download and run this app” seems to be the baseline for “user effort”.
That is, one can talk about “how should I price” the app - by how long it takes the user to earn that amount (and whether it is even realistic to earn that amount via Tapjoy offer).
There are other Tapjoy offers which are more complex - like downloading a game and finish the tutorial (usually means the first game) - these should not be too bad (and they pay 2x or 3x more than the baseline above) - however usually these games have 100MB+ sizes.
Then there are other more complex offers - like sign up for this or that (which I would stay away from myself).
Unlike monetization via Google payment (where some games offer 250,000 coins for $99 - and are probably targeting the “whales”), with Tapjoy you can only charge so much:
- up front
- during the lifetime of the app
I was recently considering this issue - whether to have each offer go a long way until user needs to do Tapjoy offer again.
OR whether each offer should only go so far, but something like $1 gets them everything.
The psychology behind it may go like this - from developer perspective, forcing a user to do tapjoy offers occasionally may seem like it is nicer, and just do for lifetime of user.
However a more realistic examination knows that many users maybe MORE pissed off at that, and may get into a Tapjoy-earning-frenzy and earn the whole thing and be done with it - i.e. the mental effort required for a user to switch away from an app and do a Tapjoy offer may favor having user do all the money earning at once. This strategy would suggest user earning from each tapjoy offer only going so far, but then the user may sense “I am only so far away from completely unlocking the app” (for example at $1 payment).
Another thing to add to this is that for many casual apps, the users will attrition away anyway - so may as well monetize them early. Although the stats for attrition maybe misleading as well, since it is possible that a fan of the app may pay more and continue using the app for longer - in fact it could be argued that it is EASIER to have existing paying users pay more - which suggests one should keep open the possibility to charge more (for non-games without a consumable item, it could be perhaps new features in an upgrade).
Of course for many games, just a $1 payment may not be enough if the user can be monetized for more (esp. for games which engage the users for weeks).