A better metric would be comparing Tapjoy earned revenue to daily active users (DAU).
If you have 3000 DAU and earn $15 or so that would probably place you close to what Leadbolt AppWalls plus AppBrain plus Admob banner etc. would pay (on the better day - ad revenue seems to be down recently).
The revenue with Airpush and StartApp seems to be higher as suggested by others here (though should factor in loss of downloads, and reduced ratings due to notification ads etc.).
The question is - with Tapjoy if one can get like $100 revenue per day from 3000 DAU.
Or even $30 revenue per day from 3000 DAU - that would be $1 revenue per 100 DAU.
$1 revenue from Tapjoy would mean about 20 tapjoy offers (of the “download and run this app” type) were completed - since these pay about $0.05 to $0.085 per offer.
But 20 tapjoy offers were completed for 100 DAU is a very high conversion rate to expect !! Now it could be that some of these offers were multiple ones done by the same user - so maybe you could say that it was 10 users earning 20 tapjoy offers - from the total 100 DAU daily active users.
The question is - can your app convince 10% of your daily users to complete one Tapjoy offer at least ?
The numbers do not add up (in terms of comparison with ads) - and suggests that ads may continue to be a strong revenue component. And in-app payment solutions like GetJar and Tapjoy may supplement it but may not blow the ad revenue out of the water.
Currently the ad networks - Admob banner ads + AppBrain exit appwall + Leadbolt AppWall can generate close (or half of this on better days and quarter or less on low revenue days like is happening these days).
With Airpush notification ads + StartApp (home screen icon + browser home page + browser default search page) - it seems the revenue is considerably more - but you have to contend with the negative impact on ratings, and on downloads (I don’t have a clue how much that can be).
But it would seem that currently you CANNOT do better than these ad networks with the GetJar/Tapjoy type of schemes.
This suggests also that an app should perhaps NOT rely completely on the Tapjoy stuff for revenue (for example if it features no ads).
One may then ask that why then do IN-APP payments (Google Payments) work out well - the answer may lie in the ease of payment when users pay with cash.
True, that users may not want to pay (on android notoriously uneasy about paying cash - less so on Apple products it is suggested) - however one area where GetJar/Tapjoy CANNOT compete with IN-APP payments with cash is the “whales”. With GetJar/Tapjoy you just CANNOT charge the whales.
With cash there is great concentration of power - it is like gasoline for cars - vs. batteries for cars - i.e. it is MUCH easier for users to pay $5 for something which they like (a must-have app perhaps) - than earn $5 worth of GetJar/Tapjoy stuff !!
To earn $5 on GetJar/Tapjoy you would have to download and run about … 50 apps !! That is clearly not something a user would do on a every-other day basis !
And this is the value of cash payments - there are apps which offer coins for $9.99 - and even more.
And there are users who can pay such cash.
This SEVERELY limits the value and prospects of the GetJar/Tapjoy type schemes - sure they may work for GetJar/Tapjoy - but from developer point of view they can be nothing more than one-of-many ways to earn revenue from an app.
All this discussion was for 3000 DAU apps - and of course if you have a hit app, that makes it possible to earn respectable income just from banner ads even !
But the question being examined in this post is - how to make the second tier of apps workable and profitable for developers ?
Even these 3000 DAU (or 1500 DAU) apps are typically ones which are not complete crap - and have taken 2-3 months to make.
If the economics do not work out for this second-tier - then the ecosystem will ONLY survive if there is HYPE of riches on the app markets - as happens with entrepreneurial efforts - i.e. the society motivates folks in college, high school to pursue arcane efforts (often low paying i.e. engineering, science - compared to the jobs that rich folks may suggest to THEIR kids - who maybe pushed towards finance etc.). This societal hype allows magazines to highlight successful entrepreneurs and NOT the failure entrepreneurs (just like hollywood and the trade press will highlight the up and coming actresses - but not the down and out ones - who probably outnumber the successful ones by 10x).
The question is - can such a dynamic work for the app industry ? Can Google and others motivate new and upcoming developers sufficiently so that the societal effort to train folks for app building is justified ? Will convincing 90% of the folks building apps to continue to build apps survive if only 10% earn the bulk of the income ?
My own feeling is that it will ALWAYS be beneficial if the revenue prospects could be improved - I would think the current revenue figures should probably be 10x the numbers we currently have - they are obviously not going to become 10x from ads alone - or from GetJar/Tapjoy. But they CAN be so from IAP - thanks to the “whales”.
Unfortunately Google has chosen to not allow some locations to earn from the whales (Google Payment not available everywhere) - what is odd is that Apple is able to do so - so why not Google ? Why so slow ?
We saw above that $1 from 100 DAU is close to what ad networks will give - on good days.
However, when you use your android phone - how much would you be willing to pay the developer just to download their app ? Would you pay $0.01 ? It would be NOTHING - sure you would pay that (if the payment process was seamless). Would you pay $0.05 - possibly - and possibly this would be the high end of what you would pay for a blind download.
$0.05 per download would be equivalent to $5 per 100 DAU (i.e. 5x higher).
So it is clear that the potential for revenue lies in cash payment - all the other avenues (ads, push notifications, home screen icons) - have other constraints - i.e. pissing off users with uncertain and sometimes unsafe ad types.
Now the question - would it be fair if developers were given revenue for download of their apps (say if user used it for more than 2 days - this way the crap scam apps would not earn revenue).
It seems unlikely now, but change the question and ask - what if GOOGLE was offering these apps for download - for populating of their app store ?
Would Google have charged for the downloads ?
I would suggest they WOULD have - currently the ability to populate an app store - not just with best-of-breed apps - but with all sorts of apps - would be a GARGANTUAN tasks which NO company could do efficiently.
Yet if Google WERE able to offer such apps - it would likely not be a free download.
So the question to ask is - why is Google expecting the free download model to work for app developers ?
A factor not included in this discussion is the growth of mobile user base - this MAY be the factor which changes the whole discussion - as the 10x factor so sought out above MAY emerge from the 10x rise in user base.
The other factor is that - and this will happen with the “success” of the app store - that if it is profitable it WILL become populated by more and more apps - and app discovery will remain a big obstacle i.e. there will remain some element of “zero-sum” game (i.e. not every developer can win) type of situation.
