How many downloads/impressions do you need to make some real money?

Hey my friends,

I’ve been working my ass off on a new Android game which I think will have a decent response.

I got into this to make some real money. At the end of my sweaty adventure I’ll want to have made atleast 10,000 USD. :cool:

I plan to publish it as a free game with ads (mostly interstitial).
I know that money is proportional to impressions and that it depends on where the views/clicks come from, etc.

Going by rough thumb rules, what do you fellas think? What is a good amount of downloads that will likely make a game with average publicity, etc. earn about 10k USD in a year? (Only if have x downloads do you think from your gut feeling that I will make 10k in a year. What is x?)

PS: I haven’t heard of any success stories except for Flappy Bird where the author supposedly used to make 50k a day. But that is an extreme case. What I don’t hear is how much other players make out there (e.g. Don’t tap the white tile, candy crush, smash hit, etc.)

Thanks!

For me approx 5000 daily installs results in daily $100 daily. Rest is simple mathematics.

p.s.: on IOS 1500 daily installs can make u $100 daily but getting installs on IOS after 7 days of launch is nightmare.

from our experience:

Tap the Box 370k downloads, ARPU (average revenue per user) : $0.03
Color Fill 2 60k downloads, ARPU: $0.065
Tap the white tile clone 25k downloads ARPU: $0.05

Most of these downloads come from UK, USA, Germany, Italy, France, etc

Conclusion: You will need somewhere between 100-250k downloads (from “good” countries) to make $10k

I dont know what it is but for my game, it is 4 to 1 in favor of Android over iOS. I make $250 through iOS and $1000 through Android with same amount of players on both platforms.

I would say you need about 300k downloads to make $10k in revenue from ads alone. Assuming an average of $4 eCPMs and $0.025 average revenue per user.

How aggressive do you plan on being with your ad serving?

i don’t understand how is it possible that you make those money with these numbers…i have a few apps on the store since 6 months and everyday my revenue is more or less the same, no matter how many people download it…every time i have more people downloading the games, the eCPM on those days is always much lower so that, in the end, i just get a few $ a day.

In the last 2 days, for example, for i don’t know which reason, i had a huge increase in downloads and the eCPM plummeted to the ground…a single app got 2k downloads in these 2 days and showing only interstitials (ad mob) or video ads (unity ads) i made a whooping 3$…0.71$ from 770 completed video on unity ads and 2.4$ for 2480 interstitial impressions (2.1% CTR and…0.9$ eCPM).

I would need 30k daily downloads to make anything out of it with these figures…

Fairly aggressive. As much as I can shove, without disrupting the gameplay too much. What do you suggest?

Oh that’s bad :confused:
I hope the others will tell us what might be wrong with your case.

Sounds like you want to do interstitials. That is a great way to capitalize on Google Play users. You can also utilize our compliant alert ad unit which does very well with Google play users due to its engaging nature. If you expand to non-GP markets then you can use push notifications, icon drops, and pop-ups, etc. Those will surely convert and be on the more aggressive side. Keep in mind that there is a fine line there.

You hit it on the head when you mentioned that you didn’t want to disrupt the gameplay. You’ll have to monitor user reviews on GP and other sites to ensure a seamless experience. Most users that download free games know that there will be advertisements. If you are too aggressive, then your users will let you know, as well as you install rate. So be vigilant there. Only you can decide what level of risk you prefer. NOTIFY can help you control this because we give you the ability to customize and set rate limits to your liking.

PM me so that we can help you get going and assists you with integration and ad serving. With our arsenal of ad units, we can be as passive or as aggressive as you would like. :slight_smile:

Cheers,

It will depend a lot on the countries your users will be from, and how engaging your game is.
On my best game I have only around 70 installs per day, less than 400 daily active users, but it still nets me around 30-50$ per day, which would be enough for you to make 10k in a year… but most of my users are from US/Canada/Europe.

Not bad stats. Is this a game or an app and which ad network do you use if you don’t mind?

It’s a game with AdMob intersticials only.

Wow pretty good for admob with your game. I guess solely it depends on the country of users.
In my case I have a game app that has roughly the same number of downloads and active users and it makes like 5$ a day. The difference is that the users are mostly from 3rd world (3rd tier) countries

Very impressive results. Why don’t you do some marketing