Is this forum dead now?

Is this forum no longer a forum talking on latest android happenings, revenues, ads, fill rates and all??

Either all of you started getting huge ads revenue and no longer give a shit to read and write the posts OR all of you are suddenly lost interest in the topics OR found some other forum. What is true from the above?

All I see on “What’s new” section every day is just spam posts. There is almost no human writing here anymore. I really want to find another similar good forum but till now I haven’t succeeded and I’m stuck with this shit :(.

Nothing to write about, mobile apps market in overall is start to decline, too much failed apps, so started to look into other area.

Just to add on, new apps are very difficult to success now, so there won’t be much new users in this forum.

Some old forumers that I know had been banned from play store because running some ads code flagged as virus.

I am willing to talk more about mobile apps market if you interested, since you are one of the old forumer here too.

Hi, as mentioned mobile apps market is starting to decline.
Anyone of you still earning a decent revenue daily from android apps/games?
How many percent decline in revenue as compared to the past?
Personally, my revenue dropped about 20% as compared to 2017.

Not sure about what is decent revenue, it was a subjective question. But 20% drop is normal, not because it was January/February, it was simply people doesn’t use much apps now, Apple / Google stock is declining a lot in the past few days due to weaker than expected revenue.

Hi,
Its good to see responses from old forumers like you.
Thanks @ardi and @shuiwo.

Well i agree that apps business is not that easy these days. Lots of fake and similar apps are pumped everyday. Demand and supply ratio is not the same as it was 2 years ago.
But users are still using the apps and greater options are available for them on the store.
They are more selective nowadays. Want high quality apps with less intrusive ads.

So bottomline is apps business is pretty much alive and worth, but competition is more and user really wants to opt for low ads apps and high quality apps.

Since more apps are available, so obviously ads revenue is also distributed among the apps, hence less ads revenue these days.

Still many developers like me are alive with good apps revenue and updating the apps with latest trends.

I was making 300+ USD per day 1-2 years ago.
But now i am making 200 average daily with same number of apps. Using Admob and FAN networks.
Banner/Interstitials/Native ad formats i am using.

What about you guys?

Well, I can confirm what @gcc is saying but with a little difference: I think that the google algorithms are now responsible for the high-quality apps going up and not the people being more selective (maybe this last factor incides 20% - 30% but not more than that I think). For me every year was better than the precedent. Recently i released an app that was immediately liked (67% retention after first day and high rate) from which I earned about 22K$ in three months. At dicember I surpassed 1k$/day as average revenue (with a maximum of 1370$/ day) but given the sesonal behaviour of my 15 apps, now I’m expecting to reach at middle febrary the minimum revenue of the year that is about 130$/day (yes, 1/10 of december) . For me the android market is growing and I must say that I’m really satisfied.

I think it depends on the countries you are targeting, I do agree some countries still can growth much, like those emerging countries, but not in advanced countries like United States:

US consumer download 0 app per month - https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-still-download-zero-apps-per-month-says-comscore/

You get more downloads in the expense of others getting less downloads - https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/the-mobile-app-gold-rush-may-be-over/

Even China is not growing in terms of phone sales - https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/25/chinas-smartphone-market-is-no-longer-growing/

Edit: This is my personal opinion - The overall revenue is growing slow, but number of apps is growing exponentially, so we got more supply than demand in many countries. And you can get more revenue, but it wasn’t the apps market growing, it is you taking cut from other developer’s downloads.

@ardi Your retention rate is very inspiring to me. Can you tell how many overall downloads you got when you earned 22K$ in 3 months.

Yes, before this app I couldn’t believe that 67% was possible to achieve… that was a big surprise for me. The total number of downloads from 1st November is almost 500k. The number of impressions about 3.5 mil and the ecpm about 6.2$. Geo: Russia 15% , Ukraine 8%, USA 6.5%, Germany 6.4%, Poland 5.2% … From USA i got an astonishing 23.21$ ecpm! translated to almost 7k$ just from them. I couldn’t believe that this skyrocket ecpm was possible in these days. Germany 11$ ecpm and Russia 5$. I think that these great numbers are related to the fact that people like the app very much and this cause them to feel more confident to click on the ads and procede further. I have other similiar apps (with 50% retention on first day) that dont get even a third of that ecpm and others that barely get 1/5 of that ecpm from the same countries… I actually use just native FAN + native Admob as backfill. 90% of the income comes from FAN. FAN have became really strict about their policy ultimately and if they see some ad units close to buttons or if there are some accidental clicks from some kid they can susped the ad serving on that placement ad - it happend 1 time with one of my apps due to some kids clicking I think.

Wow, this forum is speaking again and can see old forumers are back.
I wish to talk more and more on android.
All the experience sharing either bad or good keeps the motivation high and on the similar side learning is achieved from the mistakes.

@ardi, your aquisition stats are great.
Looks like you are using native ads only which are less intruisive than interstitials and more revenue giving than banners(ofcourse less than interstitials).
May be thats the reason that users are keeping your app and your revenue is high.
Additionally may be you are translating the store description and strings.xml files to local languages and localized graphics.

Any comparison between FAN and Admob eCPM for US and Germany?

Any promotion methods which are effectove these days? Keyword install or direct link install?

I earn $22K only after getting 1.5M Downloads. I usually get a lot of downloads, but I didn’t earn more per download, Can you DM me your app link? I want to learn how that much retention rate is possible.

Hi, I’m new in this forum and in the apps market in general.
I started developing apps as a full time activity on September 2016, after leaving my job. I was being paid 800 euros net per month, that is very low considering I’m an electronic engineer, so the decision wasn’t so hard to be taken. With very few skills in programming, I started to acquire the specific notions for developing an Android app (linux tools, design patterns, concurrent programming, some notion of xml and Gradle, …). On February 2017 I published an app with AdMob ads. Since October the app is giving me the same amount of money of my previous job.
If I succeeded in doing this, maybe the Android market is not decreasing.

@gcc from admob I got Russia 1.52$, USA 7.89$, Germany 2.43$, France 4.87$ ecc. Obviously this is for the November-December-January period. Anyway admob interrupted the express native ads so for now you cannot create a native ad unit for your app. I think that when they release the advanced native ad, maybe I will get 30-50% better results because the express native ads really sucks. I have not translated any app string to local language, just the store on some language as usual. Talking about promotion… here the point is that promotion have sense only with good apps. For example I’ve done a 600$ promotion on an app some months ago when I lauched it and I really throw that money away. It’s retention sucks (35-40%) and no matter how money you spent, keywords install you buy or God praying you make, it will return to the place that google algorithm thinks the app deserve (in this case I’m making 3-5$/day with this app). At least in my case it works this way. On the other hand, I’ve also spent 600$ on the successful app (+cross promotion) and it’s just like jumping in time. The good app will anyway succeed but without the promotion it will need maybe 2-5 months so practically you are buying 2-5 months of activity for that app.

@vivek9 Yes you are right, for me too this is the first time I’m seeing so high ecpm. On the other apps I usually get lower or much lower ecpm. Regarding your request for the app link - are you kidding me :smiley: . I would never do that :D.

@_developer Hi, ehmmm what a coincidene… I’m also an engineer and my story is really similar to yours :D. I also quit my 1500$/month job 1.5 years ago and I dedicated my self completely to programming. I’m at an excellent financial conditition right now thanks to those 15 apps and I’m going to start a small startup with 3 or 4 employee on the next months. I’m still a little confuse on what type of programming should I go for but I hope I’ll find a way.

well i too left the job some 3 years ago. but situation was little different. i was like keeping my feet in 2 boats at the same time.
It was like Job and Android apps at the same time. I was about to be kicked off because of my office work ignorance and to be little more graceful i left it on my own :cool:

@ardi, Thanks for sharing these details. yours eCPM is really good. I just checked mine it was $3.75 in December and $2.72 in this month.
I am working more on ASO these days. I never touched it for last 3 years and it looks so shit. so thinking of replacing them with new trends.

My store screenshots are just plane without any feature explanation on on them, Store listing is week, Video is very very poor. So have to do it for all my 13 apps.
working on language translation also. got few paid translation. i am hoping that in that way retention and new users might be attracted little more.

After that lots of work on bugs removal. It will take around 2-3 months for me to work on new apps :confused:

Any of you any idea with IOS Apps? I am planning to work on them too.
Which mediation and ads format you are using? users are so irritated of showing interstitial in the beginning loading screen.

I’m glad to know I’m not alone. Few people agreed with my decision.
I want to share my statistics too.
I have two interstitial and a banner. One interstitial is in the app’s start, after a splash screen. It is not shown every time due to long loading time. Considering the last 100 days the eCPM is $4.85.
The banner is shown every time with an update rate of 30 seconds. The eCPM is $0,30.
The other interstitial has a very low CTR and its performance is 1/10 of the first one. I’d like that only CPM ads would be shown from that unit. I tried to use mediation with Smaato, that is one of the ad network supported by AdMob without adding new SDK. I set it in the first position with an eCPM minimum value of $1.50, but doing so the fill rate was very low.
I’d like to try other ad networks and I’m thinking about to give Appodeal a try.

Developing for IOS was one of my thoughts, but I’m worried about the restrictions on the publishing process, because my app doesn’t have a good design. For porting my app to IOS I need to buy a Mac and an iPhone, and a lot of time to learn the operating system, new tools and new programming language. It would be a real disappointment if they did not let me publish the app after all this.

@_developer
Thanks for sharing the stats.
I have heard a lot about smato,heyzap and appodeal mediations.
Are you seeing big difference in revenue with and without the mediation?
Checked Interstitials eCPM in Admob without mediation and Interstitials eCPM with smato mediation? How much is the difference?

IOS development needs lots of resources like macbook and iphone. It needs lots of swift and objective C learning too.
Is it worth? No idea.
But i have heard a lot like first time app review and updates afterwards takes lot of time. May be they check it manually.
Sometime they even reject the app saying that nothing new about the app and such apps already available. Apps updates may be rejected if certain layout rules are not followed.

After this long struggle, downloading is very low in IOS store in comparison to android and IOS users hates the ads too :laughing:

Anyway share the experiences if you got any.

I didn’t notice any differences, because setting a minimum value causes the most impressions to be done by AdMob. The Smaato console is very bad. It needs a lot of time (respect to AdMob) for querying data from a long period and I can’t see the money they own me. I didn’t give my bank address until the last month and I think I’ve lost the money the own me before that. It’s not a big lost, I think it is around $20.

I took a pause from the market a long time ago.
My revenue did decline a bit about 5% from previous year but I guess it is normal due to no updates or whatsoever.

I might come back but I just love the relaxing life and being out door.
Thanks to Android I became financially independent and I could never work a day in my life again if I wish.

My advice would to you is to learn the rules and break them.
Do this short term.
I don’t think the era of 2011 will ever come back to Android, the small none established developers like us will never win against the big players.

I have noticed at the play store that some search terms and indexed to a specific app.
That shows how Google is manipulative like it always been, and I think it will keep going downhill for all of us.

" You will never be rich or financially independent as long as you are working for someone else."

Good luck everyone!