Bye bye Android development, will revenue ever increase to what it used to be?

So, as many of you are experiencing a huge decrease in revenue this year, what are your plans if this is how it is going to be forever due to the saturation of apps on the app store etc.

I cannot live with a 1/4 of my normal revenue. If I was making $500 a day, then maybe yes, this revenue decrease would suck but at least you would still be able to live off of it. But for those of us who aren’t making that much off of our apps, and are relying on it as a major source of income, what do we do? what are your plans?

I’ve also thought about making more apps, but I don’t have tens of thousands to spend each month getting it out their. My apps at the moment that generate me the most revenue were uploaded back in 2013 when the app market wasn’t as comprised of thousands of spammy apps, thus, they had a much higher chance of actually ranking for keywords that got searched. And Apps that I make now just get buried in the app store and rank nowhere.

Another question: What apps make you the most money? Apps that were uploaded most recently(2014 - 2015), or apps that you uploaded when the app store wasn’t as saturated e.g 2010 - 2013.

Lets discuss this below.

I start upload app on 2013, but the apps earn the most are published on 2014 and 2015.

This business always was and continues to be very shaky - you never know if your next app will succeed or be a flop. Saturation of the market makes it definitely harder than it was a few years ago, expectation of quality is higher too which drives the cost of making a new app/game up. I have a few contingency plans if it all goes to hell, skills I work on that would allow me to branch to a different area (like graphics or audio). I have the advantage of living in a country where $15k per year is not that bad and you can live comfortably with $30k. In worst case scenario I will go back to freelancing as a programmer. I will never go back to a normal job though, I hate office work (office job brought me to a mild depression once, so I avoid it like the plague). :slight_smile:

Experienced Lead Android programmers are getting offers > $150k/year here in Boston … so ducking out of making games and going back to the real world is an option…

ya android/ios income can’t be as huge as $150K a year unless you have multiple hit apps/games like
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=INFOLIFE+LLC
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Alkaline+Labs
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Ketchapp

@pongman - you are naive if you think Ketchapp makes only $150k a year. They don’t make the games though, they are a publisher for games made by other developers.

I agree. yes ketchapp is super hot name at this time. more publishers and less developers has actually resulted in the current state of apps. getting a reskined app ready for publishing is a child’s play and is considered a low profile job, publishing and promoting apps is tough in 2015 and its the work where money can be made.

You would be surprised what sort of income a single game can bring in… cough … Candy Crush… cough … even if it was IOS or Android only…

The thing with app development is it can be done from anywhere. A typical freelance developer in Eastern Europe or India will be content earning $1000 or so a month, and if the app is good the users won’t care who made it. Developers in richer countries simply can’t compete with that on price.
My advice would be either to get a job as a developer, or do freelance app development for companies in your area. You can use a portion of that money to finance promotion of apps you develop in your free time, and if one app takes off then you’re set, and if none of them do, you still have a career.

i am making $150 per day on an average and few high quality apps in pipeline.

i will convert my hit apps on IOS as well. so as per these plans i might hit $200+ in few months.

this money is more than good in india and regular job in India can have this much money only if you have a work experience more than 15-20 years.

mind, the thing with candy crush is the well thought out user acquisition plan. You have no lives left in the game?, spam your FB friends to ask for life and some of them will install the game to check out what this fuss is all about. So you have 4 users onboard from 1 user on an average hence you can place a bid of $4 on ad networks to get users. That’s how indie devs don’t stand a chance against candy crush.

The above trick is excellent but only few indie dev take the pain to think how to acquire users. user acquisition is much tougher job than developing apps and games.

thats one of at least 10 techniques candy crush uses to acquire users. and 1 user doesn’t magically become worth 4x. if it was that easy, everyone would do it.

Care to list all the user acquisition tricks CC uses that you can think of ?

Well, last months in android gamedev made me think what to do. In 2013 I made a game that made it to the top 10 in many top tier countries in Christmas season and I remember that on 25th of December it made 2500 usd alone. In one day. 100 000 downloads. Now I watch as my revenue goes up a bit and then downloads on next Monday just fall to new lows despite anything I do. I make by far better games today but they sometimes do not get any downloads at all. Well at least this adventure paid off my 30 years mortgage loan and left me with some savings - should be enough for a vegetable shop or a cafeteria :slight_smile:

Yeah, things are getting too bad. I read an article, saying that 1.6% of all developers earn multiple times more than the rest. Sometimes no matter how awesome your app is, users just don’t find it. Big companies are getting all the pie. Seems like we are going to end up working in one of them one day

It’s more and more difficult. Maybe Google will start to delete some apps in Google Play as the market is saturated with bad apps. Now we have a choice: spam a lot or make quality app. For the later, success is not guaranteed infortunately :slight_smile:

With quality games that are cross-platform you can always see success on another platform. At least I hope. If not, I’ve just wasted 6 months. :smiley: