How much might a game like Line Zen or Ball Jump be making per day?

How much might Line Zen: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ketchapp.theline2&hl=en

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/the-line-zen/id951346423?mt=8

or Ball Jump: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ketchapp.balljump&hl=en

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/ball-jump/id1021634838?mt=8

be making per day?

They are free with ads with in app purchases. Both have downloads in 1-5 millions range in play store. I don’t know how many they have in App Store.

Since those are low retention games they prob make 2 cents per download on android and 4 cents per download on IOS with ads and IAPs combined.

hi Baksai,

can you tell us how you arrived that those figures?

they don’t seem very promising at all. if a game like that reaches ~1 million downloads, they would make ~$20k only.

Based on personal and other devs experiences. I have an arcade game as well that has 380k downloads and make 1.5 -2 cents per user. Retention is bad though, even for its genre, so maybe ketchapp´s games reach 3-4 cents per download on android… Well, that would depend on the demographics as well, US installs could make 5 cents easily, while others less than 1 cent…

I believe those numbers on iOS are quite low. On my short experience on iOS, average eCPM is close/over $10, and with the users willing to spend money on in-apps… On the other hand, the numbers on android are more close to reality :wink:

Revenue will mainly depend on the demographics. And with no of install you are only getting the total no of installs. If the installs are mainly from tier 1 countries, those apps can make decent revenue.

Can concur. WordHero has 3mil downloads and the lifetime revenue per user is under $0.20 … AND this includes 2011 and 2012 when the app was featured and got most of its downloads and you could get $2 ecpm for banners…

I had to get a day job… :frowning:

hi, yesterday i played your game : WordSearch Hero , and i’m just curious , what went wrong ? i mean the game is really great , Good UI , GP screenshots looks nice , but for some reason it didn’t get a lot of downloads , considering how awesome this game , it should have by now around 500k installs…

Yes, I spent 14months doing that game. The avatar creator and full reskinning dynamically based on a class of int’s instead of including graphics are groundbreaking for android.

The problem is that Google Play is broken. It follows a ‘winner takes all’ model. If you are in the top-10, you stay there due to organic downloads. If you are in position 500, it is VERY VERY hard to climb up unless your game gets featured or goes viral (even harder!).

Why did you have to get a day job if WordHero alone has made USD$600.000 ? I guess your opportunity cost is higher?

Simple math:

Boston (USA) salary to match my previous job: $100k/yr (this is NOT a lot over here) for 3 years = 300k
Outsourcing + server costs + contractors over last 3 years = $100k
Profit = 200k less taxes = $140k

20% deposit of 3 bedroom house is > $140k here… so WordHero profit + savings were used.

So, WordHero allowed me to match my previous salary and pursue my dreams for 3 years and be an Indie… and paid for the deposit on our house where we hope to live for the next 15 years while raising kids.

And now I am MUCH more employable due to Android experience :slight_smile:

Now, if I lived somewhere SUPER cheap (indonesia/india/africa/etc)… I would have had lots of cash and I might have gone another route… fast car, etc, etc :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

And WordHero + the other apps are still making around $5.000/month right?

Yes. Almost all the revenue comes from WordHero. The others do not even cover the server costs for that month. However, when interviewing, it is VERY important to have shipped more than one app, so I won’t unlist them.

I am thinking to rewrite one App… was made for android 2.1 :slight_smile: make it up to date. @mind how long the users kept your game? Lifespan of the game in average?

I would recommend that you do NOT make the mistake of comparing your app to WordHero. WordHero is more addictive than drugs.

Some users have > 10k games played (@ 3 minutes/game). Others have played for > 3 years.

This is what the average users per day has looked like for the last 6 months with new downloads of around 200-300/day.

But do you also see some decrease in user base sometimes? My best game got about 600k active installations and I was really schocked when its user base decreased for the first time. Fortunately it was futured by Google and recovered and got even stronger that time. Unfortunately it did only last as long as it was featured. Now it is decreasing again and I’m really afright it might be over for it now.

Do you also see this happening? I do not think it will reach zero as it seems to have some potential as otherwise it would never have achieved that numbers but it still makes me feel very uncomfortable as it delivers the most income and the income is highly depended on new downloads and the current user base. What is your experience? You got some much bigger timespan to watch at.

EDIT: Maybe my game is also just interesting for some days and that is another issue. Not sure how to compensate that though. Your game seems much more stable.

Some picture of the stats (showing active users for 6 months, game was launched this year and you can see how it got more active users over time but is fluctuating a lot and right now decreasing):

@Dummie

My experience is that unless one of the following happens, it will continue to decrease:

  • gets media attention
  • gets featured
  • gets installs from ads you pay for

Sucks… but there it is… :frowning:

WordHero has been at 200-300 installs/day for the last year. I have no idea how you spike from 60k users to 120k users…

That are some bad news.

Well there are some different reasons for the spike. One reasons is that I added a multiplayer mode to my singleplayer game. Another reason is that it got featured by Google multiple times. I really don’t know why it got featured. I really think that the apps are not picked by humans but by some algorithm and I got lucky multiple times.

Also note that the stats above do not show downloads but active users.

does anyone know how many iOS downloads a game like Line Zen would have got? On Play Store it is clearly visible, but on App Store it is not. Even the number of ratings on the App Store are really weird. I have heard people saying they have 100,000s of installs but have only aroun 200 ratings (all versions). Is there a way to estimate?

How would you tell about Line Zen or Ball Jump for example?

Sometimes apps start getting momentum on its own. I have an app that was 3 months old and getting 20 downloads/day but it started increasing slowly during 3 months, and ended getting 19k downloads its best day. I did not do anything, not even updated it. So “miracles” still happen ;-).

But its true, in 99% of the cases the app will decrease and decrease unless something extraordinary happens