Here is an example of a really crappy game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kmldrn.championsleague
Do you believe there is anyone who thinks this is a fun game?
How did this game get more than 100 000 downloads in less than a month? I don’t believe it’s paying for installs.
How it survive with UEFA trademarked logo in the icon and title. 
Soccer managers might be popular though? (I haven’t installed it so I don’t know if it is a real manager or just a total spam app)
There are lots of good soccer manager games on the market. And this isn’t a real manager. All it does is start playing a soccer game where you only see a text commentary when a goal is scored and you get to drag some controls: defend, middle, attack if you want to influence the result. That’s it.
There is something else going on. With this game and with a lot of other games that are reaching the top places in the market. And I don’t think it’s advertising, either.
Maybe these apps like the uefa one haven’t been complained about yet. Anyone can raise an objection, not sure how much good it’ll do though. Google might only act if a trademark owner actually complains.
Alright let me break this down the best I can. There are 2 methods of pay per install the right way using services like the way I did and the wrong way the way the flappybird developer did it. Now if you choose to do it the wrong way you can get lucky and not get caught but if you do your banned.
The only way to get a to get a lot of downloads is get lucky and go viral or pay per install so people actually see your game or app . Now telling if someone used bots is tricky but the ones that use bots will have repeat reviews under different accounts spread out, flappybird being the most obvious usage of this method. The bots will use similar keywords like “best game ever” or “highly addictive” as comments under 100’s of different usernames. But hey it worked and flappybird developer made a ton of money on organic downloads. Now it’s up to you to choose which way your going to go.
The reviews for that champions league are a bit wiffy. There are lots of 5 star reviews with no text and a lot of 1 star reviews. I’d guess the 5 stars are bots or paid for.
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere.
Obviously most of the reviews are fake: they look similar and can’t imagine a lot of people giving 5 stars for this.
If the reviews are fake, perhaps downloads are also fake, meaning that they were generated by bots.
There are lots of apps very similar to this one on the market that invade the top lists every month: these are the real spammers, these are the ones we should focus on if you ask me.
Here’s the thing… It’s WORTH IT to make crap apps and then game the system. Why? Because all you need to do is make your 20 crap apps, get them to the top, make your $1 million or whatever, and then you are done. If you get banned, who cares? You already got paid!
How much time did it take you? Maybe a month or two to put the apps together, the marketing, the bots, the system… and BAM. You’ve made more money scamming the system then I have in the last 6 years of my app business combined.
If someone presented me with the opportunity, I would take it (by making a totally separate Google Account, checking account, etc). It’s worth the risk. And that’s why you see so many crappy apps and bots/scammers out there flooding the market.
If you’re talking about using bots then it’s probably worth it. But how sure are you that it will work? I am guessing these bots cost a lot of money. Can you afford that? And what if you use bots and don’t get the expected outcome?
In order to get a lot of apps get a lot of downloads and a lot of revenue, you either need a huge marketing budget (which most of us don’t have) - and you can’t be sure you’ll get your investment back - or use bots where you can’t be sure it will work either.
If there were a sure way to success probably everyone would use it.
These low quality apps don’t make nearly as much as you guys think for the following reasons:
Typically these low quality apps get most of their downloads from poorer countries whose users generate not that much revenue per capita.
Typically these low quality apps are used only once or twice by their users. High quality apps with less than 20% of the downloads probably earn more total revenue than these spam apps.
Let’s say such a low quality app got 10M downloads and it is showing banners and interstitials.
Each user opens the app 2 times and spends around 2 minutes inside the app. That is enough time to display 4 banner impressions and perhaps 2 interstitials (if not more).
So, for 10M downloads, the app gets 40M banner impressions and 20M interstitials.
Let’s say banner eCPM is $0.5 and interstitial eCPM is $1.5. That means the total revenue is $20k from banners and $30k from interstitials.
Total revenue: $50k from a crappy app.
Make that 2 seconds. Some of those apps are THAT bad.
Let’s say banner eCPM is $0.5 and interstitial eCPM is $1.5.
Hard to achieve in smaller countries. I have eCPM of $0.1 and $0.2 on adMob (higher in other networks, but they have low fill rates). Interstitials might get them the revenue though. Especially since they will show also to those users who will really use the app for 2 seconds only (open and close).
You are making a lot of assumptions there 
There are apps and apps. I said 2 minutes thinking about a crappy app that most users will at least try to play. And those Care games do have nice graphics which should make it interesting enough when you first open in up.
Have a look at this game’s reviews: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tabtale.babyhouse
I’m guessing most of them are fake, like the ones with love symbols. Question: what’s the point in creating a fake review with nothing but love symbols when you could post one word like great, fun, cool, etc, which would make the review look more natural?
There is something that does not make sense: if you are going to spend lots of money paying for bots, why dont you spend a bit more and make a good, or at least decent game so you can really exploit the benefits of “botting”? (i just made that word out)
10M downloads is pretty hard to achieve. Not too many spam apps achieve this milestone.
$50k is very little for 10M downloads. There are many developers who are pulling $100,000 per day easily.
I honestly don’t consider TabTale’s apps to be “crappy apps”.
I prefer not to say “crappy” too. I downloaded one of them game and I can say they were made by professionals.
Anyway, I wonder you meant companies or indie developers when you say earning 100k/day?
@avradu1984
50k$ for 10M… Two years ago I achieved 1M downloads and got 25K $. You do math.
My calculations were based on a very low user retention of very low quality apps. I calculated 4 impressions per user. Of course, having a decent app will get you A LOT more impressions.
My app was worse than softwego’s 
There were StartApp and Airpush with good prices.