Back the days I did a small app with very low usage. Laser Blaster Simulator. This app is actually just a button playing a Laser Blaster Sound.
I did this app for some young kids in the neighbourhood, so they can play star wars in their garden - nothing exiting. The app actually get a lot of bad reviews, because it really is just a button, but I don’t care actually because I didn’t made this very serious no marketing at all. The App was submitted to gplay, slideme and getjar as far as I remember. I actually got >80 g+ and a lot of good reviews also, which I never expected!
I put some admob banner there and also used this to try some appwall by incooperating a “more apps” button. I’ve used leadbolt (if you like this post, use my referal link <click> to give me credit) for that, otherwise use the normal link: leadbolt.com
Funny enough - this app still get downloaded and generates ~50 impressions per day with a scary high CTR of about 2-4% … but with reason. The app is just a button. So some users open it and may expect more … but there is only this button so maybe there is a nice ad displayed, they will click this instead … I actually do not see if this could be interpreted as fraudulent (what’s your opinion about it? maybe some adnetwork guys can give their opinions and what I could do about it to be on the safe side) - in the end users click the ad because they want to - it’s far away from the actuall button, so I don’t think there is any false clicks. I also see a significant rise in CTR, when I place house ads (those ARE more interesting) so I don’t see that as false clicks.
I recently decided to open up leadbolt and look what’s in there and hey there were 40$ generated - how nice is that? It’s actually not a bunch of money, but it is money.
What you can learn from this post:
Nearly every app has their audience
Even niche apps will find their users. Well it is not a lot of money what you can do, but every idea you have may have some users interested in that
Not much competition in niche apps
If you find a niche, that normally means, there is not much competition. So you get a bunch of users, just because they don’t have alternatives
Niche apps may not generate a lot of money
As you can see, the app does generate some money but actually just a little bit. It is because the app is simple and some users do search exactly for that.
IMPORTANT - be original!
If you copy an app - because you think you want a piece of the pie - you will just get that. A small piece of the pie. Example: Every 24 minutes there is a new Flappy Clone released. The “pie” is already sliced that much, that even my Laser Blaster Simulator will make more money than your 1.000.000st Flappy Bird Clone.
My message to you:
Sit down, think about what your environment want to use on their phone. Do it. The more simple your idea, the faster you will be ready to publish it. Will you get rich? No. You will not get rich. But you will learn more about your audience, you will learn which things are working on whcih are not. You will also learn what your users like and what they don’t like.
Be realistic
If you don’t have experience with programming, do not think you can push out a game which makes millions. It will not happen. Flappy Bird MAY look very simple, but you will find out, that it needs a bit of experience with gravity-like calculations to make a good experience. By the way, Flappy Bird was a phenomenon like the Gangnam Song - accept that - it has nearly nothing to do with the product itself - it just got viral and that’s all what it did. Stop cloning it, it’s ridicolous, you’re wasting your time. Try to understand what drove it to go viral. Also Flappy started on iOS, not android. You don’t know if it would have gone viral when started at android. Maybe not.
My advice
If you like to develop games: Do it. Do not do it just because you want to make money - will not work. Find something you would use by yourself or where you can imagine, that someone may have fun with it. If it is good, some may like it as well.