Success story -> more than $2k per month

Hey!

Good that you’ve started this forum. It will be very helpful, and I hope more people will make this forum a HOT place to hang out.

I’ve shared my success story (and tonnes of tips!) here:

http://bit.ly/sRuZ54

Hope it will somehow motivate anyone looking into developing for android to give it a go!

Wow, those are some pretty impressive revenues you’ve got there! I like the tips you’ve posted as well, they seem to align very much with my own experiences.

Especially the point “stay small” - make small simple apps that are within your limited time & budget to develop. Some of my simplest apps have been the most profitable so far. I think there’s definitely a market for these small apps, and it helps avoid the disappointment that’s inevitable when you spend 6 months writing an app, only to have it flop completely.

Of course, the big game studios have enough marketing resources that they can afford to spend months writing an app. By spending a few thousand dollars on well-placed advertisements, they can make the app popular enough to get a positive ROI. But for us indie developers, smaller is better.

Thanks David.

Yeah, we do what we can do with what resources we have. A little hardwork will get you somewhere it seems.

And there is plenty of growth yet in the android ecosystem.

Cheers!

Thanks for your post bill. Good info. The parts about keeping it small, creating lots of little apps, and having them cross promote each other was especially good advise for me who started out doing exactly the opposite and failing.

Hi seedload,

You’re welcome. Well, we all fail sometime. Important that we learn from the mistakes and move on.

Glad that my tips would be useful for someone!

Good luck!

What is the trick to getting noticed on the market place, there doesn’t seem to be any list in the market place for newly added games any more. So how are these new apps suppose to get traction? I released Chess Mates today https://market.android.com/details?id=com.epnet.chessmatesfree but my download rate is pretty bad. Any suggestions? I don’t have a lot of money to throw at advertising. It isn’t that people don’t like my app, they just seem to not find it on the market, what’s the deal?

The Android Developer Console can take a long time to register new downloads. It will probably take a couple of days before your first downloads start to appear.

Yes, the missing “just-in” list is bad indeed. But, lets change our mindsets here. Lets not rely on the just-in list, or any other “newly released” lists.

Imagine you have a new t-shirt that you wanna sell, and you wanna sell it on amazon or ebay. How are you gonna get your product noticed and purchased? The same applies if you were to sell that tshirt in your local supermarket. How are you going to get noticed? How do other brands get noticed? Advertising is out of the question for me too.

I’ve release my app Photo Story Camera FX here:
http://bit.ly/zAg0EW

It had the worst ever first day download of any of my apps!

I’ve just done a writeup here:
http://makemoneywithandroid.blogspot.com/2012/01/reasons-my-android-app-failed-and-yours.html

Hope that helps somehow… cheers!

Dont give up…

Hey Bill nice write up I agree with everything you wrote about. I also downloaded your app and gave it 5 stars :slight_smile: it is a neat little app. See though the one advantage you have with promoting your app is you have a following of people on your blog that will all get behind you and download and support your app. As of this morning a full 24 hour period I am looking at 23 free installs and 8 paid installs.

So I was reading around on the web on what it takes to get your app on one of those featured lists in the market and from my readings it sounds all political. You basically have t know one of the representatives in order to be even looked at, does that sound accurate to you?

Thanks for your feedback and the best of luck to your app, with a few more features I think it could be a total hit :slight_smile:

Thank you for the 5 stars :smiley:

Well, being featured isnt easy I guess, and yeah, probably knowing someone somewhere will surely help. Reminds me to the meaning of politics… made from 2 words, poly which means many, and ticks, which mean some blood sucking creatures!

Just as a measure, during the just-in days, I’ve had 3 of my apps i the trending lists. 2 of them had no effect on downloads. 1 had a little uptick for a while, but nothing great either.

And as for my blog followers, well, I am just starting off now with the blog and social media. I hope to gain more exposure for my apps this way. And I’d suggest you do too. This is the kind of “advertising” that we can afford to do :smiley:

I’d also suggest you look at alternative markets to publish your apps to.

Cheers!