After reading your post, I got my game “Food Run” rank #9 in Top New Free Adventure Games in India. I spent about $75. So far, I’ve earned $0.4. Haha. Looks like even though people seem to like the game, I won’t be making much money.
Ok that doesn’t make sense what AD network do you use and how often do you show ADs ? Let’s figure this out so you can earn better revenue.
We talked in another thread. You told me to stop using AdMob. I removed AdMob from the list of ad networks. The fill rate improved slightly but not much. The earnings are still around $0 to $0.02 per day. I have 89 active players right now.
I am using Millennial Media, ChartBoost and MoPub to mediate all three. Millennial Media is giving me an eCPM of $1. ChartBoost’s eCPM is fickle, sometimes $0, sometimes $0.9.
After 29th July I am earning $0 per day. eCPM from Millenial is still $1. MoPub shows an aggregate eCPM of $0.5
REVENUE
$0.42
IMPRESSIONS
936
ECPM
$0.54
CTR
3.10%
INVENTORY FILL RATE
46%
Ads are “requested to be shown” each time the player touches “Try Again” button. I also make the player wait 2 seconds before the screen changes, so that the ad gets the time to load properly.
Ads are also requested to be shown 5 seconds after the player launches the game and is still in main menu.
I don’t have banner ads. Only interstitials and videos. I don’t have the space to fit in banners in menu or try again screen. Putting banner on game screen will make it very distracting.
Ok that’s real bad something is really wrong you should be earning much more. I think you should just drop all those AD networks and use the one I use which is notifymob . Honestly even leadbolt is way better than that by a mile and I don’t even like leadbolt. Get rid of all those networks and use Notifymob you should be making $1-$3 dollars a day.
Alright this week I made $13 buck so $65 + $13 = $78 . Also the source code to bomb attack max has made $20 . So all together the game has made $98 so far in 5 weeks. I expect it to go slower then I originally planned. So now I am looking at making a profit around 10-12 weeks instead of 6-7 weeks. I am still getting organic downloads and my keyword strength is decent.
This week I earned $12.50 but I will round it off to $12 . My game Mr.HB has been getting a bit of downloads through bomb attack max which it has more play sessions than bomb attack max. So $98 plus $12 = $110 dollars made so far. Another 5-6 weeks and then I will be into the profit area. I am also working on another game that will be way more addicting than this one.
About a month ago you said you had 1917 installs. Any updates? Total, current and DAU?
I’m trying to figure out how you’re averaging $15/week with less than 2000 total installs…
Ok I haven’t updated in a while I average around $13 a week but after I left the top new free list it went down to an average of $7 a week. Total installs so far is 2,579 . Also remember I have other apps that benefit from this game too which I counted together because bomb attack max boosted thier downloads as well. Also remember I use Notifymob .
If you have any more questions let me know , also my game Mr.HB alone got 200 downloads in same period without ranking thats an example of one game getting a boost from another game.
Oh okay, so $13/week and now $7/week is the total across all your apps?
2579 total, but how many current installs and daily active users?
Ok when I was on the top new free list I had between 50-70 active players plus the people who downloaded it and open the game. Now thats for bomb attack max , I did get additional users to my other games and apps but I don’t have number on those.
Now its dropped down to 25/daily on bomb attack max and the rest of apps like Mr.HB and Super Zombie pro run have only like 3-8 a day now.
But now I launched a new game this week so of course the revenue will go up for a while. How much we will see comming this friday.
Sorry I haven’t been active in a while. I broke even about 2 weeks ago and now in the profit zone at $183. So it did take like 3 months to finally break even and show a profit. The main lesson here is that you can make money even if it’s slow in the beginning and it will take months to make a profit. But also it’s better to have 4-5 games or apps already on the marketplace before you invest so that you make additional money I.e. someone who likes one of your apps downloads the other games and apps you have, that’s when the profit area starts to show.
Also I learned how google algorithm works which was the biggest lesson . If you place on any top list , you have a permanent place inside the search system. What this means is when users search for games and apps your apps will get a turn to show in the search results. If you don’t rank then it’s really a hit or miss .
Read your story, and I actually was disappointed how long it took to earn your money back. You probably invested a huge amount of hours during these months, and with my current hour rate of 9.20 i’m almost certain I’d be better off investing my hours in the regular job instead of creating and distributing apps. If i were you, I wouldn’t have invested a single dollar, but just kept with the regular updating, promoting on social media, and adding translations. You wouldn’t have gotten in the top 50s, but you would have saved the promotion money. I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that for 90% percent of the people (also what I read on other forums), doing paid marketing IS NOT getting your initial investment back. That makes it a terrible business case, and makes me wonder why people like to get in in the first place.
I have two apps currently running on multiple stores and i have 20-25 users per day, most of them new users. They don’t earn me a damn thing, Admob displays banners and interstituals but the control panel makes me less than 0.01 per day. Reason I posted was because I wondered if you might have an idea what the best ad network is, to earn my dev fee and andromo subscription back. Once I have these, I will probably quit 
Well it depends upon the kind of app and game. The game in question from Pixelpower was a quick dirty game for earning. Just try it and you will know. Probably better graphics, level design, coins etc would be more engaging to users. What pixelpower is trying to say is that it is not that difficult to rank Indian app store with that amount of money.
I would suggest trying to make more apps and focus on whats popular. All the AD networks have ups and downs I currently use Notifymob but I don’t reccomend it. 2 apps is not enough you need to make at least 6-8 apps with varied topics. Your right most people don’t make their money back , but its because they don’t study the market long enough to actually know whats a good game or app. Best advice is don’t listen to most developers about what they consider a good game or app. Trust me most don’t and you will be more fustrated than happy. See whats popular on facebook and twitter and base an app about that.
Thanks, I will stay with Admob then. Today, I got my first good ad day and estimated revenue is 0,25. I was really surprised to see it jump from 0 to that in just an hour, my impressions weren’t that great (250). I now see that making nice apps will probably pay in the long run, since my cheap-ass secondary wallpaper app lost all its users on the second sales day. I will try to create more, and hope I will reach my goal of €1 per day (1000 impressions) on short notice, that way I’ll be able to make my investment (dev fee + andromo subscription) back in 100 days 
Please download my app if you want to see for yourself, maybe you can give me some tips on ad optimisation (search for MDE Tech > Situation Room in Google Play / Amazon).
Thanks for sharing. Sorry your app got knocked down but at least you did a great job of getting it to #15 spot. Good process for people to see what you go through, especially how international traffic like India receives the lists.
Just yesterday my googleplay account got banned because of my Movie Quiz Apps. Google banned our account so you can download Bomb Attack Max on http://sourceforge.net/projects/andromarkets/files/BombAttack.apk/download
Hi
Im on the road to get more download for my apps too, trying to get to the top charts but it is not cheap at all,
my download rate is growing quickly every week tho,
please help me by using my promo code BB077738
on ApproBuddha
we both get 5% off
once I have referred 5 people I will get 10% off
many thanks
Just giving this a bump since people seem to have questions about getting downloads and getting high on the charts. If you have any questions just ask.
very insightful, thanks for posting this