I do believe in Facebook campaigns, actually, we only got downloads from the countries we advertise in.
But i guess, the real question is, do you think there is a better way to spend that money?
I suggest USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland. They all pay good. New Zealand and Ireland are good choices because they are small and reaching top rankings is easier there.
How many downloads are you getting now and what’s the daily revenue?
First of all congratulations, and big thank you for sharing your insights and strategy.
Agree with Toxic: ask yourself whether releasing a separate game is more profitable than expanding the 1st one.
Also depends on your advertising strategy : the more you rely on search engine, the more coverage you get with each additional app. The more you rely on concentrated advertising (press release, reviews, bought acquisition…) the more you should concentrate on only 1 app.
I personally think expanding on more apps is good, since there might be only 1 single little thing that a potential user doesn’t like about your app, say, the font on 1 screenshot, or some wording in 1 description!!! He won’t download and won’t get back. Now, say you divide your work on more apps, it’s all the more possibilities for users to like your title, screenshots etc.
Downloads and revenue are sinking dramatically. Nowadays the game is getting 250 downloads and making $25. At least, this game became our first one to recover the investment and produce some small revenue. (Will share the info in the Jan report)
We already decided not to add more levels, its to time consuming and we don´t think it will have major impact on the revenue. We are working on our next game now 
Sorry to hear that, Google Play really has no mercy…
Anyway, good luck with your next game.
Hey I had a quick question about developpment, why did you chose to develop in Unity? I was wondering if you could have developped the same game with something more simple like AndEngine?
Our first two game were developed with libgdx, and we decided to change to Unity because it feels more like a professional tool. We are using Unity for our next game, although we plan to use libgdx for a small sideproject we got in mind.
Yeah, the game could have been developed with andengine or libdgx or any other engine compatible with a 2D physics plug-in.
Interesting, what do you mean by a more professional tool ?
Since you are working with Unity, any plans to release your game for iOS?
My 2 cents from a developer to another, I think you missed out on a few major options with tap the box. I played it! It’s fun, here is what I would have done different:
More levels, BUT make them purchasable! In app level purchases would be a bit of a money make and would help to keep users later.
Boosts or level skips are a big money maker. $0.50 is nothing to these American/EU users. Focus on the markets with money and “trick” them will low costs but recurring offers. You would be surprised how many kids will pay $10 or more without realizing it in a game when it’s $.25 each.
Leader board! This goes hand in hand with the above. Leader boards are a MASSIVE income driver. Competitive spirit makes your top players want to keep at the top… and with in app purchases of boosts or points. Limit the lives or tries in your game and sell bonus packs of lives, makes some key “stop” levels (VERY hard levels designed to frustrate the users) these allow for smart points that will generate stacks of cashola as players get stuck.
Viral marketing I think is a better approach than paying for ad space. Maybe a small initial investment for marketing but what you really want is your users to do the work for you. Think about offering small in game bonuses for sharing or liking on facebook/twitter/whatever life sharing app.
That’s my 2 cents!
One thing not examined in this thread is session-length.
What type of session-length are you seeing with your app - I suspect it is about 5 minutes ?
My sense is that session-length is one of the major differences in revenue between games/apps.
For example you game is making about 5x the revenue per download that I am making with 2 of my more novelty type apps - their session-length is about 45 seconds - from Flurry or Google Analytics you can get this session-length info.
So while there has been discussion about increasing levels and adding IAP etc. (which you don’t have access to in your location) - those two issues are tied to each other - if you cannot do IAP that severely limits your ability to leverage the Tap the Box-mad crowd.
But you can do things like give people rewards to make things easier … or to give a surprise reward perhaps, or to make them feel that they should come back to the app.
ALSO - you may consider - if you want to expand levels - maybe adding some simple levels in between levels as well - the sole purpose being to EXPAND the time the user is spending in your app - purely to extend the session-length metric.
Compared to making another game - you will agree that the time spent in trying to understand these issues could lead to you doubling your session-length - and that will be as if you made another game - but probably with much less effort - PLUS you will be learning something about how your users are interacting with your game etc.
So what I am saying is - while the mantra one often hears is that if a game is bad then just dump it and move on - however, there maybe some value to sticking around and trying to understand what is happening as that will help you improve not just this app - but the next app you make. Perhaps you will make that one radically differently in light of what you learned from this app.
My guess is that as much as programming - the part about how /why a game is working not working or how to improve may take you nearly as much time as well.
While I realize that the one month honeymoon period that Google Play gives seems to suggest that one give up on a game if it starts to go down - but that is not the end of the story for your app.
You should consider doing some easy short-time-consuming things not just to see what works, but also to maybe learn what you should do for your next app.
The other thing is - you have probably not even begun to fully explore what you could do to improve the searchability of your app - you are getting 260 downloads a day - that should easily be doubleable - by choosing keywords right - so this is an area you should be prepared to spend some time on - it is as important as making an app.
As someone suggested - you may even try the title:
Tap Tap Tap the Box
Tap Tap Tap on the Box
Tap on the Exploding Boxes
Explode the Boxes
What Angry Birds ? Tap the Box - ok, this one is a joke 
x----30 characters-----------x
Then look at the Description - think about adding some keywords which will increase the user funnel.
Maybe consider changing your icon a bit - maybe show an exploding type thing. That is suggest some activity or excitement in the game.
Perhaps consider adding an extra character to the game - maybe some bouncing bunny which bounces on the boxes and makes them unstable or something. Just something to distract.
Or give credit to users for returning to your app. Make users feel they can buy some special levels that way maybe (if you can’t do IAP).
Put a prominent Facebook Like button in your app.
Maybe make levels easier so users move fast through levels - perhaps alternate hard and easy levels somewhat - so users have a sense of accomplishment but also challenge - but overall session-length increases - this will DIRECTLY impact the revenue you earn.
Making another game without having explored these types of questions fully seems like you will be facing the same issues again 6 months down the road with the next game.
Use Google Analytics or Flurry - to log events which tell which level the user exited at - this will tell you which levels are harder etc. or where users get stuck etc.
So I am saying this is the type of detailed understanding you should have about your game.
Also note that since you already have a game which many people here have said is good - if you start adding nuances to it - like an extra character perhaps - eventually you will be getting to a complexity which will be very hard for someone else to match. So you are losing that opportunity by abandoning the game early - i.e. not giving it enough chance to learn once you finally have users checking it out.
Excellent, I have learned a lot from your analysis.
Although I am new to android development but I don’t know why must people always suggest that one should move on to new app development if your current app is getting less download.
I think spending a little time to try and understand why it did not work and try different other options like in store optimization might help make your next app better from lessons learnt.
Yes, I would also suggest to continue with this, at least to add another 60 levels as you said before.
And also some coins earning features (stars), so that when people stick in one level they can somehow proceed (IAP or tapjoy)
I think the reason people are encouraged to move on is when developers make a bad game to begin with which is seriously unsalvageable - in that case they are saying that just move on to something else.
Often also people are talking about having a huge hit app - and there they think that the market works in mysterious ways - i.e. some combination of user preference and Google Play algorithms conspire to make some apps more successful than others - and that it does not make sense what works or not.
If you begin to think that there is no reason for why some apps perform well on Google Play versus others, then it naturally follows that you will think that if an app fails to rise in the charts, that it is done - i.e. it will not be a huge hit.
And that may be true - unless of course some examples emerge of apps which were in the doldrums i.e. not doing great - but then some minor improvements made them rise suddenly.
However, what I was suggesting was that even with the Tap the Box app’s less than steller revenue - that basically the app is not bad - and perhaps the developers need to examine further what few other missing pieces of the puzzle they were missing which could be cured.
Other than that - I suggest that given how badly the download numbers look - surely a little bit of effort could double their daily download numbers - maybe some judicious use of keywords in title and description - and then maybe doing some small changes by making the app perhaps slightly easier to play - or rewarding the user along the way - so that the same users play 2x as long as before.
If they do 2x improvement and 2x improvement in the other - they could have 4x revenue - and it could be a good base for revenue - which they can build on with their next app. For next app, presumably they will have also learnt more from the first app - which will inform their next app decisions - perhaps even about WHAT type of app to make - so rushing into the next app may not necessarily be the best use of their time. Unless they have a really good sense of what what should work better now.
I think also informing this perception that an app basically gets “one shot” i.e. the initial Google push for 1 month - and if they cannot rise in that period then they are screwed. But that does not mean that an app cannot rise again to 2x or 4x of that low download situation say in a few months with slight tweaks.
I think also this thinking about testing an app idea and if it fails to dump it and go to the next may also reflect how things are done at the large scale top level venture capital type of sense - i.e. invest in 10 app groups - and the one that works you pick that and run with it - and cut your costs in the other. This is the only way to ensure that you have a top 10 hit in your portfolio - after all if you are only looking for top 10 hits - then you have to dump other stuff and always be focusing on something else.
However, I wonder if that is a strategy that can work as well at the small scale of an individual developer or small group. Sure if the app is something they spent 1 month on and is bad to begin with that maybe true - but if the app is not so bad as Tap the Box is - then you need to think about perhaps using it as a low but stable revenue stream. And if you still need lessons to learn for your next app, then maybe good to do that with this first app.
With venture capitalists - they have probably already learnt the lessons they want to learn - and cannot stick around. But an individual developer can stick around for a bit - so that perhaps he may become the venture capitalist 2-3 years down the line.
Of course, this is just my opinion - it may not be necessarily true or optimal for every developer or app situation - but just for Tap the Box, it seemed to me to be a good suggestion for that …
By the way, I would perhaps not be so obsessed about adding levels - esp. if your statistics say that very few people complete your existing levels - usually it will be an exponentially dropping number of users.
Your primary concern seems to be increasing the input funnel of users seeing your app - for that you have to work on increasing visibility for the app - so more people download it - i.e. improve on keywords etc. Perhaps only by 2x. This front line improvement would also involve improving the icon - or changing the description to be perhaps more electrifying for users (!)
Then your secondary concern should be to perhaps make the levels easier in the beginning so they move fast - and perhaps interjecting them with some other variable. That is to increase the session-length - as this probably translates directly into greater ad revenue.
Add reward coins to make users come back to your app - or to feel positive about coming back to your app.
With those things done you will be earning $200 per day from the app - which should be good backing revenue for you to work on your next app.
Thank you guys for all your comments and suggestions, there is a lot of info to process and to think, really appreciate the time you took to write all this. To try to respond some questions:
-We are going to publish the game on IOS eventually
-We cannot sell IAPs on GP , but we are considering it on IOS
-Regading Facebook intregration: We offer the players videosolutions of every level if they join our FB page (but in reality it is no necessary for them to join, they are publish on youtube) and got around 1650 likes. We also have a Facebook-looking car that ask the users to share the game, but we haven´t measure the clicks (shame on us). Finally, the exit pop-up also gives the player the option to share the game on Fb.
- According to Google Analytics, the average user session length is 3:24 but there is a strange bug in the stats. It shows that 63% of the sessions lasts between 0s-10s. This also happens with my brothers app, so is not a terrible bug in the app. Without that trash data, the session length should be around 5:00.
The game is currently making just $20/day 
, i am sharing all the data at the end of the month.
Thanks again for your responses!
Hey guys , so here is the January income for Tap the Box. As mentioned some posts before, earnings are going down dramatically.
The numbers for January are:
January Downloads: 9.651
Impressions: 802.000
Ecpm:$1.3
Earnings: $1.122
You can see that the game is getting very low amount of new users, just 9.651 compared to 129.000 the previous month. That is the obvious explanation of the earning´s decrease. The game is still making some decent money, but we expect this to change this month and to be less than $500. At this point, we decided is not time-efficient to improve the game and try to “save” it, we are focused on our next game.
It’s a very nice game, i played it and told a few friends about it, you guys did a great job! Unfortunately January incomes are down all across the board for all networks, might be better next month, don’t lose hope
man, reskin it and upload/market that version from another perspective (may be “Shoot the box”)
I would also do it, however if you do it like… 4-5 times or more, then ‘BadApps’ reddit may take you on a trigger …
Quote:
I would also do it, however if you do it like… 4-5 times or more, then ‘BadApps’ reddit may take you on a trigger …
Not if you take down the earlier version … or reissue the app as Tap the Box 2 or something.
For integrating Admob interstitials which unity plugin did you use?