Building an App Company

[MattCour]

His eCPM would be pretty high in my opinion bc the ads are not spammy. So on 50 mil DLs he would crush it. Full screen ads would only ruin the gameplay.

 

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[oddball]

Full ads don't really ruin the gameplay unless you spam the user every two seconds.
I also still find it strange that the developer was telling people to leave him alone, he doesn't want the attention, etc, and now he is openly sharing what he is making?

 

[PopEmersen]

Full ads don't really ruin the gameplay unless you spam the user every two seconds.
I also still find it strange that the developer was telling people to leave him alone, he doesn't want the attention, etc, and now he is openly sharing what he is making?

Exactly

 

[deeyaree]

So glad I stumbled upon this post.

I'm getting into the indie app development game myself. I'm a designer and illustrator by trade, and have recently a taken on a reskinning project. I have a few questions for anyone who'd be willing share some info.

From what I'm reading it seems that the overarching advice is to reskin many games. FAST.

Is this still true? On average how long does it take you to reskin a simple app?

The total revenues reflect the sales of ALL of your apps?

How long have you been developing for?

thx in advance!

 

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[pande]

delete

 

[em1L]

Hi Oddball,
How did it go with your Flappy Bird reskin? We did 2 ourselves, both rejected. However a bunch of clones are making millions right now in the top 25, with Fish Reskins etc.
I saw from your advertiser list that you are not using Applovin, we have had very good success with them, and on days were Revmob and Chartboost does about 50usd pr. day Applovin could easily do more than double. The eCPM is huge on that platform.
I attached a screenshot with ones app performance the past 3 months.. eCPM over 8USD. Thats awesome in the long run

 

[oddball]

Hi Oddball,
How did it go with your Flappy Bird reskin? We did 2 ourselves, both rejected. However a bunch of clones are making millions right now in the top 25, with Fish Reskins etc.
I saw from your advertiser list that you are not using Applovin, we have had very good success with them, and on days were Revmob and Chartboost does about 50usd pr. day Applovin could easily do more than double. The eCPM is huge on that platform.
I attached a screenshot with ones app performance the past 3 months.. eCPM over 8USD. Thats awesome in the long run

I have a few apps coming out with Applovin right now. Chartboost is doing excellent so far, crushing revmob. I am also trying AppHaven on a couple apps. Why did you flappy bird clones get rejected? Specifically because they are clones? If that is true, one of mine is definitely going to get rejected.

Also, how many apps do you have? Mind sharing what some of the top performing are?

 

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[em1L]

I have a few apps coming out with Applovin right now. Chartboost is doing excellent so far, crushing revmob. I am also trying AppHaven on a couple apps. Why did you flappy bird clones get rejected? Specifically because they are clones? If that is true, one of mine is definitely going to get rejected.

Also, how many apps do you have? Mind sharing what some of the top performing are?

Thats great to hear, that network really outperforms everything we have tried. - Do you mean Playhaven? We have had a small success with that network, using it on the "more button" instead of Chartboost. We got rejected for our Flappy Bird clones because in the heat my partner, made exact match on "Flappy Bird" in the title. It feels a bit sad, since the number one clone now "Splashy Fish", has matching keywords in the title and rocking the top spot in 77 countries including the US.

We have 47 apps in total, a few of them we had to take down because of copyright infringement (when the title, graphics or icon gets to close to the original one)

We have around 500.000 downloads split over our whole portfolio, however only a few of them are getting good amount of downloads.

Here is the last 3 months performance in downloads.
Our company name is Softeyes Studios - If you want to look it up on app annie.

I just returned from 6 months in Asia, so it has been slower than it could, however I will speed things up now that I have returned

 

[oddball]

That is awesome, thanks for sharing.

Right now chartboost is my big income but like I said, trying a couple new networks. (and yes, I meant PlayHave, lol)
By the end of the month, I should have close to 20 apps live in the store. My first game got taken down because of the violent theme but I reskined it and am waiting for it to get reviewed. If I knew what I know about monetizing now then, it would have made a whole lot more. But yea, I've learned a lot and have a good system down, working on scaling now.

 

[em1L]

That is awesome, thanks for sharing.

Right now chartboost is my big income but like I said, trying a couple new networks. (and yes, I meant PlayHave, lol)
By the end of the month, I should have close to 20 apps live in the store. My first game got taken down because of the violent theme but I reskined it and am waiting for it to get reviewed. If I knew what I know about monetizing now then, it would have made a whole lot more. But yea, I've learned a lot and have a good system down, working on scaling now.

20 Apps is an awesome start.. I think Violent Games are a great niche, remember the Slenderman trend? I think you just need to put rate the game 16+ or whatever category fits the violence presented in the game. Yeah you have to learn by doing in this business everything happens so fast, and a small change in adnetwork, keyword or anything else will make a big difference. We started out trying to create our own game from scratch, burned more than 10.000 dollars each time, and the games failed horribly. After we changed to reskinning, some of our biggest success make 2000 pr. month passively and only cost a few days of coding + 300 dollars in skinning the graphics.

 

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[oddball]

20 Apps is an awesome start.. I think Violent Games are a great niche, remember the Slenderman trend? I think you just need to put rate the game 16+ or whatever category fits the violence presented in the game. Yeah you have to learn by doing in this business everything happens so fast, and a small change in adnetwork, keyword or anything else will make a big difference. We started out trying to create our own game from scratch, burned more than 10.000 dollars each time, and the games failed horribly. After we changed to reskinning, some of our biggest success make 2000 pr. month passively and only cost a few days of coding + 300 dollars in skinning the graphics.

What pisses me off about the violence niche is that my game is just like beat the boss and kick the buddy and they have ratings of 12+, I'm told I need 17+. Not sure if it really makes a difference because people probably lie about age but it is annoying. The other issue is different reviewers will have different thoughts on your apps. I've had it get declined by some, then approved by others. The last guy yanked it out of the store. Just a speed bump though, getting around it.

Yea, I did the same thing man. Now I focus on reskins, I outsource it all but I have a few developers I use that I get great deals with. I've paid anywhere from $385 to $1400 for reskins. Quantity > quality for me but I don't want junk/buggy apps, they have to still be playable. I'm really learning how to maximize revenue with them so every time it is better and better. My goal by year end is to have 50 apps in the store, should be very doable.

Actually, last night I noticed a critical error with a few of my apps and a couple things to change to maximize revenue. I will work with my devs tonight to get them fixed and back out asap. Changes should cost no more than $300 and I expect them to generate that much more per month, at least, hopefully more.

 

[em1L]

What pisses me off about the violence niche is that my game is just like beat the boss and kick the buddy and they have ratings of 12+, I'm told I need 17+. Not sure if it really makes a difference because people probably lie about age but it is annoying. The other issue is different reviewers will have different thoughts on your apps. I've had it get declined by some, then approved by others. The last guy yanked it out of the store. Just a speed bump though, getting around it.

Yea, I did the same thing man. Now I focus on reskins, I outsource it all but I have a few developers I use that I get great deals with. I've paid anywhere from $385 to $1400 for reskins. Quantity > quality for me but I don't want junk/buggy apps, they have to still be playable. I'm really learning how to maximize revenue with them so every time it is better and better. My goal by year end is to have 50 apps in the store, should be very doable.

Actually, last night I noticed a critical error with a few of my apps and a couple things to change to maximize revenue. I will work with my devs tonight to get them fixed and back out asap. Changes should cost no more than $300 and I expect them to generate that much more per month, at least, hopefully more.

Don't mind the 17+ rating if you need to put it in that category. Sometimes I think that a violence rating might even help with the downloads, who wants to download a violent game that is only rated 12+? If you want the most violent stuff you go for the 17+ rating right?Furthermore its only a warning, there is nothing that keeps the 12 year olds from download the game, right?

Yeah don't get caught up by stupid reviewers, do a few small changes and upload the game the day after. Though review times are mostly always a week long, unless you are doing updates, here is a cool tool that is estimating the review time from twitter updates: http://reviewtimes.shinydevelopment.com

I get your point about not creating junk apps, and I definitely don't think you should. If you cannot provide any value to the users, they will give you a bad rating and ditch the game.
Thats why, the past months we have always gone with the best source codes that are actually substantial and fun to play. This way we experience returning users, which means more ad revenue.