Mobile Apps- Free with ads vs. app for $$$

[Jimi L]

What is everyone's opinion on offering apps for free but crammed with ads versus offering an app for x amount of dollars?

I'm going to release my first app soon for the gaming company I'm starting and pretty sure I'm going to offer it free with ad banners and some options shutdown and then offer an upgrade to get rid of the ads and open the options for x amount of dollars (probably .99)

Also, are ad banners added during programming or during deployment?

 

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[Joozed]

You may also want to consider offering the app for free and then selling upgrades for small fees (i.e. new levels, unlimited lives, extra weapons, new characters etc.). That is a rout a lot of popular or successful apps have gone over the years and is a different approach then mentioned above that you may want to consider.

 

[MattCour]

Do both. One version w full screen ads, one paid w no ads. $4.99. It's simple to do 2 different versions.

 

[fastattack03]

What I did was have only one full page ad that pops up when the app starts. Pretty much like a splash screen. And then I offered a way to remove the ad and that is by paying $0.99

Banner ads are added during programming.

 

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[healthstatus]

Also, are ad banners added during programming or during deployment?

You will put your ad code in during programming, and it will call the ad server to get the current ads. You will also want to put analytics software calls in your app. If your game is an addictive, leveling type game ads can be quite successful. If it is more a long term shooter, then ads won't do much for you. You will need at least 1,000 ad views to make $1.00, and I have heard mobile CPM rates are going down (this could be a result of time of year as all CPM rates dip in Jan-May) so you may only get 70 cents for 1,000 ad views. So you either get 1,000 people to download it for free, look at one ad, or sell the app to 1 person for 99 cents and after Apple takes their cut you make the same money. If you can get people to pay more than a buck for the game, you can do the math to figure out how many free downloads it will take.

This all gets back to, how are you going to drive traffic to your game? If you don't have that figured out, all these decisions are total crap shoots. Saying you will figure that out after the game is done, is backwards.

 

[Winning]

Freemium is the way to go- don't cram it with ads... Returns wont be high unless you have TONS... and I mean TONS of users on their daily.

With Freemium, you charge users for extra things in the app. Thats the way most have gone, and its worked.

A wise man once said, Don't break a model that doesn't need fixing ;-)

 

[AndrewNC]

Free app downloads with in-app purchases work MUCH BETTER for me compared to even charging $0.99 for an up up front.

 

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[scratchdisk]

Free app with in app purchases or ads, especially on Android. If you release a paid version on Android it will be pirated like mad.

 

[AndrewNC]

This all gets back to, how are you going to drive traffic to your game? If you don't have that figured out, all these decisions are total crap shoots. Saying you will figure that out after the game is done, is backwards.

^this. 100%

 

[jeandearme]

You will need at least 1,000 ad views to make $1.00, and I have heard mobile CPM rates are going down (this could be a result of time of year as all CPM rates dip in Jan-May) so you may only get 70 cents for 1,000 ad views. So you either get 1,000 people to download it for free, look at one ad, or sell the app to 1 person for 99 cents and after Apple takes their cut you make the same money. If you can get people to pay more than a buck for the game, you can do the math to figure out how many free downloads it will take.

Erm, it's not like that. Seriously, when it comes to money - get real-world data because someone might find it as true when it's not.

I'm using ads in my apps and CPM rates are around $1.5 - $2.0, so when You go with it in big numbers it's really a big difference.

As for bussiness model - the answer is simple: it depends from app to app. Guys above showed most of them, but You job is to use Your brain and work it out. Still can't figure it out? Go to Google Play and download top free apps and play with them for a longer period (sometimes ads are after, let's say, 10th level - after You are little catched up), then go with paid apps if You want to (or freemium - maybe even better).

Go, research. For starters - get Your hands on this: http://www.google.com/ads/admob/businesskit/introduction/ Worth reading.

Then, You might want to read these: http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/ AFAIK, best resource on making money on Android.

Afterall, if comes to two things - number of downloads (marketing) and retention (experience).

 

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[healthstatus]

Erm, it's not like that. Seriously, when it comes to money - get real-world data because someone might find it as true when it's not.
I'm using ads in my apps and CPM rates are around $1.5 - $2.0, so when You go with it in big numbers it's really a big difference.

Are you using your November - December cpm rates? Regardless, I say $1.00 you say $2.00 for 1000 ad views. How many of your users have generated 1,000 ad views? Unless you have an app that gets used multiple times a day and generates a lot of ad views each session, CPM is really hard way to go. My real world data is my website and apps that have been running for a lot of years with a LOT of page and ad views.

 

[jeandearme]

Are you using your November - December cpm rates? Regardless, I say $1.00 you say $2.00 for 1000 ad views. How many of your users have generated 1,000 ad views? Unless you have an app that gets used multiple times a day and generates a lot of ad views each session, CPM is really hard way to go. My real world data is my website and apps that have been running for a lot of years with a LOT of page and ad views.

Nope, the recent ones. I'm only in apps, no web-browser pages. I think there might be a difference. I don't understand Your question about how many users have generated 1,000 ad views? Well, I don't think any user reached that - and that's not even my goal. It's even better when there is one ad view for each screen since AdMob (which I'm using mostly) has limitations to three ads/user/day.

For yesterday, I got 7,96 PLN which is $2,5 as for requests RPM (fill rate appx. 96% + house ads). As far as I see - it's quite good RPM so far in comparison.

CPM is really hard way to go.

With 2000 downloads/day for shitty apps You can make as far as $40/day. At least, I had such experiences. The problem with shitty apps, though, is they need constant downloads to maintain income. Nevertheless, I wouldn't agree it's hard way to go - it just depends on what You do and need. Sometimes it's better, sometimes not.