Comment by avgarrison | Hacker News Reader

Comment by avgarrison | Hacker News Reader

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It may be worthwhile for me to chime in here with my own stats, which are far less impressive than bignoggins. I recently ported my iOS app, BridgeBasher, to Android. I took a different route though. Since I had no users on Android, I thought the best thing to do would be to create an ad-based version on Android, mostly because I've heard a lot of people say that Android users are less likely to pay for apps. I decided on using Mobclix for advertising, and here are my stats:

Date - Android / iOS

8/7/2011 - $2.16 / $142.00

8/8/2011 - $1.68 / $97.00

8/9/2011 - $1.15 / $84.00

8/10/2011 - $1.82 / $76.00

8/11/2011 - $0.98 / $78.00

8/12/2011 - $0.57 / $103.00

8/13/2011 - $0.59 / $88.00

8/14/2011 - $0.72 / $102.00

8/15/2011 - $0.43 / $74.00

8/16/2011 - $0.44 / $75.00

8/17/2011 - $0.18 / $88.00

Total - $10.54 / $1,007.00

This is obviously comparing apples to oranges, since the iOS version is paid ($0.99) and the Android version is ad revenue only, however given bignoggins success with a paid app on Android, I'm thinking I have made a mistake going the free route on Android.

MobClix has big promises as to eCPM, but in the past month, AdMob has been KILLING my MobClix performance. I have AdMob AND MobClix in place, and recently dialed it to send 80% of my impressions to AdMob because of >$1 eCPM from AdMob.

Also, be sure you HAVE a paid version with no ads available to buy -- and don't forget to cross promote it using house ads. I have about a 1.4% conversion rate to paid (at $2), which accounts for more income than the free version so far.

Granted I'm still not getting rich on my Android version, but I'm trying to get a publisher for it (ONE clause left in the contract still to iron out), which should help a lot.

Thanks for the tip. What publisher are you working with?

I'd rather not say until I've signed. :)

Contact me offline and I'll let you know what happens -- there's contact info anti-spamified on here: http://rechargegames.com/page/about-quickcharge

Looking you up on the Market, you have 5k+ downloads. Your competitor, X Construction has 100k+ downloads for the paid version and 5m+ for the free version. So that's roughly a 2% conversion rate. If you released a paid version instead and got 2% of the downloads, you'd have $100 instead of $10. Still not near the iPhone version, but I'll guess you didn't have an entrenched competitor when you started on iPhone.

(Give or take a little inaccuracy as I'm just using the lowest possible figures from what Android Market gives me)

Also, if I search Bridge Builder, (which is pretty much the name of the genre) their app shows up and not yours, which may hurt your visibility. Maybe try fit that into your description somewhere?

Android users are paying, I can attest to that as well. Mind sharing about how high you rank on iOS?

Also, I just went to download BridgeBasher. Your game wants crazy permissions. Why should a game have to update my SD card contents, need my location, AND have access to device calls and identity?

1. Save files. 2. Targeted ads 3. To get a unique identifier for the phone. (I.e. ads again)

Number 3 is an example of Android permissions being insufficiently granular. It's nice that you know when installing apps that they can get a unique identifier (which until iOS5, apps always had access to on iOS. It's randomised or something on iOS5), but its also a nuisance that it requires giving other permissions too.

Number 2 and number 3 are arguments for being able to refuse apps permissions like you can do with iOS location settings.

The permission requirements are ridiculous, but are required for Mobclix. I would like to get away from all that, with a single requirement for Internet.

Location permissions are optional. I use MobClix, and I don't ask for location.

I might be able to get higher eCPMs if I had it enabled, but between GPS taking more battery (for fine location information) and people being hesitant to download apps that track their location, I'd rather have the higher distribution and happier users.

I think many people is losing money with this "Android users dont pay for apps" idea. I bought tons of apps and almost every people I know that uses Android use to buy apps too. It is even easier for people in countries like Brazil, where iPhone users cant buy apps directly (only using gift cards). With google checkout I buy apps in seconds. I have more paid games than most of my friends who have iPhones.

My problem with Mobclix was actually getting payment. For the first three months they only paid me after I waited the 90 days and contacted them numerous times asking why I hadn't gotten paid. After the third month they stopped responding to me completely and last week out of the blue I finally got paid for advertisements from more than a year ago.

Would you mind disclosing your sales for the past week? What did you do (without pushing an update) that made it shoot up so much?

http://www.appannie.com/bridgebasher/ranking/history/#view=g...

I have another app, SimplePhysics, which is a far better app, and I made it free last week. I have a notification in it that says: "If you like SimplePhysics, then you should check out my other game, BridgeBasher!" and redirects them to the download page for BB. Since SP is free, it's getting around 80k-100k downloads per day, and really driving sales for BB.

80k dowloads a day? really thats crazy

and this is on the android platoform?

this is on iPhone. SP was top 10 overall paid at one point so not surprised free version gets that much.

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