I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any.
How can flappy birds be making $50k per day, and your #1 paid app only makes $2k per day?
I just bought the game to thank you for no ads, no IAPs.
Have you considered a single IAP that does nothing, but gives you (and Apple, and the IRS) a bit more cash?
There is an order of magnitude difference between the downloads rates for premium vs free apps (probably 2x). So it is entirely possible that a top ranked free app gets a ton of downloads a day relative to a top ranked paid app.
>Garbage ★ by XxlCraiglxX - Version 1.6 - Jun 13, 2014
>It's so nice to have this hive-mind community full of hipsters and morons raving about the worst goddamn games. Same thing happened with Angry Birds and Flappy Birds. You people are disgusting. Horrible unwashed masses of brainless consumers. Hey morons, take a step back and really consider the piece of crap you rated 5 stars. No, really, just take a moment.
The entire experience has been a roller coaster. Every time ADR hits a top spot, I dream about a future where I don't have to work a 9-5. But then it drops, and those dreams are taken away. That being said, 50k a day would definitely bring me to that goal quickly (just not the case for me).
Perhaps a few indie authors could collaborate and write a blog article about it?
I imagine the "feedback" emails of large software projects must be similar.
The Apple Bar Geniuses at the Store in Palo Alto all loved it as well.
I hope just one of our heartfelt loves can equal at least a thousand haters, who, as we all know, just gotta hate. :-)
Now, given that we're no where near the #1 spot, we're averaging about $1,000 a day. But that figure is dropping too. ADR is a depreciating asset with a life span of two years I'd say (making this assumption based on what I've seen with other paid apps and their rank history).
Do you have any statistics on how far players have made it in your game? I, for one, downloaded the game just to see what it was about. This is not my type of game, so I quit after only playing about 10 minutes.
Reason I ask is that you could test this out as a freemium app. Free to download, but after a certain period, the user has to pay to continue.
Let's say 20% of people that download it are hooked. If you get 20x the download rate on free, that means you could have a 400% increase in revenue. It might be worth testing out.
Also, any tips on recovering from a ranking hit after releasing a new version and losing all your current version ratings?
If your rank is low, release, and release often. Don't sweat the reviews (use them as a means to gain feedback from the people who've downloaded the game). You can also make your app free for a couple of days which will bring in new eyes (you lose your rank if you do that, so just be aware).
As for being a top ranked app (and in my case, a top ranked app that lives and dies by its reviews), I really can't release a new version unless I add something that significantly increases end user engagement.
For example: v1.5 of the game hit the number one spot, and dropped to #2 18 days later. The moment it dropped I released v1.6 of the game which added developer commentary from me and Michael. We went back to #1 for 2 days after a week long slump. That being said, I compared numbers after the fact and our review conversion rates only increased by ~0.2%.
Full write up here: http://amirrajan.net/a-dark-room/#secondwind
For the US, I think the age profile are kids in middle school and high school. Just from what I've heard from my friends, the game spread like wild fire through schools. This is my current working theory especially since the game dropped significantly in rank the moment summer started.
EDIT: welp. it looks like he has ads.... :-(