I am sure this was just a growing pain point, but I could not get any answers from them for about a week while filing my IT returns, just kept getting automated reminders. So I ended up going with Taxmantra, another e-tax filing provider and got it done within a day.
Any specific reason for doing this instead of just charging people for using the tips? Are your users generally skeptical of accuracy of tips and as such not likely to pay?
"As I understand it Amazon is demanding Hachette to sell their books at a certain price. This is highly unusual"
how is this different from Walmart deciding at what price it sells its suppliers' product. Almost all the retailers decide the final selling price of suppliers' products, that is the reason they are able to undercut mom&pop retail stores. Only exception on supplier side is Apple and to some extent Bose who have the brand leverage to dictate their prices to retailers.
I would love to know more if you are planning to do something similar for mobile games. As a mobile games developer I know that something like this will resonate with a lot of mobile game developers
I do plan on going next year. I decided to skip this year as I was not sure how valuable it will be, but now I feel I was wrong about that. Good luck with continued success for this and future games.
any tips on how to get in touch with the Apple dev relations team? We generally send emails to app_store_promotion@apple.com around launches, but they don't seem to get any response.
We have had similar success on all 3 platforms, as it is easier to stand out on Amazon, Google play drives a lot of downloads, and Apple monetizes very well. For us, it is almost 34-33-33 in terms of revenue breakup.
The first lesson I had in this industry was to always prepare for a lean patch. In a hit driven business, you can never be sure when the next hit will come, so always good to have as large a runway as possible.
Having said that, this has been my largest worry in this startup, and has caused many a sleepless nights.
Most of our users are in US, UK and Europe. We monetize via In App Purchases (IAPs) and Ads. On average we monetize close to industry standards, 2% of people pay for hints, powerups and other IAPs, while ads give a decent $2 eCPM ($2 for 1000 impressions)
We have games on iOS, Google play and Amazon app stores. Mostly trivia games, but some arcade games too.
As an example, this is our most popular game across the 3 stores, with 1 million+ downloads https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.froods.dwt...
Our mobile games startup started in Dec 2013 is profitable. Our monthly revenues are 3-4X our monthly expenses (which includes market salary for Co-Founders.) In fact in the last 2-3 months, we have been able to save up almost 18 months worth of runway for our team of 8.
Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rates.
A similar thing happened to me when I made public a previously private repo on Amazon and forgot to scrub it for AWS key. Luckily I got an email from Amazon within 24 hours of the instances being started, and as such my bill was just $360, which in any case they waived off.
You might want to check your Github repos.
An Indian startup here looking to register a C corp soon. How have you setup the two entities? Does the US corp get all the revenues, and pay the Indian company a development fee for the product? Which company pays the salary, US or Indian? Anything else to keep in mind while going down this route?
The numbers are correct. These numbers have been reported by GungHo (the company that has made Puzzles&Dragons). They have to report their revenue numbers as they are traded in the Osaka Stock Exchange. [1]
Also these are April numbers, recent revenue estimates will be even higher as the game is now climbing up the top grossing charts (iTunes) in US too.
Having gone from a non-technical co-founder in my last startup to a technical co-founder in my current startup, I could identify with your post, so much so that it was almost like I had written it myself. Also last few months I have always been frustrated with the slow speed at which I write code as compared to others. And that sometimes makes it hard to enjoy the process when the time difference between when you think of a new feature and when you actually see it working in front of you, is large. But now next time I am feeling frustrated I will think of this blog, grit my teeth and just carry on.
For me it is slightly different:
When I login "Indian guy with Indian credit card, Indian registered Kindle, Indian shipping address, etc..", I get $9.21.
With an anonymous browser window, in India, I get: $9.48, no taxes and free international wireless delivery.
I guess this is just third-world / first-world price discrimination.
Specifically I am looking at feedback on these questions
1. What aspect of the site confused you?
2. What would improve this site?
3. Will you buy this app? For how much?
4. If no for 3, why not? What can improve your chances of buying?
Agreed. If Constantin Films take us to the courts, then we will have a very slim chance of winning, just as every other video creator. They can enforce their copyright if they want, and make it stand in a court of law, with all the resources they have. About commercial usage, we believe we are just sharing our view on the Indian E-Commerce and ReCommerce industry through a humorous take. So whether this is a commercial/promotional video or not, is something, I believe, we can agree to disagree.
I agree with what you are saying about the involvement in the task/scenario being low. And that is the reason, a lot of people do not even bother selling used electronics, they just throw it away. We are trying ways to educate people that selling online does not have to be a chore, it can be simple, easy, and fun (in the sense of 'making some easy money' fun). It is a learning process for us, and we will keep trying till we get the right mix of humor and involvement.
There are now thousands of video which use this content, and the copyright holder Constantin Films chooses to not strictly enforce its copyright, due to the publicity the movie itself gets from these parody videos.
Youtube asked us to sign a declaration stating that we are using this content in a totally different context, under fair use rules, this is allowed. So like thousands of other Hitler reacts videos, we hope we are in clear.