Ask HN: Care to share your average Android Market daily revenues?
Hello hackers, I shortly release my first android application and had like to know, what are some average normal numbers on the android store? care to share your average revenues, my daily are ~ $10 , is it normal?
12 comments
I have a few apps for Android. First few days you always get a lot of downloads (depending on what your app does). That was one year ago. I released another app a few weeks ago and the market has changed. Now, it's much more like the iPhone market where you fall into oblivion if you don't have some marketing strategy. Take a look at the 'just in' for all apps. It's filled with batches of 'hot babes' apps and skins apps so you fall down the list very quickly before anyone even has a chance to notice you.
I released a 'Sca', a spy camera app, a year ago and it's doing pretty well. Made $6,000 in 14 months. With the release of all the new phones this year, revenue has picked up to where I consistently get $30 per day after Google takes its cut. I tried $2.95, $9.95, and I settled on the current $5.95. Revenue is constant across all price points. There's no way to scoop up all price points, though, which is annoying. Anyone have any ideas for that?
Last I checked, you get bumped back to the top of the 'just in' list if you submit an update and it's been a few weeks since your last update, so it's a good way to spike up traffic.
I released a niche app for astronomy, Iridium Flares, that sells for $1.45 and makes one sale every few days.
I made sure my two paid apps have a free version. I have a few free apps that advertise my paid apps.
If you compare the top paid apps with the top paid games, it looks like there are more successful games than successful apps. People will pay for entertainment, but games usually require many more hours of work.
I released a 'Sca', a spy camera app, a year ago and it's doing pretty well. Made $6,000 in 14 months. With the release of all the new phones this year, revenue has picked up to where I consistently get $30 per day after Google takes its cut. I tried $2.95, $9.95, and I settled on the current $5.95. Revenue is constant across all price points. There's no way to scoop up all price points, though, which is annoying. Anyone have any ideas for that?
Last I checked, you get bumped back to the top of the 'just in' list if you submit an update and it's been a few weeks since your last update, so it's a good way to spike up traffic.
I released a niche app for astronomy, Iridium Flares, that sells for $1.45 and makes one sale every few days.
I made sure my two paid apps have a free version. I have a few free apps that advertise my paid apps.
If you compare the top paid apps with the top paid games, it looks like there are more successful games than successful apps. People will pay for entertainment, but games usually require many more hours of work.
Fortunately, some types of apps can get very nice revenue from ads. (I mean, compared to games.)
We're getting like $2000 a month out of ads with our free apps, but only $250 from our paid application, which is just a generalization of the free ones.
An interesting fact: we experienced no decline at all in the number of sold instances of our paid application when we increased the price from €0.50 to €1.00. That means, we doubled the revenue :-O. (Yeah, well, the new release included some improvements, but still surprising IMO.)
We're getting like $2000 a month out of ads with our free apps, but only $250 from our paid application, which is just a generalization of the free ones.
An interesting fact: we experienced no decline at all in the number of sold instances of our paid application when we increased the price from €0.50 to €1.00. That means, we doubled the revenue :-O. (Yeah, well, the new release included some improvements, but still surprising IMO.)
It doesn't surprise me at all that 0.50 to 1euro makes no difference in terms of # of download. I would not be surprised if even 2euro or 2.5 would keep the number constant. It would be really nice to do some serious marketing / behavioral economics study on what is the threshold for "real cheap" on the app stores. I wonder if there is any way to get anonymous data from apple store.
I currently have two apps on the iTunes App Store, Farmville Timer http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/farmville-timer/id360432188?m... and Cafe World Timer http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cafe-world-timer/id365160796?...
These are relatively simple utilities with push notifications for tracking various events in those Facebook games.
Both of them are priced at $2.99 and sell between 10 and 20 copies a day on average, netting me about $60 a day or $1800 a month. They've been on sale for two months now.
You can see my blog at http://blog.tuchee.com for greater detail about my pricing experiments and experiences in developing the apps.
These are relatively simple utilities with push notifications for tracking various events in those Facebook games.
Both of them are priced at $2.99 and sell between 10 and 20 copies a day on average, netting me about $60 a day or $1800 a month. They've been on sale for two months now.
You can see my blog at http://blog.tuchee.com for greater detail about my pricing experiments and experiences in developing the apps.
A few more observations: I kept detailed stats on the download patterns for my paid spy camera app. The rate of downloads is constant between 8am and 2am. I did not see any 'rush hour' effect. It's also constant but slower at night, between 2am and 8am. Given that sales come from all over the world, that would tend to flatten any bumps in the graph. I'm not sure what time zone Google is using for these stats.
More interestingly, weekends see up to two times the traffic, so I release my updates Saturday morning so they can have the most possible traffic through the 'just in' list.
More interestingly, weekends see up to two times the traffic, so I release my updates Saturday morning so they can have the most possible traffic through the 'just in' list.
Or Apple App Store revenues too, if you're willing.
My Android numbers are similar, close to $1k after 2 months, now averaging around $10/day. It's been pretty constant for a while, I suspect the natural decline over time is countered by more users picking up recently released phones like the Incredible and Desire.
I have a few iPhone apps in the store. All together they average around $8 a day. Was a lot more back when I released them Oct 2008.
in 2008 it was just a matter of putting anything in the store. I was making few hundreds per day.
I remember at the beginning you could even afford to check everyday which new applications were published, and some days the number 0...
I remember at the beginning you could even afford to check everyday which new applications were published, and some days the number 0...
perhaps a link to your app or a snippet about it?
Also we could put this up in a spreadsheet. That would be helpful in looking clearly at the avg sales by category of apps (games, business, etc)
P.S: I'm planning to develop an Android app too.
Also we could put this up in a spreadsheet. That would be helpful in looking clearly at the avg sales by category of apps (games, business, etc)
P.S: I'm planning to develop an Android app too.
[deleted]
It's in the category sport. It's a great idea with the spreadsheet.
Well I'd say normal probably depends entirely on what type of application you wrote, and whether it's a paid app or ad supported.
Do you happen to know what the rates are for ad-supported apps? Not really sure of what options there are, I've seen Google-branded ads in Android apps though. How do they compare to web advertising?
We've had a lot of experience with Admob, and also with Mobclix. I'd recommend the latter.
For some types of applications (such as news readers, definitely not action games), ads can work very nicely.
You can expect something a eCPM of $1.20. In our case, that translates to like 6 cents per click (which is a metric I like more).
We have a very shallow comparative in our blog: http://www.androidsx.com/admob-vs-mobclix-1st-round/
For some types of applications (such as news readers, definitely not action games), ads can work very nicely.
You can expect something a eCPM of $1.20. In our case, that translates to like 6 cents per click (which is a metric I like more).
We have a very shallow comparative in our blog: http://www.androidsx.com/admob-vs-mobclix-1st-round/
first 5 days $2K per day (iPhone application) - education
$2K per day , Congrats. I guess, this kind of numbers need more time on the Android market.
also please bear in mind thia app has a brand and company behind it with lots of market share in its niche allready through other products other than iphone, so lots of avenues to generate awareness of the app through other channels including facebook.
well big day was friday which took in over 5K in 24hrs that got us in top 30 highest grossing apps for a while
did you see a strong decrease after the first 5 days? for how long is the app in the app store? do you still have those revenues?
its only been 5 days :)
I'm suspect there will be a drop off - all though this app target is cyclical so new consumers appear 2X a year.
On Apple store about 3k/mo (most of those from medical) with a bunch of little apps.
Browsing the Android market, especially in the top paid application section I have not seen any application particularly worthy of me purchasing it. Could you give me examples of any apps actually worth buying?
The first Android app I paid for was Aldiko (http://www.aldiko.com/), an ebook (epub) reader -- excellent feature set, and fantastic polish.
There's an ad-supported free version, too, but $1.99 is nothing for software I use every day.
There's an ad-supported free version, too, but $1.99 is nothing for software I use every day.