The China market is getting my attention. My co designer showed me how we could get 20,000+ downloads a day in China. He launched and yes we got 21,000+ downloads our first day.
Yes, do share. I had an app/game that I launched last year get about 5,000 downloads in China in the first few days (and then the downloads just abruptly stopped altogether) but 21,000 is impressive. Do share, please. Your app, how you did it, etc.
I am going to sit down with my co developer after the Chinese holiday to finish and upload our next game. I am a Canadian and like you am new to the Chinese market, well in fact I am new to all app markets. I have been in China for over 15 years and have a number of businesses in China and game apps is a new one. Enough of the history. My co developer launched a few of our games in China and I found that all of a sudden I was getting a return on pianoTap, it was about 100 times more than I was getting with Google admob. That caught my attention but I was told by my co developer that Tencents uses a method that gets more hits but he felt it was disruptive for Chinese players. I told him that may be so but our games as far a Chinese players goes has the same method of introducing ads as all other games and we should not hold back because of that. I am more business minded and he is more download minded. I am also in touch with 2 developer / publishing companies in China, one has a good amount of startup capital and the other is making good money in China. In the 30 days I will focus on how this market works. I do know that as a foreigner I cannot open an account with Tencents an maybe cannot offer inapp purchases so I uses one of my family to open the account. Again I am not totally clear on this because I always felt that the USA, Europe, Russia etc markets where the cat's meow. I do know that Chinese love their smart phones and this market is huge and more than that it is wealthy plus they seem to love adds and buying online. I think it is an exciting market to be in if you get into bed with the right partner. One that will pay you your share in a transparent way.
I need to meet with him. I don't know how he did it. Yesterday he told me he got 4,000 + new downloads and this was before the day ended. You have to keep in mind that 24,000 downloads via Google would cost at least $48,000 to $72,000 +
Hardest Stick Man Games in English, don't know what it is called in China. We launched a few games in China but he handles that. I mistakenly thought China was not a contender but it may be the market to aim for.
I am meeting with my co designer on Monday. We are putting our finishing touches to our next game using in apps plus advertising and see how it works in the Chinese market. He will use all of his methods to get the downloads on the Chinese side. So far what he has done is so much better than what I managed to do with the foreign market (market outside of China). I put the value of the downloads he got to about $75,000 US if we had to used paid google ads to get them. Plus he got a few 100 comments. He and I feel that the dowloads coming in should be enough to make that game go viral, it has not yet which is a surprise to him and me because it is much better than a game he worked on which got over 5,000,000 but that the the way things go in this business, there are always the unknowns. So those who feel that 20,000 downloads can bring them over the top have to rethink that. One thing I know is that we made a big jump forward and learning as we go.
I know he never names then normally I'm surprised by all these figures as if you keep getting great sales as you constantly tell us how come the games are so bad ? Looking at Hardest Stickman Games on the app store it just looks very very poor. Not one review on the UK app store Just surprised at some of the figures, you can see why he doesnt name the apps most of the time.
Yes he said that the foreign market is not good and he does not understand. This guy created Do Not Crash and I think this game is much better. But he got the downloads in China and that is great and worth money. The China market is huge and I know the pay on ad only games comparing apples to apples is much higher with tencents than google like 10 to 100 times the amount and if he managed to get the downloads in China then he is doing something that is worth money. Of course I also look at the bottom line, the cash that comes in. This game is only ads and the ads are shut off for China, his choice so there will be no dollar return on games played daily data which is a bit of a disappointment but it is early in the game building so it is ok. From what I see in China I think this will be the biggest market and understanding what Chinese like is not the same as it is in the foreign market. Lets see how things go with the next game. As far as the Hardest Stickman Games I think he did a good job but then again that is my opinion.
I just seen his China download data and the graph is moving up. The test will be when we launch the new game to see if we can duplicate it. If that works then it will be a small positive result that it can be duplicated. Of course it would be best to do with more new games to get more reliable data. However whatever he did is impressive. As I always thought this guy is a great game designer, programmer and research driven by the burning desire to succeed without the help of a publisher.
We needed to postpone our meeting until next week. Here is some info re Chinese Publisher. One game that made some action only got paid for the 1st month, about $150,000USD. No transparent reporting was provided to match the payment and the following months not a word, email etc about the next payment and so on for the following months, that was months ago. Welcome to China....
Update: The game is making about 2,000 to 3,000 RMB a day which is $350 to $500 USD a day. Not a bad amount of pocket change considering that this was done without buying advertising and all the revenue comes from the game ads.
Funny you say that, because my aunt & her co designer who lives in China makes $10,397/Month on average, working part-time from home doing only android games. Not a bad amount of pocket change. They are very successful. I will have meetings with her soon and hopefully see her new office in China.
