Is it possible? Yup. Read on! http://blog.fairladymedia.com/2010/01/08/buying-your-way-into-the-app-stores-top-25/ In this article we've shared the results of our experiments with in-app advertising for our games. I'd love to hear your thoughts! Please post in this thread or on the blog. Thanks!
I've only skimmed the article, but are they really using a 20% conversion rate for their calculations? Even though they said that was the best rate they ever achieved?
This makes it sound worth it if you have the capital to spend. Even so, I wonder if going with a marketing firm that specializes in iPhone stuff would make the money go farther. Also, would the ads be as effective now? It's a really tough decision to make and there's a lot to lose
20% conversion rate? Hey folks I'm the lead developer for Fairlady Media and would like to answer any questions that might come up. We're hoping to both answer questions that are out there and hear from other devs who have experience with in-app advertising as well. Yes, I used a 20% conversion rate for the calculations. I know that's optimistic, but it was the average for the time period that we were heavily advertising and Spazzle got into the Top 25 (that is according to AdMob's conversion rate tracking system). If you figure a 10% conversion rate, you would double the estimates in the article. Thanks for the question!
Would this be more expensive now? Great questions! If anyone has any experience with marketing firms, please chime in! In regard to the ads being as effective now, the numbers in the article reflect the inflation that has happened with the App Store over the past year as the volume of developers, apps and devices has gone up. We spent $5,800 last February and got into the Top 25 (other factors may have contributed to that). I estimate that to do the same now, you'd need at least 5 times that amount.
Apple's cut? The cost associated with in-app advertising at AdMob doesn't go through Apple. If you purchase 1,000 clicks at AdMob for in-app advertising and bid 5 cents per click, you'd pay AdMob $50. What you're hoping for by doing that is for your app to climb the charts in the App Store and get you more downloads. Any revenue you get from that through Apple for paid games will be minus Apple's 30% cut. I hope that answers your question!
Yes, it's always a difficult decision for us; we're a small company and started out without any capital (aside from our design/dev skills, lol!). One of the main deciding factors for us is, "Is this game good enough to hold its position after we push it up the ranks?". Some of our games have dropped much more rapidly than others, and that's a real ouch... The lesson learned is to get a good sense of whether your customers love the game before you do a big ad spend.
The numbers cited on that blog are misleading. "Being in the Top 25 during the last week in 2009 meant a profit of between $12,000 and $22,000 a day." Using the last week of 2009 to tantalize developers is just silly, due to the dramatic short-term effect Christmas had on the app store. Zombieville, for example, had about 60,000 downloads between Christmas eve and new year's, nearly two-months worth of our typical sales crammed into a single week (a "normal" month for us was between 30-40k units). These figures are way outside the norm, and should not be used as any kind of benchmark for advertising ROI. "To get into the Top 25, youll need to average more than 10,000 downloads per day. A Top 10 app will average more than 20,000 downloads a day. Less ambitious? To be in the top 100 in a gaming category like Family Games, youll still need to average more than 2,000 downloads per day." These figures are spectacularly wrong. Top 25 in the US paid charts is nowhere near 10k+ a day. Zombieville was #33 yesterday, and had only 2600 domestic sales. Based on our position on the top grossing list relative to cheaper, higher ranked apps, its easy to see that 10k is not even close to accurate. The top 100 family games figure? That's WAY off. Our other game - OMG Pirates! - is in the top 25 action games (one of the more crowded categories, far more crowded than the "family" category) with barely over 1000 US sales, so cracking the top 100 family games is more like 200+, not 2000. Are these numbers just made up, or pulled from the last week of 2009? Either way they're pretty useless.
I think they're talking about free apps only, and the profit comes from AdMob ads (please correct me if I'm wrong). Good data to have. Advertising paid apps on AdMob is generally much more difficult. We've spent up to $1000 in one day (not a ton, but it was an experiment) advertising a $0.99 app, and the corresponding increase in purchases barely makes a dent on rank. We estimated that we'd have to spend at least $30,000 in a day/weekend to get into the top 50/25 paid. Don't quote me on any of those numbers - this was a while ago, and I only remember ballpark figures. The lesson for us was that it wasn't worth it for a paid app. Sounds like it might be worth a try for a free one.
I'm pretty sure they're referring to buying admob ads for a paid app, thus increasing its rank on iTunes, and leading to further sales. The success story they site reached #14 in the family games category nearly a year ago, while simultaneously being covered on cnet, digg, and other sites, which probably had far more to do with its rise up the charts than the ad campaign.
Clearing that up.. These numbers are for free apps, not paid apps. For paid apps, all of the numbers will be very different. In any case, all of the numbers are either from the referenced articles or from the contained chart. I'll review our article to make sure that its clear where we're talking about free apps vs. paid apps. Thanks!
I'm a little confused by the article. Can you clarify: are you paying admob in the free version of the app, to advertise the paid version of the app?
Thanks Nattylux! You're absolutely correct! This article was comparing numbers for free apps only and the revenue is from AdMob ads. I completely agree that the numbers don't add up for paid apps. The conversion rate would be *much* lower, thus raising the amount you'd have to spend substantially. Unless you were targeting a paid app profit in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, I don't see how you'd want to invest the $60,000-$120,000 necessary (figuring a 10% and 5% conversion rate respectively).
I'm still confused So how do you make any money? Do AdMob pay you every time someone clicks on your ad? Please explain - thanks!
Yeah, that's wasn't very clear - you begin the article talking about how you can potentially buy your way into the lucrative top 25 on the charts, where apps are making 12k-22k... but then spend the rest of the article talking about something completely unrelated.
1. We pay admob (5 cents plus per click) to advertise our free app in other peoples' games/apps. 2. We get lots of downloads (and hopefully climb the charts). 3. We advertise other products, services, apps/games in our game using banners from several advertising companies. These companies pay us per-click revenue on those advertisements. Thanks for all the questions and comments, and sorry if the original article was a bit unclear.
Thanks for this great article. To me it sounds like a good way to get a steady revenue. What about paid versions then? Like your game Spazzle, do you see significantly sales rising for the paid version? This article is about free apps, lite version most likely. What I am thing is that maybe it is a great way to promote the paid version as well.
