So I launched a drawing type game very popular with 60 installs free game with inapp purchases and Chartboost and all results are zero earnings in Itunesconnect and zero earnings with Chartboost ITs flippin depressing when you have a $180 million dollar game under your belt
It is a sad market, I don't know anyone making decent money right now. The market is so full of free games being free doesn't even equate to downloads anymore. I would suggest you put a link to your game in this thread though, people might check it out.
Yes it seems very strange when after a lot of threads/posts here he doesnt even create a new thread for this in the games section or ipod apps section
I'm not surprised. The kinds of questions you are asking tells me you're a beginner to the industry, with no experience. Use this project to learn how to build, how to market, how to design and most importantly how not to make the same mistakes you did on this project. I find it super strange that you asked how hard it is to make a drawing game yesterday, and then tell use you launched a drawing game today! Why did you waste our time if you already knew?
put a link so we can make intelligent discussion. By the way you don't have a 180m game under your belt, someone else does.
For the amount of marketing you did, 60 installs is pretty good. I mean you couldn't even bothered doing the simple free things I am not sure what makes you think it would end up in anything but a few people. 60 is more than I would of guessed. I have read in general less than 1% of people buy an IAP (for my games that have a premium and free version I have about 1% of my downloads being paid). With only 60 downloads zero IAP is an expected result. Also do your stats tell you people are playing or are they just downloading saying boring and closing the app? On chartboost, you tend to not make much until someone clicks an ad and installs, then you make a lot. How many impressions have you made? Is anyone clicking? Also comparing yourself to 180m app is clearly ridiculous. It sounds to me like you are mainly focused on getting rich quick than making a quality app. You aren't in the right place for get rich quick schemes. It takes hard work, talent and a bit of luck. Congrats on finally releasing a game/app however. The only correlation I have seen for success is the number of apps released which tells me experience is important.
Sadly, this is no longer the 2009 goldrush. Mobile games are a very hard market to crack. As Destined noted: 60 installs for no marketing is very decent. You really need to get the word out about your game and decide if you want to continue pushing it or make something else. I am curious what you mean by having an 180 million dollar game under your belt? Is this your perceived worth of your game? is this what your developer's previous game made? etc
Well its drawing type game like Draw Something I have 169 installs now but still depressing stats say $ zero
Yeah i'm starting to give up. He hasnt posted a link here when it was out, and despite 33,000 people asking him for the link hes still not posting it. Dont get it
Based on what you have said/posted I assume your app is rather poor in quality, compared to something which is popular, well done and has the market cornered. I wouldn't expect you will make more than a few dollars from it over the lifetime of the time. While it obviously won't be a profitable experience for you it is good to of actually released something. Again 169 is good based on what you are doing. I doubt he has any clue. There are people here who would install and share if it was good. When you have an app and you aren't willing to tell people you are dooming it. When you have no/little marketing budget you have to take every chance you can get.
I can sympathize. We just launched Star Saver a couple of days ago, and I'm a little bit disappointed (quite a bit actually) with the launch numbers. Although the reception has been fantastic so far. Just to give some perspective, we had a small team working on it for over 3 years (there's a Kickstarter thread around here somewhere from like 2011), and we have several ads running on different sites. If you're interested you can check it out: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-saver/id829013676?ls=1&mt=8 Mobile really is a hard nut to crack, and I sure haven't figured it out. And this IS coming from someone who worked on million dollar games. There's a heck of a difference between production and marketing though and I have no idea how to market or sell for mobile. In any case, don't get discouraged. I'm really trying hard not to.
Your game looks fantastic. Trailer is very well put together. I hope it does a decent return for you. I see you have gone a shareware model so I will have to check it out tonight. I empathize with your long development time: our tiny team have been working on a somewhat ambitious game for nearly 5 years - and we still have another 6 months to go.
Agreed, interesting pricing with the large (in mobile games) unlock fee. I will download tonight and if good tweet about it to try and help. That is a long time to work on a mobile game!
Hate hearing stories like this. Devs work for ages on a game and then have minimal downloads. Played your game a fair bit last night, its really good (left an honest opinion in your thread). We're in danger of having tons of freemium crap or clones if people just dont help out good indie devs. You even have a good system of people can try the game for free then unlock the rest, love that 'shareware' type of system. Hopefully word of mouth will start to help
I don't want to hijack the thread, but I really appreciate the feedback! We just submitted a couple bug fixes and, to your point in the other thread, we're working on trying to speed up that intro (without breaking anything). Launches are *so* hard!