$50k earned on the App Store

[Ovogame]

Today, my Apps’ income just past over $50000. It’s a nice threshold that many tiny developer like me will never reach but it took me almost two years to reach that amount (I’m only talking about Apps that I am self-publishing on the App store). So, I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad. As far as I am concerned this is a failure. A game like Jump Birdy Jump should have bring something like $200k at least (yep, it is that good). But unfortunately, it didn’t get the attention it deserved from the press or Apple (it was only feature in some tiny App store). Luckily, I don’t just rely on the app store and never stop my PC casual game business. I’ll carry on creating game for this wonderful platform but I’ll probably spend less time on it. If you are starting as an indie developer, make sure to pick up a cross-platform engine, so you can get as many streams of income as possible (like I do). Or you’ll be gambling too much.

JC

[obscenemedia.com]

Hi Ovogame,

I'm working on my first game and if I could pass $50,000 in two years, I wouldn't call that a failure whatsoever. To me that's amazing but I'm sure once I'm more established, I won't be saying that. Did you do any marketing on your part or did you just leave it up to chance? If you did market, what channels did you use?

Jared Martin
http://www.facebook.com/obscenemedia

[TheBunny]

Awesome!

[Mars Base]

Gratz that's a nice achievement!
It's nice to see that such numbers are possible with more mainstream games.

[Zenout]

I've reached a point of considering Mac and PC deployments as becoming more attractive than iOS. How would someone like me handle payments? I guess the Mac AppStore and Steam would be the places to aim for...would probably get some visibility too.

50K is a good job if it funds a bigger project (even the security of survival is nice), plus allows you such luxuries as private transport! But it's all relative and we all want to step up I agree.

The iOS 'feature' corner is an art form in itself. I need to look back at when the day my first app was released, then avoid that day like the plague: It made N&N for like 2-3 HOURS...stuff like that is life changing tbh.

Guess what we have earned in these 2 years is precious developer experience.

[TheBunny]

Originally Posted by Zenout

I've reached a point of considering Mac and PC deployments as becoming more attractive than iOS. How would someone like me handle payments? I guess the Mac AppStore and Steam would be the places

YES!

Only bad sides... steam might not take you...
and MAS sales are mostly really low when I talk to most devs on there
like 1/10th that of ios in general.

YMMV of course

[Zenout]

How much of an issue is this GreenLight thing? Ovogame's suggestion about multi-platform sounds appealing. Plus apparently essential, again relatively.

I guess what I mean is: Are the voters as bad as some of the raters we know! Is the system policed to prevent unscrupulous types. Sorry going off topic a little. Just wondering if this issue of 25K/turnover is global to platforms? (sounds ok for startups)

[BazookaTime]

Jump Birdy Jump is an awesome game, I would have thought it did better than that.

[Greyskull]

Originally Posted by TheBunny

YES!

Only bad sides... steam might not take you...
and MAS sales are mostly really low when I talk to most devs on there
like 1/10th that of ios in general.

YMMV of course

Desura seems to be more flexible when it comes to distributing indie games. You should try them, too. They might not have the name recognition of Steam, but it's another channel to get your games out from your hard drive and into the world.

[Ovogame]

Just to clarify, $50k is for all my selfpublished apps. JBJ account for about 60% of that. JBJ was the only game created just for iOS. The others are port from my PC games, so it was cheap to release them on iOS. Anka (iOS) is distributed by BFG, so it isn't part of the equation (it did already brings more money than JBJ, despite my shares being smaller obviously).

@obscenemedia
I didn't do enough marketing obviously. Other than sending loads of review request (didn't work very well), posting on forums... I'm cross promoting my apps with my inside my other apps. Every 6 months, I'm putting some of my games for free (to bump a bit the visibility). My budget for JBJ was mainly my time spent on it (5 months). My external cost was tiny few , other than my time (5 months) so my marketing budget was also tiny.

@Zenout
For PC/Mac payment processing, you can use 3rd parties like BMT or Plimus. Steam is extremely hard to get into. I'm using the Mac app store for mac games and loads of casual PC distributors like BFG. At the end, the long tail is working as some of them do still brings money in even after month/years of the original release.

@TheBunny, @BazookaTime, @sampdx
Thanks a lot.

@Balloon Loons
Yes, I would like to create a more "hardcore" game, but all my past experience and distribution channels are with more casual games, so I am always worry about having to start from scratch again.

JC