How does this app maker make 250 grand a day? http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Zynga+news/feature.asp?c=39092
Because, just like words with friends, it's a familiar board/party game that people know combined with the convenience of stuffing it in your pocket and people like that. Right or wrong personally in that position I would sell out to Zynga - I get the feeling if I didn't they'd just clone me and stamp me out, leaving me with close to nothing anyway. My ideals say otherwise, but I don't pay my rent in ideals...
True about stamp out but this does not explain exactly HOW they make this 250 grand a day I suppose it is with ads? What are the game play rules?
There's millions (and millions) of users, a paid version & free Add version. IAP to buy bombs and new colours. All that = massive $$$ It's incredibly popular mate and it's awesome. No mystery where the money comes from imo.
if you are atop the app store in 1st place, you are getting seen by millions of eyes. You are getting.. I didn't even know how many purchases a day. Hundreds of thousands of downloads for top spot? Then the IAP translates into a sizeable amount of daily cash as well. Since they've got the free list topped as well, they are getting that many more impressions on their ads, and they do banner ads & fullscreen ads. When you only get a couple thousand impressions/day that's like $2 if you are lucky but if you are getting a couple million impressions - also, having the route to IAP in there.. well, you can do the math.
Do they use jsut 1 ad network? IF so what is it? I might try Hodapp I saw some Youtube vids Also what are the bombs used for please?
how is an 8 year old without an actual ios device to play it? he only gets a few minutes a day internet allowance! so don't be so harsh
Marketing lesson for us all! If you haven't played Draw Something yet, do it! They have really nailed the virility aspect of the game, not just the ease-of-use. We are now working on updating our app for some elements of the virility, where users can play against other users. Big respect to OMGPOP, it's a great inspiration for the whole industry!!
If that's true ($250K/day), things changed a lot recently. Last year one of my games reached #2 in top grossing chart and it was making less than $100K/day.
Mind you they're atop both free and paid. Also both (I believe) have IAP, and the free runs both banner ads with fullscreen ads as well which pay a higher return. Not to mention an overall increased userbase in the time since, as well.
Right - when this was first posted they owned both 1st and 10th top grossing on the Canadian App Store (which I imagine was similarly ranked elsewhere)
One thing I noticed, is the % of people buying IAP. It's much higher than a typical game. I have about 10 games I'm playing right now, and half of us bought IAP, and judging by the colours used, it's the $5 one. That's huge! And the more people play, the more likely they are to buy more colours. The colours used can semi do the job, but having more colours helps a lot. Considering that it's free and the amount of time spent on it, people can justify spending $1 on IAP as well.
The paid version gives you a 2000 words list (not sure the # in the free version but it's significantly less), 400 coins, and removes the ads. Both the free and the paid version have coins that can be bought via IAP. However you also earn coins by drawing / guessing. The harder the word = more coins. Then the coins can then be used to buy bombs and color packs in the game. In the free version, there are full screen ads a the end of each round (similar to Words with Friends). And the limited word list (read repeating words) is a huge push for the paid version. Color packs are about 250coins. Bomb packs are about 400coins for 10bombs I believe. Each round you pick a word of easy / medium / hard difficulty. Giving 1 / 2 / 3 coins respectively. Needless to say that it takes quite a while to save up coins in game to unlock new colors. Or you have to be playing a ton of games at the same time. Either way it's a huge push to just buying coins with the IAP.
I think most people are content with the ads; its the colours that you really need to use the app well. A bunch of my friends have purchased the colour packs on the free version for instance. Really, it is perfectly monetised. Free version drags you in until you pay and the paid version gets you straight away.