To anyone with info regarding AdMob: (And apologies if you thought I posted this to show how to make money) I think it would be a great benefit to developers if anyone could post information and actual figures regarding profits and downloads with AdMob to see if releasing free games with AdMob as a sustainable means of income.
It depends on the app and revenue can be a bit all over the place. Game1 has been out over a year and I don't do updates on it anymore. It use to be $4-$8 a day. Now $2 a day. It seems to high a pretty high click through rate for some reason. 2-3%. App1 is not a game but runs on user generated content off a popular website. Use to be $50 a day. Now about $25 a day. I only make minor updates. 300K ad request. 0.40% click through rate. App2 is similar to App1 but the content is not as popular. 10K ad request. 0.45% click through rate. $2-$3 a day. I do all this part time and actually haven't spent much time on them at all. There's potential to make money on Admob. But I feel like it depends on the app. It has to be something users keep coming back to. And if they do that often, you'd potentially can make more than just a 99cent throw away app.
Can't comment specifically on AdMob since I opted for Mobclix, but I just wrote an article about this subject: So how much does an iPhone developer make? In short, I make about 10 times more via an ad-supported free game than when I sold the game for 99c. Still not much though, it's something like a few dollars a day (but that's just for one game).
We're in the middle of our first experiment in free, ad supported games. I just wrote up our experiences today on our blog:- http://retrodreamer.com/blog/2009/12/elf-command-results-week-1/
Before you post raw statistics publicly, be sure to check your agreements with your advertisers. Quite a few of them forbid you from posting exact figures.
