Anyone who’s been here before knows that I’m a huge Corona SDK fan, and that it’s the development tool I use to program our iOS (and in the future, Android) games, however, there is one important iOS feature that it doesn’t yet support: In-App Purchases.
It is currently on their roadmap, but…
When we speak with friends, share a joke, a quiet word, or a conversation over drinks, there is so much more than words that pass between us. A smile or nod or encouraging gesture – these allow for true connection and understanding. Being really with someone. How can a technology hope to…
There are few ways to track the performance of your apps.
My Favourite is http://www.distimo.com/
It is easy to use and can track many info.
However if you need to track active users etc it is better to integrate SDK from flurry.
Sure there is an app for that.
You can either use GlobalApps or AppsStatics
Image of Global App
AppStatics
After reading all these posts, I’m sure you already have a game plan for releasing an app. But will the profit actually cover all the costs? It’s safe to assume that creating a game will cost you around 40k if you are using coders and resources in first world countries.(A lot less if you’re able to go over seas and higher coders / workers there)
First let’s look at the big releases so far, ones that have made in the millions.
Infinity Blade made $10 million in 7 months with 40% coming from in app purchases. Its sequel raised it another 20 mill.
Cut the rope sold 3 million games in 6 weeks @ 1.00 a sell, minus apple’s 30% cut, that’s not too shabby.
Jetpack Joyride saw 350k downloads in a week, so with ads in place and in app purchasing - it’s bound to be making quite a lot.
Order & Chaos made $1 in 20 days with a 6.99 game. Assuming that’ all without in app purchases, then they sold about 7k games.
Then we have some indie games:
Released at $10.00 first, then got a price cut of $5.00 to then sell and make more money than the original $10.00 price. It then got featured by apple which got it to sell 125k in its first month.
Supported by in app purchases, built by a publisher that already had a successful game (Pocket Frogs) got it to the 1 million download mark in 4 days with 2.6% of their users buying in app purchases.
Sold 500k in a week. They had a 500k user database that received a newsletter of the launch which sure enough helped spark that number. Already released an app that had 3 million in sales.
Then we have people that released big with their first release.
Sold more than 3 million copies, all build by one man and was first place in the app store for more than 2 weeks.
Made it to first place in the American app store and earned $40 to $50k per day.
Then we have reality.
The average game gets about 300 or so downloads. Teaming up with a publisher can push those numbers a lot higher, but it also requires teaming up with someone that knows what they’re doing and has a record that proves it. Yes, there is money to make in the app store. But it’ll take more than just luck to get you there.
According to some recently released information, it takes quite a bit of fame and fortune to get your app to the top 25. The data is broken down like this:
For the U.S. App store. (All per day)
Per category the numbers drop, but they’re still pretty fierce.
Further rankings for free app categories are like this:
These numbers are always changing, but it should give you a general idea of what you’ll need to aim for if you want to make it to the top spot.
You can get more information and further updates here.
If it’s not for the obvious reason that the world is much bigger than just the English speaking audience, going global can have a huge impact on how much money you can potentially be earning.
According to the charts, the popular apps in the US are generally the popular apps in foreign countries. That can be a good or bad thing. If you have a popular app in the US then it’s a lot easier for your app to be a huge success in foreign countries. However, breaking the barrier to get into the top spots will be fierce.
Then there’s also the case where your app or game might just be more accepted by people in another country for some reason or another, but without it in their native language it’s hard to tell.
Getting your app translated doesn’t cost much, so to test the waters it should be a no brainer. If it appears to be doing a lot better than you expected why not try to get some advertising for the areas you are releasing in, or higher some marketers to get your app in front of the people you want it to.
Also, for those of you who are wondering what it’ll take to make it to the top spots of the countries and other stats, we highly recommend you checking out this article.
After reading the Pros and Cons of HTML5 you decided you wanted to go native for development. Some would salut you, some not. But we’re not here to judge you. We’re here to support. So with that in mind, here are some of the languages you should look into learning for your future coding endeavours:
For Android Games
