Johannes is the co-founder of Another month is over, 2011 is done. I hope your last month was as great as mine was. Let me tell you why.
If you are new to this series, let me explain it to you: Since Android is an open platform, I decided to be open about the income I’m making with my private Android apps too. In the last report I aimed to reach $3,000 for the last month. You will see if it worked out.
For all income reports, please click here.
Which Apps?
3D Invaders – about 167,000 installs (+29k), 17% active
AL Voice Recorder – about 538,000 installs (+51k), 24% active
AL Voice Recorder Ad Free – 853 installs (+37), 43% active
Droid-Blog.net Android App – 370 installs (+22), 18% active
SmsToSpeech full – 722 installs (+7), 40% active
More then 80 thousand new downloads in this month. The AL Voice Recorder crossed the half-million-border. Wow! Still, it’s download rates declined a bit at the end of the month but 3D Invaders’ downloads increased a lot.
What did I do?
I worked on some apps, no changes to the apps currently published
Advertising Stats
Here are some statistics from the two advertising networks I’m using, AdMob and Madvertise. Please read the second income report for an explanation of the following numbers.
AdMob:
Requests: 693.010 (+65k)
Impressions: 680,326 (+69k)
Fill Rate: 98.17% (+0.83%)
Clicks: 29.441 (+11.2k)
CTR: 4.33% (+1.36%)
eCPM: $2.52 (+$1.12)
House Ads: 1,343 (+778)
Adjusted Requests: 694,353 (+66k)
Adjusted Fill Rate: 97.98% (+0.73%)
Madvertise
As I’m not using house ads in madvertise, no adjusted requests and fill rates are shown here.
Requests: 1,287,724 (+175k)
Impressions: 206,705 (+41k)
Fill Rate: 16.05% (+1.22%)
Clicks: 10,132 (+2,463)
CTR: 4.90% (+0.25%)
eCPM: $10.32 (+$1.18)
Again a really nice increase in both networks. Especially the increase in CTR at AdMob surprised me positively.
How much?
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. This time I’m trying to give you a even deeper overview by providing graphs of my income development:
Madvertise:
3D Invaders: ~$1,817.00
AL Voice Recorder: ~$319.29
madvertise Total: ~$2,136.29 (+$627.46)
madvertise income graph
AdMob:
3D Invaders: $625.94
AL Voice Recorder: $1,086.42
AdMob Total: $1,712.36 (+$854.14)
AdMob income graph
Market sales: ~$97.77 (+$10.75)
In-App purchases: ~$5.96 (-$2.23)
Total: ~$3,952.74 (+$1,481.96)
Almost $4k, a really awesome result!
What’s next?
Being able to reach this numbers again would be great. So I’m setting my goal for next month to the close mark of $4,000 for this next month.
Please feel free to share your own experiences and hints in the comments. Please also don’t hesitate to tell me if there is anything else you’d like to get some information about.
2012/01/04 at 09:12
Looks like pretty much all the Android developers had a good month for December. Better ads, more phones sold.
Congrats on reaching your goals! I hope to be at the level someday.
2012/01/04 at 14:50
Congrats for your december results! I’m amazed at your insane CTR / eCPM. mine are abysmal compared to yours…
Here’s my numbers for december:
madvertise (1 app): AI: 226K / Fill rate: 23% / CTR: 0.33% / eCPM: 0.84€ / total: 190€
Admob (1 app): AI: 985K / Fll rate: 97.96% / CTR: 0.24% / eCPM: 0.12$ / total: 119€
Market sales (3 apps): total: 3350€
As you can see, most of my income comes from Market sales.
2012/01/06 at 22:57
Hello b0b,
thank you for sharing.
Indeed. But I love the income you make by your paid apps.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/04 at 15:09
Hello,
I am also planning on developing a android game, but I have a few questions for you.
Are you doing this the official way, so do you pay taxes over your income, and are you a company or something?
Or are you just doing this besides your own job, and you are not paying taxes and stuff over it?
I am asking this because i also want to continue my normal job, but I also want to do everything legit. So that means that I have to become a company right?
Can you tell me how you do this please.
2012/01/05 at 21:52
Hello R,
yes, I founded a company called ANDLABS which also does paid Android development, we currently are a team of four.
It probably depends on the laws of your country how much you can earn without paying any taxes, but at some point your sure must. Your tax adviser of choice probably knows more regarding this topic.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/04 at 18:25
Hello Johannes,
gratulation to your success. I have much less fill rate and eCPM since te beginning of the year. The fill rate is lower since xmas. I see this in your stats, too. But since 1.1. my eCPM is only 25-30% of the value, it was before. I have some ready-to-release apps, but when the revenue not is getting up again, i better release them as paid apps.
I had published my first game some weeks before. For android it is free and add supported. But madvertise has a fill rate of 6%, which is low in comparsion to my other apps. I think it’s because games are no premium placement.
Btw: I couldn’t use AdMob in this game, because of an bug in the ad integration. I now have switched to MillennialMedia. Admob can used as a fallback (also some other networks) and i hope this way i get it again. MillennialMedia also offers a free ad server AND free house ads. This is a better solution than madvertise ones. At madvertise you have to pay if you advertise for your own paid apps. That is annoying, because i like madvertise and the web frontend has less bugs than MillennialMedias. ;-)
BTW2: I have written in a mail to you about InMobi. At moment i can’t recommend them.
BTW3: One of the new installs of 3D Invaders was my son. He found it himself, I didn’t tell him. ;-)
2012/01/05 at 20:35
Hello Horst,
usually madvertise does pretty well in western Europe, no matter it’s a game or not, but in the last weeks their fillrate seemed to have flatened a lot. I hope they will do better again soon.
I’m not always using the most up-to-date SDK of AdMob out of lazyness (just too many updates), so I’m still able to use it.
I hope your son enjoys the game. When someday I will see someone whom I don’t know using one of my apps, I’ll probably give him 50 bucks :-D
2012/01/05 at 01:38
Hi Johannes,
Thanks for the report.
How do you use combination of Admob and Madvertise? Do you have 2 ads displayed in each activity?
Thanks
Kiran
2012/01/05 at 20:31
Hello Kiran,
you’re welcome.
Please have a look at http://droid-blog.net/2011/08/19/how-to-combine-madvertise-with-another-ad-network/.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/05 at 14:07
3D Invaders seems to be an exact copy of the app made in this german tutorial:
http://www.androidpit.de/de/android/wiki/view/Spieleentwicklung_101
The tutorial has a creative commons license which doesn’t allow commercial use, demands attribution, etc …
Are you two the same guy?
2012/01/05 at 20:44
Hallo Sebbi,
that’s right. The menu-and-weapon thing is not included in the tutorial you mentioned, but the gameplay is exaclty the same. The tutorial was written by Mario Zechner, the genious creator of libgdx. The tutorial is licensed under cc, the code is licensed under GPL V3. This also is the reason why I mention Mario in the game’s description and in the game itself (the i-button on the bottom left on the first screen) and the reason why the game itself is GPL-licensed itself. And before you ask: Yes, Mario knows about me publishing his game.
He later was asked to create a book on Android game programming which you can find here (English). It’s definitely worth reading it.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/05 at 20:58
Hi, another comment from me,
Previously indeed madvertise combination with admob was better for you.
But if I do a quick calculation now.
Total admob requests: 693.010 Total admob money: $1,712.36
Total Madvertise requests: 1,287,724 Total Madvertise money: $2,136.29
If you all your Madvertise ads were Admob, you had a total of 1,2 million more impressions.
A quick calculation says that with that total of requests, you would have earned a total of:
1,712.36 / 693.010 = 0,002471 x 1,287,724 + 693.010 = $ 4894,20 Total with admob only.
So you lost precisely $ 1045,55 this month because of Madvertise. That is quite a huge loss.
If you want to know why I did all of this math for you, mostly to help you grow bigger, but also because I am planning to make my own android app to, and I am still deciding what advertiser I have to use.
As you can see my website is already made, but i am not beginning to work on it till my app is made.
Maybe we can mean something for each other int he future.
Greets,
2012/01/05 at 21:40
Hello Effento,
thank you for caring so much.
But, I’m happy to say that your calculation is not correct because it relies on a wrong basis: I request AdMob and madvertise ads at the same time (but in different intervalls, hence the request numbers are not equal). When no madvertise ad was delivered, I show AdMob ads. This means that I ‘lost’ was at maximum 206,705 impressions, AdMob-wise, which would be ~$ 520.90, which again means that I made a plus of ~$ 1615.39 by using madvertise.
Do you agree?
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/05 at 21:45
hey johannes, congratulations on your success this month!
I have been programming for a month now for Android games and had almost the whole of December Show Admob.
Here’s my small, but for me surprisingly high, incomes:
Account Total Amount: $ 115.99, request: 310.849, eCPM: $ 0.72, fillrate: 51.73%, RPM: $ 0.37.
SoundZoo: 2000 Download
PingPong: 18500 Download
(if you want to find my apps look for “Rico Saage” in the market).
For me, the fillrate comparatively so small, and are getting smaller, you can tell me why?
In last days, I often had a rate of 30% or less. I’ve noticed that advertising displayed only when you play with mobileinternet. If the mobile use wifi, the advertise can not be displayed. Now I turn the wifi automatically off when the App start and hopes that the mobilephone then connects to the mobile Internet. This method works but is not very commodious. (my rate go back to 50%).. I would appreciate very much if you tell me how you get such a high fill rate.
I wish you much success in the future.
Viele Grüße aus Leipzig, Rico. ;)
2012/01/05 at 22:05
Hello Rico,
$115 is a really great result! In my first month with ad based apps on the market, I made something like $35.
I experienced that the fillrates go up and down a bit at the beginning, but when your app can provide solid request rates in not too short intervalls, it *should* go up to 75% or more.
Best regards (aus München ;-)
Johannes
2012/01/05 at 21:48
Sorry didn’t know this.
So basically every failed impression from Madvertise is directly filled up by Admob so no impression goes wasted?
I am still in a learning process but i will get there Ha.
2012/01/05 at 21:55
Nevermind.
Well, some AdMob impressions go wasted when madvertise is displayed instead, but since AdMob impressions are worth way less than madvertise impressions, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to give.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/06 at 09:41
I’m observing that your eCPM is above 10%! I know this number varies with differnt ad networks, but this is above the average right, like very high ! ?
2012/01/06 at 22:58
Hi Gopal Appmaker,
that’s right, it’s extraordinary high.
2012/01/06 at 09:43
And, just forgot, these numbers are really good! Congrats, you and your blog are inspiration for me (as well as for other hopefull Android developers i think!)
2012/01/06 at 22:59
Great to read that, it’s feedback like this that keeps me going.
2012/01/10 at 21:46
Hi Johannes,
Thank you for continuing the income series here on your blog – I’ve followed for a while and your detailed documentation has been an invaluable learning tool and good inspiration. I’m a fellow developer that is interested in exploring other monetization routes like in-game advertising, so the transparency you offer has been a huge help.
Quick question related to both AdMob and Madvertise ads: how do you manage ad refresh rates or ad targeting for either service? What do you set the refresh rate at, and do you change it over time at all? Can you target the ads you serve, and do you manage that aspect as well? Any information you can provide would be great!
2012/01/11 at 09:34
Hello Chris,
thank you for your comment and your encouragement.
For both networks, I use the default refresh rate (30 seconds at madvertise and 60 seconds ad AdMob I believe) which I haven’t changed in ages. I use keywords on AdMob but not on madvertise, that’s all.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/26 at 07:28
Hi Johannes,
inspired by your blog (i think in the meantime i studied nearly all of your articles) i also integrated AdMob ads into my Android apps, and threw my old ‘concept’ of publishing time limited trial versions away.
Within the first 14 days about 90.000 requests were done, the fillrate was ~95%. This looks quite promising if there wouldn’t be the low eCPM of only 0.22$. The CTR was 0.62% which is also below average i think.
My AdMob ad settings are all on standard, so refresh rate = 60 secs, all languages, all ad categories except adult ads. The geographical statistic shows me that around 40% of my traffic is generated in europe.
What would you recommend me in order to increase my figures?
2012/01/26 at 10:02
Hi nr1,
great to read that.
It’s a bit difficult to give you tipps without knowing your app but, since yo many of your users are located in Europe: Have you tryed using madvertise, maybe in combination with another ad network?
Best regards
Johannes
2012/01/26 at 13:30
Hi
and thx for your reply :)
In fact it’s not just one app, but multiple. However they are very different in terms of daily using time. At the moment i’m only using AdMob. Do you think it still makes sense to start with Madvertise? (As known they will decrease the revenue for the developer shortly by 40%). I also heared about MobFox for european ads. Some say it’s good others say it’s bad, do you have experience with this network?
br
2012/01/26 at 14:47
At the moment madvertise performs four times as good as AdMob, so I think it will still be performing better from March on. I didn’t try MobFox so far, if everyone did, please feel free to share your experiences.
2012/07/09 at 08:09
Hi,
I developed a sample app and displaying an ad through admob. Below are the stats so far.
Revenue: 0$
eCPM: 0$
Requests: 388
Impressions: 388
Fill Rate: 100%
CTR: 0%
Can some one please help me understand that even after 388 impressions why my revenue is still showing 0$. Whereas I have read that 1000 impressions fetches you around 3$. Am I missing anything?? Please help and advise. Thanks!
2012/07/09 at 08:32
Hi Sashi,
thank you for sharing your numbers.
The eCPM is only a metric, the amount of money you make depends solely on your clicks at AdMob. Since no one clicked your ads yet, you didn’t make any money. This can change fast but nothing is guaranteed.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/07/09 at 09:25
Hi Johannes,
Thanks for your reply. So you mean that AdMob doesn’t pay on ad impressions, it only pay on ad clicks. Is there any other mobile ad provider who pays on ad impressions along with the ad clicks?
Regards,
Sashi Rai