Johannes is the co-founder of May is over and so is June. This tells you that I’m quite late with my income reports, I apologize for the delay. Here’s the May’s report.
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 $2,000 for the last month. You will see if it worked out.
For all income reports, please click here.
Which Apps?
3D Invaders – about 256,000 installs (+11k), 14% active
AL Voice Recorder – about 792,000 installs (+52k), 19% active
AL Voice Recorder Ad Free – 1,088 installs (+42), 33% active
Droid-Blog.net Android App – 511 installs (+34), 13% active
SmsToSpeech full – 759 installs (+15), 26% active
63,000 new downloads, that’s a bit better than in April, a good sign.
What did I do?
Due to the overall bad response, I removed SellARing. Downloads for the voice recorder have grown a little again since then.
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: 586,938 (-5k)
Impressions: 579,712 (-1.6k)
Fill Rate: 98.92% (+0.58%)
Clicks: 23,076 (-1.5k)
CTR: 3.98% (-0.25%)
eCPM: $1.52 (-$0.04)
House Ads: 1,277 (+536)
Adjusted Requests: 587,315 (-4.5k)
Adjusted Fill Rate: 98.71% (+0.49%)
Madvertise
Requests: 1,131,242 (-226k)
Impressions: 46,691 (-60k)
Fill Rate: 4.13% (-3.75%)
Clicks: 1,442 (-2,161)
CTR: 3.09% (-0.28%)
eCPM: $3.23 (-$2.52)
while AdMob stayed stable over all, I lost more clicks on madvertise than I received in total. I think I’ve never experienced such an immense loss in performance of an ad network before.
How much?
Here are the numbers:
AdMob:
3D Invaders: $252.38
AL Voice Recorder: $627.45
AdMob Total: $879.83 (-$26.58)
madvertise:
3D Invaders: ~$69.49
AL Voice Recorder: ~$81,40
madvertise Total: ~$150,90 (-$464.78)
Market sales: ~$100.86 (+$16.54)
In-App purchases: ~$11.57 (+$1.98)
Total: ~$1,143.16 (-$647.19)
A pretty bad performance for May. While I hope madvertise will recover a little, I of course already know the last month’s numbers. That’s a little asymmetric information, but you don’t have to wait too long until the next report is published, I promise.
What’s next?
I didn’t reach my last month’s goal, so, again, it will be $2,000 for the month of June. The June’s report will be published in the next week, so stay tuned.
Please feel free to share your own experiences and hints in the comments. Ask questions, share, do whatever you like.
2012/07/06 at 11:10
Hi Johannes,
Thank you for your report! It seems a little low results according your goals, but from our point of view the ads market it’s going “down under”. At MPP Productions we started with AdMob+Madvertise, but without any installation from Germany our Madvertise fillrate was always stuck in 1% :\.
Now, we choose another strategy… We’ve Admob but with our new game (<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mpp.games.luckyshot3d" Lucky Shot 3D), we also have signed TapForTap network! Just to archive more players with free advertising.
Our results since first game (Hot Hands) were very bad, we’ve just only 10$ in the pocket since 4th April lolol. The next steps would be: Release the game for IOS (next week); Increase the reward on ads click (to improve clicks count); start developing new game to expand our offer;
Just a final question.. What company you use, When you want to promote your apps?
Best Regards,
MPP Productions
2012/07/08 at 14:04
Hi Guys,
thank ou for sharing your results.
We use our own company, ANDLABS, for all the promotion work.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/07/06 at 12:36
Hi Johannes Borchardt just found your blog, thanks for sharing this kind of info, by the looks of it i can see that the android market can be a really tough place, but i am wondering something. Do you think that sharing your income reports as in any way hurt your numbers? I am asking this cause from what i could see guys like kreci.net and makingmoneywithandroid.com stopped sharing income reports because so many people were making copy cat copies from their apps.
2012/07/08 at 14:15
Hi Steve,
I knew Chris from kreci.net has stopped sharing his income because of copy cat apps but I never even assumed about my apps being copied in a similar fashion and I don’t think it’s hurting my numbers. It’s probably the complexity/income ratio plus the competitive advantage of my apps that keeps people from doing so. If my apps would be copied, I would just add more features to them or develop new apps. That’s how competition works in a capitalistic society, either one copies and tries to do it better or one is inventive/innovative.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/07/07 at 03:40
Ecpm of admob drop a lot since July 1. Drop from $0.2 to $0.1
Do you have this kind of issue?
2012/07/08 at 14:20
Yep, experienced something similar here: Dropped from §2.56 to $1.64.
2012/07/07 at 13:25
Hi Johannes,
I am new to mobile ads. I developed an app and I want to monetise it.
I researched and found that there are a myriad of ad networks.
I feel, I am at a loss where to start and what is the recommended strategy.
Most people probably start with admob. So far so good.
But what if I would want to switch to a different network? I would need to integrate a different SDK, and have my users update the app, which I found awkward.
So, I discovered there is “Mediation”. Sounds nice…, but then again, different ad networks partner with different networks, for example, admob support mediation with mobfox, but not with madvertise…
How do I choose the right network, which gives me maximum flexibility, without having my users to update the app each time I want to try a different network?
Then there is Adswirl. What makes them different from others?
Is there any network which specifically targets the german language markets?
What is a “Benutzerdefiniertes Ereignis” in Admob?
Can you please provide some links, tutorials, examples, explanations or comments on these questions?
I think a lot people will appreciate it.
Tx,
Best regards,
Michael
2012/07/08 at 14:38
Hi Michael,
I think reiti answered all the questions, thank you for that, reiti. madvertise has a 100%-fillrate in Germany for me but for some reason I’m a “premium publisher”, maybe that’s influencing my results.
Best regards and success
Johannes
2012/07/07 at 19:44
make better apps so there is no reason to copy them profitabely ;-) I believe it is well for developers to hear from other developers what they experience. Not everyone will be sucessfull with making good apps/games but some will and they need the right “push” in the right direction ;-)
2012/07/08 at 14:38
I totally agree :)
2012/07/08 at 03:40
@reiti: but how does that relate to any of my questions?
2012/07/08 at 07:01
@reiti: Sorry, I didnt realizes you were replying to Steve’s comment
2012/07/08 at 10:16
@michael yes, I replied to steve, your comment showed up later :-)
I recently tried MoPub as mediation network. They work well with many different networks. You will still need native sdks for some adnetworks, but you have great flexibility to add many networks. It’s easy extendable. You may have a look at them. I wrote some articles about them in my dev blog.
The only german network I know is madvertise. Filrate is not the best, so use it only mixed with other networks. In MoPub you can code a small wrapper on the madvertise sdk. After that you have control over impressions online (without further updates)
2012/07/08 at 13:19
@reiti: I was on reiti.net, bur I couldn’t find your dev blog, only your personal blog. Can you please post the link to your dev blog?
2012/07/08 at 13:25
@michael yes, it’s my personal blog. It’s a mixup over everything not-project related. Maybe you are interested in reading my tutorial – which is not a detailed tutorial but more a read up about how to do
http://www.reiti.net/personal-blog/blog/94/mopub-tutorial-get-started
2012/07/08 at 14:22
I fully agree with Johannes about competition. Winner is who makes the better product and not who invented it. In the end that leads to better products which is also best for the consumer. No need to mention, that nowadays nearly everything is an improved copy of something invented before.
2012/07/08 at 14:39
Just take a look at the iPhone. It has all been there for years but they just made it better.
2012/07/09 at 13:17
@reiti.net
Well thanks for the insight :), just have one question? How do you make really good looking app´s when someone sucks at design (photoshop,ilustrator) like me lol. I really dont have problems with programming department, but design? oh boy i really suck at that :\. I am considering getting someone good at it but for now its really out of my budget. Any advice will be much appreciated :).
2012/07/09 at 13:21
Normally I do make my graphics myself – you can use google image search to get some ideas how you want something to look. I am using free tools like gimp and inkscape.
Without budget it is hard to get something made – I currently trying 99designs.com to get some better looking marketing images, you can request game graphics there too, maybe you’ll give it a try
2012/07/09 at 13:44
http://android-ui-utils.googlecode.com/hg/asset-studio/dist/index.html
Though I gave it a try once and decided, I can do better myself. But if you really suck that much, you could give it a try.
2012/07/09 at 17:14
Thanks for the info i should really learn by my self the basics then since it seems to be a big disvantage not being capable of producing appealing UI :\. By the way you guys learn designing by yourselves right?
Any resources you might have about doing simples things like buttons and stuff will be appreciated, thanks again
2012/07/09 at 17:51
@Steve: I am using GIMP: it’s free, does the most things Photoshop can do, and there are myriads of tutorials and youtube videos on how to use it.
2012/07/11 at 08:41
Pearsonally I also use GIMP and Inkscape. But since I’m a talent free zone regarding graphics, I also outsource bigger projects to designers I trust.
@reiti: thank you for sharing 99designs, didn’t know this existed.
2012/07/11 at 09:07
Glad to help. Just a tip: Do not try to apply for their referel program. They want you to join commisionjunction with a referallink and does reject you (which I do not understand ..) when applying for their program, which is a bad approach I think.
2012/07/17 at 16:43
Johannes,
Just wanted to let you know of a good ad network to integrate into your apps. It is sweet. I am seeing between $5 and $10 ecpm depending on the day. Just thought i would share that with you, this works great for games and regular apps.
2012/07/19 at 15:32
Hi Steve,
thank you again for sharing.
Two things regarding links:
1. Please attach http:// in the beginning of links, otherwise they won’t be recognized as external links.
2. Please understand that affiliate links are not allowed in the comments of this blog, I changed your link to point to the normal RevMob-site.
Best regards
Johannes
2012/07/19 at 17:01
..hopefully, people read your post, that this was an referal link in the first place .. :-) it gives such a network suggestion some taste of caution .. i am very aware of such things.. especially they do not specify clearly for me what they do offer – not much info on that site..
back to topic: what do you currently think about madvertise? they are doing not so good for a long time now, maybe they will not recover… what do you think?
2012/07/19 at 22:14
I’m not sure. My gut feeling is that, although they had a $10m funding last year, if they continue like this, they won’t exist very long. It seems like, since the developer fund ended, everything has gotten worse for them.
2012/07/25 at 19:20
Johannes and all here,
I have a question concerning ad network medition.
I have an app, which is currently using Admob as the sole ad network. Now I want to switch to mediation.
To switch I need to do the following:
– Adding the respective SDks to my app
– Switching to mediation in the Admob Dashboard
– Basically this means a new version of the app.
But what will happen while I am switching:
– I will have users still using the old version until they update to the new version.
– On the other hand, Admob will already using mediation.
So, what will happen? Will the users which are using the old version still get ads?
How can I handle the transition in a smooth way, so that the users of the old version still get ads and the user of the version will get mediated ads?
Does anyone have experience with that?
2013/09/03 at 08:44
Hey Johannes ! in your blog you really shared very informative information about the apps and its income report.
Thanx for sharing and keep going like this.