Droid-Blog

Android development and money stuff

Show menu Hide menu

AuthorJohannes Borchardt

Android Money – Income Report #3: July 11

2011/08/01 / / 24 Comments

July is over, so it’s time for my monthly income report again.

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 Android apps too. In the last report I aimed to reach $800.- for the last month. You will see if it worked out.

For all income reports, please click here.

Which Apps?

3D Invaders – about 92.000 installs (+10k), 16% active

AL Voice Recorder – about 359.000 installs (+24k), 25% active

AL Voice Recorder Ad Free – 690 installs (+40), 43% active

Droid-Blog.net Android App – 120 installs (+110), 35% active

SmsToSpeech full – 656 installs (+16), 44% active

What did I do?

The Android Market changed a bit and so did it’s ranking algorithm. Fortunately, this led to a slightly better ranking of the AL Voice Recorder which caused it to be downloaded 24.000 times. That’s a fantastic increase in new downloads of 60%. Accordingly, also the installs of the AL Voice Recorder Ad Free increased from almost 0 to about 40. SmsToSpeech, my other paid app, didn’t sell as many copies as in the last month, but as the ad free version of the voice recorder is way more expensive, these losses are well compensated.

The Droid-Blog.net app increased an unbelievable 1100%  in downloads while grossing the same amount of money as in the last month: nothing.

Essentially, I did nothing to promote my apps. I did release some minor updates on 3D Invaders in the first half of the month but that’s it. The active install ratio of 3D invaders declined from 20% to 16% which means I have to do definitely more there.

Advertising Stats

Here are some statistics from the two advertising networks I’m using, AdMob and Madvertise. Please read the last income report for an explanation of the following numbers.

AdMob:

Requests: 415,263 (-45k)

Impressions: 408,058 (-47k)

Fill Rate: 98.26% (-0.74%)

Clicks: 11,192 (+2.75k)

CTR: 2.74% (+0.89%)

eCPM: $1.08 (+$0.27)

House Ads: 5,503 (-18k)

Adjusted Requests:  420,766 (-64k)

Adjusted Fill Rate: 96.98% (+2,84%)

Madvertise

As I’m not using house ads in Madvertise, no adjusted requests and fill rates are shown here.

Requests: 341,884, (+6,5k)

Impressions: 65,339 (+10k)

Fill Rate: 19% (+2%)

Clicks: 3,314 (+692)

CTR: 5.07% (+0,34%)

eCPM: $6,52 (+$1,08)

As you can see, the AdMob performance of my apps decreased a bit in terms of requests. Still, due to an enormous increase of the CTR, my apps were able to get a plus of 2,750 clicks. Madvertise also performed fantastic last month, getting even a slightly better fill rate this time. Overall, I’m quite satisfied with the work/effect ratio my apps produced this month.

How much?

Now that you have seen that my ad performance increased, you can probably guess that my revenue did too. This time I separated the Market sales and the In-App sales. Here are the numbers:

AdMob: $439,56 (+$71.60)

Madvertise: ~$426,07 (+$123.91)

Market sales: ~$130,76 (+$56.35)

In-App sales: ~$8,63

Total: $1,005.02 (+$260.17)

I totally reached my goal of $800. As I knew I wouldn’t have much time in the last month and as July has one more day than June, I thought this would be realistic. The change of the Android Market and the great performance of the ad networks caused my apps to do way better, resulting in the more than 1k income for the last month (hurray!).

What’s next?

I’m still working hard on our next game which is why I think I won’t have much time to spent on my private apps this month too. My goal for the next month is to reach the great numbers of this month again: $1005,02.

 

Please feel free to share your own experiences in the comments. Please also don’t hesitate to tell me if there is anything else you’d like to get some information about.

 

Android Market: Mutliple APKs – how it works

2011/07/21 / / 1 Comment

If you checked your developer console in the last hour, you will have noticed that the Android Market now allows developers to upload multiple APKs of the same app.

We all know the problem: The Android platform has a huge variety of devices and screen densities. Hence, all apps should support four pixel densities and every image needs to be saved in four sizes. This results in apps much bigger than they have to be. Now, this problem is solved. From now on it is possible to upload different APKs with the same packagename and different filters to support the fitting app to the users device. This can shrink the apps size dramatically.

Here is how it works:

  1. All APKs need to have the same packagename and must be signed with the same certificate key.
  2. All APKs need to have a different version code.
  3. The filters used to differentiate between your APKs are screen size, Open GL texture format and API level.
  4. These filters must not all be equal over the different APKs.
  5. If there is a case when only the API level differenciates two APKs, the APK with the higher API level needs to have the higher version code. Let me explain this: An Android device recognizes available updates only via the version code, so when a version code of an app available on the market is < than the version code of an app with an identical packagename on a device, an update is available. Now imagine this: You install an app with a version code = 4 and an API level = 7. There are Multiple APKs available, the other one being for API level = 8 with a version code 3. Now the device gets an update to API level 8. There is a new APK available, but the version code of that new APK is lower than that of the APK currently installed, therefore no available update will be identified. To avoid thas error, this rule has to be adhered to.
  6. To get everything done correctly, the Android Market team suggests a scheme for the version code of an app:
    Suggested version code scheme

    Suggested version code scheme

     

Keeping all this in mind you are ready to upload multiple APKs to the Android Market. Simply go to the new APK files tab and choose advanced mode. Choose activate on all the APKs you want to be delivered.

Conclusion

Now it is possible to publish an app in different forms for the different devices on the Android Market. Unfortunately there are no tools supporting this yet and maintaining many codebases takes a lot of time. Producing one APK for all devices is still considered best practice, but the developers can decide on their own.

Please tell me what you think of the new Android Market feature in the comments.

What Aikido taught me about App development and business

2011/07/19 / / 11 Comments

This post is very much about attitude.

As you might know, I’m a passionate practitioner of the Japanese martial art Aikido. Currently I’m injured and not able to train, which is why I was viewing the training last Friday when a guest teacher taught in one of the Dojos I regularly train at. The training was great and some things made me think about Aikido and the things one can learn in order to be a better developer and businessman. Here are three things I have learned:

Optimism beats pessimism

Some people say “when you are a pessimist, you either are right again or being surprised positively”. That might be true, still I think it’s way better to think positive. Being truly optimistic becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy. Because you think things will work out in a way that is good for you, they do. Your work becomes better, quality wise and quantity wise, and is much more fun. Same in martial arts: Training (keiko) does not need to be hard nor do you. If you are softer (soft, not slack!) keiko becomes much more demanding as you are able to perceive more and hence work harder on yourself. It also becomes much more fun for your partner, especially when she or he is still a beginner.

Make the next step

There are moments when you are realizing that what you just did was not good. In Aikido this happens for example when you realize that the technique you just did was not well executed. When you are hesitating here, your partner will overwhelm you. Instead, you should make the next step. You should realize that something went wrong but not let it intercept your move. No matter what time it is, it is always now, right? It never is tomorrow and never is yesterday. So in one sentence: Even though things are not working out perfectly, you should move on.

Be humble and thankful

Success sometimes leads people to the thought that they accomplished what they did on their own. Of course they did not. Think about an successful app: Would it be successful without all the users, the critics, the development teams? Our success is always dependent on the kindness of other beings. Therefore, a humble and thankful attitude is a good thing. Especially when it comes to negative feedback one should see the opportunity for improvement and answer the user in a good manner.

 

As you can see, martial arts don’t only affect one’s body. Please feel free to tell your story and thoughts in the comments.

 

The new Android Market design: Essentials

2011/07/18 / / 4 Comments

The new Android Market is still arriving. Some things have changed, here’s what’s essential for app developers:

The new Android Market Design

The new Android Market Design

  1. No more Just In: The Just In tab always gave developers the change to boost their apps visibility for a short time. This is gone now. If you have an important update, publish it now, as long as some people still have the old version of the Android Market.
  2. Top Grossing, Top New, Trending: Instead, there are some new categories: Top Grossing shows the apps bringing in the most money over the last time. It’s interesting to see the rise of In-App Billing here as some of the apps listed are free. Top New Free amd Top new Paid shows the best performing newest apps. Trending shows the apps that are gaining big download numbers. All these new categories are already available on the web interface for a little while.
  3. New Featured Categories: The Market now comes with a Staff Choices and an Editor’s Choice category. While the latter is describet as “Here are some of the best apps on Android Market, as chosen by our staff.”, I don’t know what the difference is (yet).
  4. Promotion Videos: Your promotion videos are now also shown on the device (Got to make some videoss soon).
  5. Five lines of introduction text: That’s important for the way you structure your Description. You now have five instead of three lines to tell the user what your app is all about.
  6. Comments: Are now a mixture of old and new comments.
  7. Two apps in a row: As you can see on the screenshot, the Market now shows two apps instead of one in a row. This gives the user a faster overview over all the apps out there (I like it).
  8. Changed search algorithm: It seems that the search algorithm has changed again as some of my apps are now ranked quiet different.

I know, there are also books and movies now, but that’s not important for developers, especially when they are not living in the US (like me).

Some of you already knew this, but if you didn’t, I hope it was helpful. Please feel free to leave any comment you want, twitter, plusone or like it.

Older posts Newer posts

© 2024 Droid-Blog

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑