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AuthorJohannes Borchardt

Four reasons why your app wont be successful

2011/07/11 / / 10 Comments

Many developers produce tons of apps but still don’t earn much money. Others publish one or two apps and earn thousands of dollars every month. Why is that? Why are so many apps unsuccessful? Here are four reasons:

1. Your idea sucks

    That’s obvious. If there is no need for your app, why should it be downloaded.

    2. Your implementation sucks

    That’s a common error and its characteristics vary widely. I did that many times so I know what I’m talking about. Implementation means everything the user notizes (user experience, UX). This includes visual design and technical realization. Or in other words: If your app looks like the Android Market in it’s first iteration, it’s going to be hard.

    The good news is: When your idea doesn’t suck but your implementation does, you can still change that.

    The first release of the Android Market looked terrible

    The first release of the Android Market looked terrible. If your app does too, you should change that.

     

    3. You are not promoting

    Many developers develop and after that, they develop again. That’s not enough. Someone has to do the marketing and promotion stuff and if there is no one else, you are that someone. Twitter, blog, facebook and talk in forums. There are 1035 blogs found on Technorati when searching for ‘Android’. E-mail all of them. Seriously? Seriously.

    4. You don’t keep trying

    You like your idea, your friends do and maybe even your girlfriend (or boyfriend) does. You are excited and can’t wait to get the first update on the developer console. There it comes: 200 downloads on the first day… not to bad, but it wont bring you the expected millions. The next day will sure be better. 20 downloads. Hm.. Next day: 18. One week later: Total of 300 downloads has been reached, $o,45 has been made. Well, you’ll better focus on an other promising project.

    While some apps are successful from the very beginning, most apps are not. Also Angry Birds was not. Once again: I’m totally serious on writing each of the 1035 blogs. Write 30-40 of them every day and you’ll be done in one month. You invested weeks on building your app, why stop when it’s finally done. I know, programming is fun, but getting great feedback of and contact to your users and future users is too.

    Conclusion

    In order to have a really successful app you must

    • Have a good idea
    • Make a beautiful app that runs smooth and free of error
    • Promote and communicate a lot
    • Keep trying and have some discipline

    Wanted: Beta Tester

    2011/07/07 / / 54 Comments

    ANDLABS will soon release a new, terrific 2D game for the Android platform (of course). For this game, we need beta testers. I can’t tell you much about the content, but four things are for sure:

    • It’s an absolutely new concept
    • If you like tower defense games, you will love it
    • If you like physics games, you will love it
    • The beta test will start in the period of mid to end of August.

    So if you are interested: Good choice! Just leave your e-mail-adress in the comments (I will delete it before approving your comment).

    Thank you very much, I’m convinced you will like this game.

    Edit: already 10 sign ups here plus two on G+. You guys are great!

    Android Money – Income Report #2: June 11

    2011/07/01 / / 19 Comments

    June is over, so it’s time for my monthly money 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 $750 for the last month. You will see if it worked out.

    For all money reports, please click here.

    Which Apps?

    You might have noticed that Droid-Blog.net now has its own Android app. The number of ad requests and downloads was enormous and so was its overall success. Here are the numbers:

    3D Invaders – about 82,000 installs (+10k), 20% active

    AL Voice Recorder – about 335,000 installs (+15k), 26% active

    AL Voice Recorder Ad Free – about 650 installs (+-0), 44% active

    Droid-Bog.net Android App – 10 installs (+10), 30% active

    SmsToSpeech full – about 640 installs (+40), 44% active

    What did I do?

    As you can see the AL Voice Recorder gained 15,000 new users while the overall userbase declined a bit (about 3,500 active installs were lost). 3D Invaders had some frequent updates and new weapons in the first half of the month. Some days later I also published In-App Billing. While the latter was not quite successful, the overall active downloads increased while the download-active installs-ratio stayed the same. Also, I switched back from Mobclix to AdMob which resulted in an increase in AdMob income.

    The Droid-Blog.net app was able to get a total of fantastic ten downloads and brought in not a single cent. AL Voice Recorder Ad Free didn’t sell many copies too, but somehow SmsToSpeech Full was sold about 40 times. I didn’t do any further investigation why this happened, but I positively accept it.

    Advertising Stats

    Sebastian S. suggested to include not only download numbers, but also ad statistics. Before I start some definitions:

    A request happens when a device requests an ad to be served. An impression is an ad that is actually delivered and shown on the device. The fillrate is the impression-request-ratio (#impressions / #requests * 100%). The CTR (Click Through Rate) is the clicked ads-impressions-ratio (#of clicked ads / impressions * 100%). The eCPM is the average money generated by 1,000 impressions or, in other words, the value of 1,000 impressions.

    I also use the term adjusted fillrate and adjusted requests . These numbers are the same as described above, but they are taking house ads into account. House ads are ads published by you in your own products. They are free of cost and are not part of the request and fillrate numbers. My settings are made in a way that house ads are only delivered if no payed ad can be displayed which is why I’m introducing these adjusted numbers here (as otherwise the transferet impression could be missleading).

    Here is how the two main ad networks I used last month performed:

    AdMob:

    Requests: 460,532

    Impressions: 455,912

    Fillrate: 99.00%

    Clicks: 8,419

    CTR: 1.85%

    eCPM: $0.81

    House Ads: 23.,739

    Adjusted Requests:  484,271

    Adjusted Fillrate: 94.14%

    Madvertise:

    Madvertise doesn’t offer house ads, so the adjusted numbers are equal to the normal numbers here, therefore they are not mentioned. Edit, I received an e-mail from Madvertise: Madvertise does offer house ads, but you have to mail the support for that. In the future, it will be automatically available for everyone.

    Requests: 335,352,

    Impressions: 55,401

    Fillrate: 17%

    Clicks: 2,622

    CTR: 4.73%

    eCPM: $5.44

    The bad fillrate of Madvertise is because it is focused mainly on european countries. While the most clicks come from the UK, German clicks are by far the most expensive. They grossed an eCPM of $12.77 in the last month, so if your app targets Germany, go and use Madvertise! By the way, the customer service is also great, while it is almost not existent at AdMob.

    The CTR is also way higher on Madvertise, but it seems as if this would change in this month (AdMob is becoming better).

    Ok, how much?

    Here is how much I earned:

    AdMob: $367.96 (+$107.45)

    Madvertise: ~ $302.16 (+$7.16)

    Market sales: ~$74.41 (+$29.41)

    Mobclix: ~$0.32 (-$50.62)

    Total: ~ $744.85 (+93.38)

    As you can see I disabled Mobclix very early in the last month. I didn’t reach my goal of $750, but I got very close to it. To me, it’s still satisfying.

    What’s next?

    This month I will have lots of work to do, so I will be able to work on my own apps only in the last third. I will focus on an new fantastic app (you will love it, I hope) and the AL Voice Recorder this time. Because I have not that much time to spend, my goal for the next month will be $800.-


    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.

    Downloads, Advertising/Promotion and Time

    2011/06/28 / / 11 Comments

    Richard just asked a good question on the income report #1 post:

    “how long did it take, to get that number of downloads for your free apps? What kind of advertising/promotion did you consider? Have you advertised them? Would be interesting to read about the ascent of your downloads over time…”

    I think this might be of general interest, so here are my answers.

    The AL Voice Recorder started on 4th of July 2010, so it has been in the Market for about a year now (~335.000 downloads). 3D Invaders was released on 29th of November 2010 (~80.000). For both apps I did not do any paid advertising. What I did was App Store Optimization and social media marketing (blogs, forums, twitter, etc.).

    I recorded the downloads of the AL Voice Recorder for five of months, here is the result:

    AL Voice Recorder download stats

    AL Voice Recorder download stats

    On 07th of November 2010 I made an App Store Optimization and the app was ranked #1 for the search query ‘voice recorder’ since then. You can see the huge increase in downloads on the chart.

    My impression on advertising is that it is only usefull when you are able to spend enough money for being present for a longer period of time. This will sure have an effect on your download rates. Most developers spend $50 on their apps and then say “AdMob (normally it’s AdMob) burned my money!”. Of course you wont see big results when spending $50 for an ad campaign. Assume that one click costs $0.05 and the conversion rate is 10%, than that’s 100 new downloads for $50 (or $0.50 per download). I think advertisements in mobile ad networks are necessary as a part of huge ad campaigns, including social media presence, ASO, viral marketing and so on. When relying on ad networks only, the success will probably not be that sustainable.

    I hope this was helpful, please feel free to leave comments.

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