[Journey] Building an iOS & Android App Empire

[WarlordYT]

how much time for ad limit to be removed from Admob ?
and what you think of Ironsource?
thank you

1 . 60-90 days
2. Pure garbage nothing compared to Facebook audience network and Admob

 

[alfanez]

or use another mediation platform like Appodeal so you won't lose money

what do you mean by lose money.?

 

[mnrfas]

what do you mean by lose money.?

lose mony by ads not showing thank to admob ad limit

 

[nakamura]

what do you mean by lose money.?

lose mony by ads not showing thank to admob ad limit

Exactly this.

At the moment I am losing a lot of money with my FAN app as well. Fillrate is low. FAN only shows ads to people who have Facebook installed on their phone.

So far I made really good experience with Applovin..and I think the major reason for this is: You can actually choose if the video should be skipable or not, etc. The video ads of Applovin are really good tho. For iOS it even gives me an higher ecpm than Admob.

 

[rayasher]

is there anyone here who can help with listing my brand app in ios and google stores? how much does this normally cost? if im to purchase accounts to list the apps, how much will it cost?

 

[xgf666]

Hi Nakamura, I red your entire Journey and it was very interesting ! (also fck Google haha) Congrats on your success !!
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind, around mid-journey you weren't happy with Appodeal,

However, I found something very weird. The earnings with Appodeal are incredibly low. An app, which should normally make $10+ makes just $1.

I think you wrote some additional messages saying that you didn't win as much with them as you should do. Then after a few months you said that because filrate used to be 70% you added Appo for those additional 30% and that you should have done it earlier because you are much happy now and everyone should do it too. Did I understand you correctly ? If so why did you change your mind about Appo ?

What type of ads are you using ? Are you getting paid for clicks, video views, display ?

Also if you don't mind me asking for an advice, I'm planning to create a game (let's say a chess game) and I would like to display an ad before the game begins and after it ends, I was thinking about displaying a video because if I show a CPC ad I'm afraid that people will just want to play and not paying attention to it and my understanding is that I can be paid for just playing the video. Is that correct ? In your experience what is the fillrate I can expect with just videos and a mediation platform ?

I'm planning on hiring a dev to create the game for me and I'm having a hard time figuring my ROI because I have no idea of the type of revenue I can expect with 2 ads being displayed, if you could give me some tips to estimate my earnings that would be awesome !

Congrats again on your journey !

 

[nakamura]

Hi Nakamura, I red your entire Journey and it was very interesting ! (also fck Google haha) Congrats on your success !!
I have a couple of questions if you don't mind, around mid-journey you weren't happy with Appodeal,



I think you wrote some additional messages saying that you didn't win as much with them as you should do. Then after a few months you said that because filrate used to be 70% you added Appo for those additional 30% and that you should have done it earlier because you are much happy now and everyone should do it too. Did I understand you correctly ? If so why did you change your mind about Appo ?

What type of ads are you using ? Are you getting paid for clicks, video views, display ?

Also if you don't mind me asking for an advice, I'm planning to create a game (let's say a chess game) and I would like to display an ad before the game begins and after it ends, I was thinking about displaying a video because if I show a CPC ad I'm afraid that people will just want to play and not paying attention to it and my understanding is that I can be paid for just playing the video. Is that correct ? In your experience what is the fillrate I can expect with just videos and a mediation platform ?

I'm planning on hiring a dev to create the game for me and I'm having a hard time figuring my ROI because I have no idea of the type of revenue I can expect with 2 ads being displayed, if you could give me some tips to estimate my earnings that would be awesome !

Congrats again on your journey !

Hi, thanks for reading through the thread.

1. At this time Appodeal was showing me figures like the fill rate is 60%, etc. which I found kinda weird. Maybe I was setting it up in the wrong way or I had different expectations. Not sure. But what I can tell you is: Mediation platforms like Appodeal can save you a lot of time and trouble, especially when you have businesses like Admob who randomly limit or suspend your accounts. With Appodeal you can simply switch between the ad networks without updating your app. Its very helpful.

2. Fill rate will be 100%, especially if you have a few users. But you have to differentiate between Video ads and Interstitial ads. For example Admob only shows "Rewarded Videos", but you have to give users something in return, for example Lives or Coins. The normal interstitial ads will just be full screen advertising in form of pictures, sliders or animations. If you still want to show Video ads only, you can try Applovin. With them you can also decide whether users are able to skip the video while its playing or if they have to watch it to the end. Yes, you get paid if people watch the videos or the interstitial is being shown. If they click on it and do certain actions you will be paid even more. One advice: Never click on your own ads. Never ever do it. If you wanna test your own ads, use test ids.

3. Almost impossible to estimate any earnings. It depends on:
- What kind of ads you show. Videos pay the most and banners pay the least. (Videos > Interstitials > Native > Banners)
- Where your traffic/users come from (Countries with highest eCPM to target are USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan and some others)
- Your game itself and how you set it up
- and some other factors

 

[slav.ch]

Update:

No app got deleted. Earnings are still around $100-120 per day.

I made one more Play Store account last week and I will upload two apps on there. + I am looking forward to upload two more iOS apps.

After this I willl move on and focus more on games, so I can call myself game developer on my Facebook and Tinder profile

Tinder profile LOL
Your journey - goddamn cool story!

 

[slav.ch]

Update:

Earnings average: $100 through FAN + Unity daily since my last update. I guess with Admob I would have make way more money. Somehow the earnings for iOS are extremely low with FAN. Its not only that the fill rate is only 70%, but the ECPM is 3x less than on Admob.

With Android FAN is doing pretty well. 90% fill rate and decent ECPM (still lower than Google). And just saying: I already blocked the Tier 3 countries, so the average ECPM should actually be higher than on Admob, where I got a lot of traffic from countries like Indonesia, PH, Thailand and India. Now they are blocked! They can not access my beautiful apps and abuse them, because they are blocked. Very nasty.

Uploaded two more Android apps. One of them got published already. Google took like 7 days to review it. I didn't make any other new app so far, because I was busy updating my existing apps to FAN and Appodeal.

I was drinking a beer last night and I was thinking about what I would do differently if I would start from the beginning:

Depending on the niche of the apps I would:

Probably make two accounts. One safe account, where I only give access to countries, where people won't do unethical crap like mass reporting and another account, where I would just give access to everyone.

About monetization:

I would block Tier 3 countries from seeing ads. Yes, I would lose a few $, but it would keep my account safe.
Or even better: I would use mediation and send Tier 3 traffic to a different ad network. You can actually select the countries you want to show ads to. I would use Admob only for Tier 1 & 2 countries and a network like FAN, Unity, etc. for Tier 3.

Also, I would make sure I wouldn't buy keyword installs or any other kind of "invalid traffic" / bots and run ads. Basically, terminating ANY KIND of risk.

This would probably the best and safest way.

I know that it's to late to say. but it was because of IOS 14, i guess i know already what it was, they just protect people from ads.
And i had Shopify business before and have chanels with information from FB.
Some commerce guys was sitting in rage because of IOS 14
IDK how IOS15 handle this, and how FB handles it now.
I'm just wanted to say you this in early messages.

But i only started to read your thread yestarday)

And i also started to learn Swift back in January 2021.
Now im building my first app to publish.

You provide a ton of information here, thank you!

 

[WarlordYT]

how is your journey @nakamura , my apps and games got banned 2 of them , which where doing well , i appealed but i dont think so
anything happening soon

 

[slav.ch]

how is your journey @nakamura , my apps and games got banned 2 of them , which where doing well , i appealed but i dont think so
anything happening soon

So, you don’t give up
Make a ways around
OP told here about ways where you can create new acc, how you need to do it
That you can reskin
You can do that, don’t be pessimistic!

 

[nakamura]

how is your journey @nakamura , my apps and games got banned 2 of them , which where doing well , i appealed but i dont think so
anything happening soon

Oh mate! I was reading this post and checked my apps. Two of them also got removed. LOL.

For one app the account just got terminated, no reason given or whatsoever. Out of nowhere.

The other app got suspended because of the title and the "deceptive behavior policy" which is absolutely wrong. The app does exactly do what the title says. Its absolutely ridiculous. And also.....if the app title is somehow wrong, why would they SUSPEND the whole app?! Instead of telling me to change the title?! Funny people. I will also appeal, lets see.

 

[nakamura]

Update:

Uploaded and published two more iOS apps. One Android app got deleted. Looks like there was another ban wave.

And here some more insights:

Furthermore, since 1st August can only upload Android App Bundle (.aab). Google says its better for the users, because the apps are smaller, etc., but actually it also gives them a lot of insides and they can scan/read the code even better. This also means they can easily cross checks if the apps have been uploaded before and got suspended before or not.

Usually people "obfuscate" their apps to hide their code and to make it extremely difficult for Google to cross check the apps. It also makes it more difficult for people to reverse engineer apps. Since 1st August this became harder, because the normal obfuscation doesn't really work anymore.

Seems like I found a problem for this solution:
https://github.com/bytedance/AabResGuard
It obfuscate the .aab. I just tried it by myself and its working. I uploaded one app using AabResGuard just now. Lets see if it will work.

Also:

Soon Google will only allow 30 characters for the app title instead of 50 characters....and they also add some more guidelines to it:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/04/updated-guidance-to-improve-your-app.html
From my opinion it is very difficult for a few months to use specific keywords, especially copyrighted words of other games, apps, trademarks, etc. They have zero tolerance and will immediately terminate the account....

 

[Salma_alouadi]

Update:

Uploaded and published two more iOS apps. One Android app got deleted. Looks like there was another ban wave.

And here some more insights:

Furthermore, since 1st August can only upload Android App Bundle (.aab). Google says its better for the users, because the apps are smaller, etc., but actually it also gives them a lot of insides and they can scan/read the code even better. This also means they can easily cross checks if the apps have been uploaded before and got suspended before or not.

Usually people "obfuscate" their apps to hide their code and to make it extremely difficult for Google to cross check the apps. It also makes it more difficult for people to reverse engineer apps. Since 1st August this became harder, because the normal obfuscation doesn't really work anymore.

Seems like I found a problem for this solution:
https://github.com/bytedance/AabResGuard
It obfuscate the .aab. I just tried it by myself and its working. I uploaded one app using AabResGuard just now. Lets see if it will work.

Also:

Soon Google will only allow 30 characters for the app title instead of 50 characters....and they also add some more guidelines to it:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/04/updated-guidance-to-improve-your-app.html
From my opinion it is very difficult for a few months to use specific keywords, especially copyrighted words of other games, apps, trademarks, etc. They have zero tolerance and will immediately terminate the account....

Is ur aab app work fine with AabResGuard with craches ..

 

[nakamura]

Is ur aab app work fine with AabResGuard with craches ..

Yes, works fine

 

[Salma_alouadi]

Yes, works fine

but how you manage to open multiple account without been detected !.
2) also does google ask for company documents when u opened developer account for ur company ?

 

[Badarod]

Hey Nakamura , Good luck for you , Still you facing the admob ads serving limit

 

[WarlordYT]

my game got banned and again limit came for 7 days

as for my appeal : they showed me middle finger and told me to fuck off

 

[nakamura]

Hey Nakamura , Good luck for you , Still you facing the admob ads serving limit

Use Admob Mediation or Appodeal. After limit is gone, simply activate Admob again. With mediation you have the huge advantage that you can simply turn the advertisers on and off within seconds.

my game got banned and again limit came for 7 days

as for my appeal : they showed me middle finger and told me to fuck off

There is something wrong with Google Play. Seriously. They ban everything, meanwhile there are accounts of big companies that are somehow "privileged" and they can do whatever they want and their app can contain whatever they want. Small guys are randomly getting banned. Its really weird.

but how you manage to open multiple account without been detected !.
2) also does google ask for company documents when u opened developer account for ur company ?

Sounds easy, but everything must be different: different device, location, IP, credit card, phone number, etc.
for 2) As far as I remember, yes.

 

[Badarod]

Use Admob Mediation or Appodeal. After limit is gone, simply activate Admob again. With mediation you have the huge advantage that you can simply turn the advertisers on and off within seconds.

i am using admob mediation with FAN two mounths ago , but the fill rate of FAN is very LOW because of ads serving limit on admob (50k request to 15K impression LOL)