- Mar 22, 2013
- 6,272
- 10,985
Update:
Here are some numbers. Currently, I have:
2x Google Play Developer accounts (both are "officially" connected). One for games, another one for regular apps.
2x Apple App Store accounts: One of my company, one personal account
Apps in total:
Android: 8
iOS: 20
Earnings:
Through ads: $90-130 per day. It always varies. Also, I don't really check all the ad networks every single day and do the math. I do it on a weekly or monthly basis.
Adnetworks:
- Admob
- Applovin
- Unity
At the moment, I don't use Facebook Audience Network and also not Facebook ads, because they were deactivating my ads account without any reason. Something in their algorithm triggered to deactivate the account. What happened was: I made a hotspot with my phone, logged in to Facebook ads, and the next second I received an email saying my FB ads account was deactivated, so I stopped sending traffic to FAN just to be safe. I already contacted Facebook and told them to review my ads account. I never had any ads rejected, and never advertised any shady or prohibited niche. The block suddenly happened after I logged in, totally randomly.
Advertising:
- Used Facebook ads a little bit to try and check (one additional benefit of Facebook ads is you actually gain followers, etc. and its good for brand awareness)
- Google Adwords
- I spent around $30 per day on advertising. Why? Read below.
Testing apps:
So before I think about spending money/time on ranking apps or spending money/time on improving apps, I first test the apps.
How do I do it?
I am integrating Firebase and buying around 1000 Tier 3 app installs. After this, I carefully check all the stats on Firebase.
For those of you who have no clue what Firebase is: Basically, it's an analytics tool by Google, similar to Google Analytics, but just for apps. It tracks everything.
So, what do I take a look at?
- User activity & retention
- User engagement time
- Event count per user, specifically: ad_impression, user_engagement. These two are telling me how often they are doing certain actions in the app, and more importantly: it tells me how often they are exposed to ads. The more often they are exposed to ads, the more money I earn.
Firebase is full of this kind of information and they are really valuable. You can also set up your own events. I didn't do it so far, but I should. For example, creating an event every time an interstitial ad is being shown, or every time a rewarded ad is shown. This information is important if you want to scale your app. You need to know your numbers.
Here are some of my thoughts and also some real experiences:
Most people are obsessed with finding a good niche with low competition. Yes, that's a good approach. BUT, you can also enter a medium-high competitive niche and make a much better app. In my opinion, there is one important factor, which really makes a difference: In-app activity.
I had two apps in the exact same niche for Android. Wanted to rank for the same keywords. One app was made with java and was kinda simple: slider, main menu, 10 buttons, which were all leading to one single screen. The other one was a flutter app, but it had settings, different categories, looked much better, had way more screens, videos, etc. and the Flutter app just ranked so much faster and easier than the Android app. Why? Because the engagement time was just so much higher, the in-app activity was just so much higher.
I think this is also one of the reasons why TikTok took off that much in the App Store. The engagement time and in-app activity of TikTok are simply crazy. They must have it really easy to rank. Some people are using TikTok for several hours per day, keep scrolling. I mean, if you think about this just from an analytical perspective and you know how the Google algorithm works, then you would try everything to keep the people as engaged and active as possible. In this perspective, TikTok is incredibly good. Just think about it: One scroll and the next shitty video appears, and you can't simply stop, because all the videos are funny or weird.
So how can you actually improve the engagement time and also the in-app activity?
That's quite simple. Depending on your app/niche, you just need to add more content and work on the user interface. Making the content accessible easier. Also, don't spam people with ads in the beginning.
If you have a game: Add achievements, leaderboards, share buttons, daily rewards, bonuses, and premium items they can unlock after a certain time. All of this will lead to one thing: More engagement, more in-app activity, and higher retention. People won't just uninstall your app right away, they will open your app the next day to get rewards. They will also open the app after 7 days because they want to get a special item or reward.
Don't think they are simply adding rewards, etc. because it makes the game more fun, no, they do it because they want to have more in-app activity and retention.
If you are using Unity, I can recommend this plugin: Easy Mobile Pro. I With this one, you can easily implement achievements, leaderboards, and so on.
Additionally to all of that, from my experience, there is some kinda "shadow ban" on Google Play. They prevent your app from ranking/getting organic traffic in the first 30-45 days. That's Google being Google. The same crap happens on their search engine. So, if you want to upload an app, publish it as soon as possible and then keep updating it. Don't spend weeks or months developing it. Publish the minimal version of it as soon as possible. It actually saves you a lot of time.
What will I do next?
I have a whole list of apps that I wanna make. Around 20-30 apps more. So yeah, I keep developing, testing and checking.
Here are some numbers. Currently, I have:
2x Google Play Developer accounts (both are "officially" connected). One for games, another one for regular apps.
2x Apple App Store accounts: One of my company, one personal account
Apps in total:
Android: 8
iOS: 20
Earnings:
Through ads: $90-130 per day. It always varies. Also, I don't really check all the ad networks every single day and do the math. I do it on a weekly or monthly basis.
Adnetworks:
- Admob
- Applovin
- Unity
At the moment, I don't use Facebook Audience Network and also not Facebook ads, because they were deactivating my ads account without any reason. Something in their algorithm triggered to deactivate the account. What happened was: I made a hotspot with my phone, logged in to Facebook ads, and the next second I received an email saying my FB ads account was deactivated, so I stopped sending traffic to FAN just to be safe. I already contacted Facebook and told them to review my ads account. I never had any ads rejected, and never advertised any shady or prohibited niche. The block suddenly happened after I logged in, totally randomly.
Advertising:
- Used Facebook ads a little bit to try and check (one additional benefit of Facebook ads is you actually gain followers, etc. and its good for brand awareness)
- Google Adwords
- I spent around $30 per day on advertising. Why? Read below.
Testing apps:
So before I think about spending money/time on ranking apps or spending money/time on improving apps, I first test the apps.
How do I do it?
I am integrating Firebase and buying around 1000 Tier 3 app installs. After this, I carefully check all the stats on Firebase.
For those of you who have no clue what Firebase is: Basically, it's an analytics tool by Google, similar to Google Analytics, but just for apps. It tracks everything.
So, what do I take a look at?
- User activity & retention
- User engagement time
- Event count per user, specifically: ad_impression, user_engagement. These two are telling me how often they are doing certain actions in the app, and more importantly: it tells me how often they are exposed to ads. The more often they are exposed to ads, the more money I earn.
Firebase is full of this kind of information and they are really valuable. You can also set up your own events. I didn't do it so far, but I should. For example, creating an event every time an interstitial ad is being shown, or every time a rewarded ad is shown. This information is important if you want to scale your app. You need to know your numbers.
Here are some of my thoughts and also some real experiences:
Most people are obsessed with finding a good niche with low competition. Yes, that's a good approach. BUT, you can also enter a medium-high competitive niche and make a much better app. In my opinion, there is one important factor, which really makes a difference: In-app activity.
I had two apps in the exact same niche for Android. Wanted to rank for the same keywords. One app was made with java and was kinda simple: slider, main menu, 10 buttons, which were all leading to one single screen. The other one was a flutter app, but it had settings, different categories, looked much better, had way more screens, videos, etc. and the Flutter app just ranked so much faster and easier than the Android app. Why? Because the engagement time was just so much higher, the in-app activity was just so much higher.
I think this is also one of the reasons why TikTok took off that much in the App Store. The engagement time and in-app activity of TikTok are simply crazy. They must have it really easy to rank. Some people are using TikTok for several hours per day, keep scrolling. I mean, if you think about this just from an analytical perspective and you know how the Google algorithm works, then you would try everything to keep the people as engaged and active as possible. In this perspective, TikTok is incredibly good. Just think about it: One scroll and the next shitty video appears, and you can't simply stop, because all the videos are funny or weird.
So how can you actually improve the engagement time and also the in-app activity?
That's quite simple. Depending on your app/niche, you just need to add more content and work on the user interface. Making the content accessible easier. Also, don't spam people with ads in the beginning.
If you have a game: Add achievements, leaderboards, share buttons, daily rewards, bonuses, and premium items they can unlock after a certain time. All of this will lead to one thing: More engagement, more in-app activity, and higher retention. People won't just uninstall your app right away, they will open your app the next day to get rewards. They will also open the app after 7 days because they want to get a special item or reward.
Don't think they are simply adding rewards, etc. because it makes the game more fun, no, they do it because they want to have more in-app activity and retention.
If you are using Unity, I can recommend this plugin: Easy Mobile Pro. I With this one, you can easily implement achievements, leaderboards, and so on.
Additionally to all of that, from my experience, there is some kinda "shadow ban" on Google Play. They prevent your app from ranking/getting organic traffic in the first 30-45 days. That's Google being Google. The same crap happens on their search engine. So, if you want to upload an app, publish it as soon as possible and then keep updating it. Don't spend weeks or months developing it. Publish the minimal version of it as soon as possible. It actually saves you a lot of time.
What will I do next?
I have a whole list of apps that I wanna make. Around 20-30 apps more. So yeah, I keep developing, testing and checking.
