[Journey] Building an iOS & Android App Empire

Okay guys, I woke up to see this on my OLDER Google Play account:



They just terminated the account with two apps on it....and then the reason: Multiple violations. What?! I had three apps on it, one app got removed because a button was not working properly (I sent an appeal which they replied "sorry there is nothing I can do") and two days later I receive this email.

What pisses me off the most are they are not even giving any specific reason. Of course they don't, because I didn't violate anything.

Wtf is going on with Google? Why would they suddenly out of nowhere come along and delete my whole account? And this crap is not only happening to me. It is happening to so many people these days, not only on Google Play, but also on YouTube etc.

And this is exactly what makes App developing so god damn unstable. Not the app, niche or ads themselves, no, it is fucking Google...and you have to depend on them, because they got the traffic, they got the play store. I never had ANY problem with Apple tho.

And do you notice something with this email?

They end it with "The Google Play Team". No mate, WHO actually decided to get my account banned? I want to know who is in charge for this.

This is what I meant before: They are the kings, they are the law, they are the attorney, they can do whatever they want to do. There is no one who is regulating them. This company became fucking totalitarian and they are taking advantage of their monopoly by doing with their devs/content creators anything they want.


By the way, the iOS app got published and I will write another post about it later on.

That is bad news, don't feel broken. Anyway it is an algorithm that does this and they are the kings

i have got like 4 accounts banned witht this kind of BS , Gugal is absolutely BS thats why i make accounts on VPS (3 apps / games) max on each accounts

nakamura said:

Okay guys, I woke up to see this on my OLDER Google Play account:

View attachment 150183

They just terminated the account with two apps on it....and then the reason: Multiple violations. What?! I had three apps on it, one app got removed because a button was not working properly (I sent an appeal which they replied "sorry there is nothing I can do") and two days later I receive this email.

What pisses me off the most are they are not even giving any specific reason. Of course they don't, because I didn't violate anything.

Wtf is going on with Google? Why would they suddenly out of nowhere come along and delete my whole account? And this crap is not only happening to me. It is happening to so many people these days, not only on Google Play, but also on YouTube etc.

And this is exactly what makes App developing so god damn unstable. Not the app, niche or ads themselves, no, it is fucking Google...and you have to depend on them, because they got the traffic, they got the play store. I never had ANY problem with Apple tho.

And do you notice something with this email?

They end it with "The Google Play Team". No mate, WHO actually decided to get my account banned? I want to know who is in charge for this.

This is what I meant before: They are the kings, they are the law, they are the attorney, they can do whatever they want to do. There is no one who is regulating them. This company became fucking totalitarian and they are taking advantage of their monopoly by doing with their devs/content creators anything they want.


By the way, the iOS app got published and I will write another post about it later on.

Click to expand...

This sucks and you were just doing white hat

@nakamura I am not sure if it is related to what is currently going on with Google, but my PERSONAL Youtube account got banned last weekend for violating their Terms and Conditions.

Which I find really funny, since I didn't post anything, I don't comment on any videos at all - last comment was at least 2 years ago, so yeah.

Interesting topic. I also make games for Google Play, unfortunately I don't have money to spend on marketing, so I'm trying to improve the quality of games every time, and also to work hard on my copywriting/persuasion skills because I have no other option. I haven't made any money so far, I barely have a few downloads, but I'm pretty confident that I can make it.
I wish you good luck and keep up posting about your work, we all could learn from each other.

Sebastian324 said:

@nakamura I am not sure if it is related to what is currently going on with Google, but my PERSONAL Youtube account got banned last weekend for violating their Terms and Conditions.

Which I find really funny, since I didn't post anything, I don't comment on any videos at all - last comment was at least 2 years ago, so yeah.

Click to expand...

No joke, it seems the whole Google company is forcing some kinda agenda. There must be a lot of shit going on behind the scenes.

Here just some examples what I noticed just within this year:

- Google Play deleting apps and accounts without any reason.
- YouTube banning channels, shadow banning and deleting videos
- Google search suspending crawling or better to say having crawling problems for several months (no one can tell me it is so difficult for them to fix it, if they wanted to they could just reverse an update)
- Admob/Adwords limiting accounts (like mine) for several months (even tho they say it takes up to 30 days!) or what is even worse: They give people a lifetime ban just before payout.


....and then: they always just saying "it is against our policies" but they don't give a proper reason. It seems so random. Like I sent an appeal for apps, I was showing them screenshots, etc. and they just say "sorry, nothing we can do". Honestly, I don't understand it.

Update:

I spent yesterday creating a new Google developer account (for the apps that have been deleted on my old account). I also already uploaded one app on this account.

On the other account I created for this journey there are 2 apps in review at the moment. Right now I am building another app. However, I don't want to upload them all at the same time. Don't wanna spam a new account with many apps. The burden to get the account deleted is incredibly low.

About the iOS app, I uploaded it and it also got approved. Now I am spending some time setting up a social media presence (IG, FB etc.) in order to make some paid ads later on. I will treat this like a start up. Since Germany is in lockdown for a month I got plenty of time. Can't even go to the gym.

Once my Android apps will get approved by Google I will upload another bunch. Unfortunately, Google takes such a long time to review them. It is madness. Two of them have been in review since 6 days! Just for reference: Apple took 8 hours to review and approve my app. You can say about Apple and their products whatever you want, but their support for developers can't even be compared to Google. It is on a completely different level.

About the monetization:

The iOS App: I have an in-app purchase to unlock a premium version for around $8.

The Android apps: Some got Appodeal for ads and others only got Admob. If Admob is going to limit my account (its an aged account...signed up for Adwords around 3 years ago and also got earnings before) I will just update the apps and integrate Appodeal. I don't think Google will limit this Admob account easily tho...however, who knows whats going on with them. About Appodeal: I mostly use FAN, because the ECPM is better than Applovin, Startapp and all the other networks.

One simple question - How did you create app? Hire someone else or purchase app from other developers?

WPninja said:

One simple question - How did you create app? Hire someone else or purchase app from other developers?

Click to expand...

Mostly by myself. It is not so difficult, especially with Flutter. Also, there is a lot to copy paste on Github and other platforms, then I am just changing the details or functions however I want to have it.

nakamura said:

Mostly by myself. It is not so difficult, especially with Flutter. Also, there is a lot to copy paste on Github and other platforms, then I am just changing the details or functions however I want to have it.

Click to expand...

Can I create it without any app development knowledge? However, I can work with PHP only :-(

WPninja said:

Can I create it without any app development knowledge? However, I can work with PHP only :-(

Click to expand...

You will need app development knowledge. At least the basics.

Update:

Good news. Two of my apps got published on the Google Play Store. Now I will proceed to upload other Android apps. I will also upload two more iOS apps. I will monetize them all with Google Admob only (for the beginning). If my Admob account gets limited I will update the apps and integrate Facebook Audience Network or Appodeal instead.

Big Update

I kept making apps for iOS and Android. Here are the stats at the moment:

iOS: 2 live apps
Android: 3 live apps

In review:
iOS: 0 (but will upload tomorrow!)
Android: 3 apps


I also made money already through admob, which is kinda surprising. I promoted one of my app on my Facebook group and several FB pages I am managing. According to Google Play (they always take some time to update stats) one app got more than 500 downloads already. The other one got 50+ downloads (all organic, I didn't share the app anywhere).

The last 3 days in total: $70 through admob

About the iOS app which got in-app purchases: I didn't share the app anywhere so far. In fact, I didn't create a IG or FB page for it yet, but I will probably do it right away now. The app got around 50 organic downloads so far. The Apple App Store also takes a 2 days until it refreshes the stats, so its hard to say how things evolved now.

Here is my marketing strategy for the iOS app, which is absolutely legit and HQ in my opinion and it might be easy scale:


1. Creating a FB and IG page. Using Placeit.net to create some fancy mockups and upload them.
2. Probably buying some IG followers for social proof, just to get things started. To get some engagement I will use engagement groups.
3. Later on I will buy FB / IG ads for app installs. I will write a comprehensive post on this later on and share some stats, costs, etc. with you guys. I might also try TikTok ads, I heard the CPI/CPC is quite low there.

I will also buy some App ratings/reviews in order to make the app more attractive for potential users. This also belongs to the category "social proof". It is just to get a better conversation rate and it also helps with the rankings within the App Store.

nakamura said:

Big Update

I kept making apps for iOS and Android. Here are the stats at the moment:

iOS: 2 live apps
Android: 3 live apps

In review:
iOS: 0 (but will upload tomorrow!)
Android: 3 apps


I also made money already through admob, which is kinda surprising. I promoted one of my app on my Facebook group and several FB pages I am managing. According to Google Play (they always take some time to update stats) one app got more than 500 downloads already. The other one got 50+ downloads (all organic, I didn't share the app anywhere).

The last 3 days in total: $70 through admob

About the iOS app which got in-app purchases: I didn't share the app anywhere so far. In fact, I didn't create a IG or FB page for it yet, but I will probably do it right away now. The app got around 50 organic downloads so far. The Apple App Store also takes a 2 days until it refreshes the stats, so its hard to say how things evolved now.

Here is my marketing strategy for the iOS app, which is absolutely legit and HQ in my opinion and it might be easy scale:


1. Creating a FB and IG page. Using Placeit.net to create some fancy mockups and upload them.
2. Probably buying some IG followers for social proof, just to get things started. To get some engagement I will use engagement groups.
3. Later on I will buy FB / IG ads for app installs. I will write a comprehensive post on this later on and share some stats, costs, etc. with you guys. I might also try TikTok ads, I heard the CPI/CPC is quite low there.

I will also buy some App ratings/reviews in order to make the app more attractive for potential users. This also belongs to the category "social proof". It is just to get a better conversation rate and it also helps with the rankings within the App Store.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your sharing! I love your journey as well and i am also trying to do the same things with you but i got some stucks. I have basic knowledge on developer such as Flutter and Native Android for Front-end side and Java, NodeJS, MongoDB for back-end side. But i don't have any good app idea to start. I made some researchs on the market but i saw that Google play have all of kinds of apps. I am thinking about dating/tracking app but many apps like that already uploaded to Google Play. Do you think they are good choices for making money?

My target is just 5-10 USD per day but now it is 0. If possible, would you please help me to solve my stucks?

Did you get your Google play account reinstated?

Great journey mate. I will be following.

Google is becoming one hell of a sucker this time around and the funny thing is that it is a bot controlled empire. Banning is done by bots, account reinstating is done by bots, basically, bots handle almost everything on the playstore. SMH.

So many developer accounts are getting banned here an there for no reason and Google is doing nothing about it. They're surely loosing it imo.

Update:

So Google decided to limit my Admob account again. No reason given, they just write "Account being assessed". I never pressed on my own ads, always used test ads and I didn't even download my own apps from the store. All downloads are just organic and from FB groups/sites I am owning. The admob/adsense account itself was already aged. I made it 3 years ago and already had earnings through Adsense.

I made around $230 from 3 apps (two Android apps and one iOS app) so far...and it has been like 10 days. The average revenue per day was around $20-30 per day. Until now. The fillrate dropped to almost 0%. It says they are limiting the account for under 30 days, but it can also take longer. From my experience it takes much longer. Sometimes 6 months or even longer.

Once again, the problem is: You have no one you can contact. No email support, no one you can call. It is a shitshow and in my opinion a fraud.

So basically Google still has to pay me the generated revenue, lets see how this is going to work out. My guess is they will close/suspend my account just right before the payout. If this is the case, I am going to sue them. I am not going to take this and it is not about the $200. It is about the principle, that they can fuck developers without any reason and basically steal your income. I already had contact with a german lawyer and he told me he would rip them apart. He said its a no brainer. The thing is: I really didn't do any shady stuff. All is white hat. All the traffic is from real users.

Google has become a real pain in the ass. It is like they are always throwing stones at you, while you are running a marathon. Like they don't want you to be successful by keep banning, suspending or limiting your accounts. There is nothing like "sustainability" when working with Google. It is the same story with SEO. You could be all Whitehat and rank for months or years, but suddenly their crawler is not working, no one is addressing the problem and your whole site gets deindexed and you lose all your income and rankings even tho you never did something against their policies.

So what am I going to do now?

Implement FAN/Appodeal to two of the three apps and update them on the Google Play account. The third app will still be used for Google Admob, so these idiots can see there is no scam or fraudulent traffic.

The limit is common with Admob nothing to worry about it, you get hit with it and in weeks it goes back to normal.

Did you receive your address verification PIN? I heard the limit is removed once you verify the PIN.

Also don't listen to your German lawyer, he's just trying to pull a couple bucks out of you by claiming to "rip" them apart.
A couple years ago, a Moroccan game website owner sued Google for banning his AdSense account with 800k USD pending as a payout. Google claimed all sorts of things in the court, in order to not pay him and I think Google won the case. Not a good idea to against a multi billion corp with world class lawyers, unless you have multi million dollar budget to fight the case.