

Ask HN: Care to share your average Android Market daily revenues? - Concours

Hello hackers, I shortly release my first android application and had like to know, what are some average normal numbers on the android store? care to share your average revenues, my daily are ~ $10 , is it normal?
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heliodorj
I have a few apps for Android. First few days you always get a lot of
downloads (depending on what your app does). That was one year ago. I released
another app a few weeks ago and the market has changed. Now, it's much more
like the iPhone market where you fall into oblivion if you don't have some
marketing strategy. Take a look at the 'just in' for all apps. It's filled
with batches of 'hot babes' apps and skins apps so you fall down the list very
quickly before anyone even has a chance to notice you.

I released a 'Sca', a spy camera app, a year ago and it's doing pretty well.
Made $6,000 in 14 months. With the release of all the new phones this year,
revenue has picked up to where I consistently get $30 per day after Google
takes its cut. I tried $2.95, $9.95, and I settled on the current $5.95.
Revenue is constant across all price points. There's no way to scoop up all
price points, though, which is annoying. Anyone have any ideas for that?

Last I checked, you get bumped back to the top of the 'just in' list if you
submit an update and it's been a few weeks since your last update, so it's a
good way to spike up traffic.

I released a niche app for astronomy, Iridium Flares, that sells for $1.45 and
makes one sale every few days.

I made sure my two paid apps have a free version. I have a few free apps that
advertise my paid apps.

If you compare the top paid apps with the top paid games, it looks like there
are more successful games than successful apps. People will pay for
entertainment, but games usually require many more hours of work.

~~~
espinchi
Fortunately, some types of apps can get very nice revenue from ads. (I mean,
compared to games.)

We're getting like $2000 a month out of ads with our free apps, but only $250
from our paid application, which is just a generalization of the free ones.

An interesting fact: we experienced no decline _at all_ in the number of sold
instances of our paid application when we increased the price from €0.50 to
€1.00. That means, we doubled the revenue :-O. (Yeah, well, the new release
included some improvements, but still surprising IMO.)

~~~
heliodorj
how many installs do you have to be able to pull $2000 a month in ad revenue?

which ad network are you using?

~~~
espinchi
200k installs generate all that revenue in Ads. The average active installs is
around 40%, though.

We started using Admob, but now we are much happier in Mobclix.

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allwein
I currently have two apps on the iTunes App Store, Farmville Timer
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/farmville-
timer/id360432188?m...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/farmville-
timer/id360432188?mt=8) and Cafe World Timer
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cafe-world-
timer/id365160796?...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cafe-world-
timer/id365160796?mt=8)

These are relatively simple utilities with push notifications for tracking
various events in those Facebook games.

Both of them are priced at $2.99 and sell between 10 and 20 copies a day on
average, netting me about $60 a day or $1800 a month. They've been on sale for
two months now.

You can see my blog at <http://blog.tuchee.com> for greater detail about my
pricing experiments and experiences in developing the apps.

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heliodorj
A few more observations: I kept detailed stats on the download patterns for my
paid spy camera app. The rate of downloads is constant between 8am and 2am. I
did not see any 'rush hour' effect. It's also constant but slower at night,
between 2am and 8am. Given that sales come from all over the world, that would
tend to flatten any bumps in the graph. I'm not sure what time zone Google is
using for these stats.

More interestingly, weekends see up to two times the traffic, so I release my
updates Saturday morning so they can have the most possible traffic through
the 'just in' list.

------
mcav
Or Apple App Store revenues too, if you're willing.

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orangecat
My Android numbers are similar, close to $1k after 2 months, now averaging
around $10/day. It's been pretty constant for a while, I suspect the natural
decline over time is countered by more users picking up recently released
phones like the Incredible and Desire.

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rksprst
I have a few iPhone apps in the store. All together they average around $8 a
day. Was a lot more back when I released them Oct 2008.

~~~
davidedicillo
in 2008 it was just a matter of putting anything in the store. I was making
few hundreds per day.

I remember at the beginning you could even afford to check everyday which new
applications were published, and some days the number 0...

------
SingAlong
perhaps a link to your app or a snippet about it?

Also we could put this up in a spreadsheet. That would be helpful in looking
clearly at the avg sales by category of apps (games, business, etc)

P.S: I'm planning to develop an Android app too.

~~~
Concours
It's in the category sport. It's a great idea with the spreadsheet.

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dminor
Well I'd say normal probably depends entirely on what type of application you
wrote, and whether it's a paid app or ad supported.

~~~
RossM
Do you happen to know what the rates are for ad-supported apps? Not really
sure of what options there are, I've seen Google-branded ads in Android apps
though. How do they compare to web advertising?

~~~
espinchi
We've had a lot of experience with Admob, and also with Mobclix. I'd recommend
the latter.

For some types of applications (such as news readers, definitely not action
games), ads can work very nicely.

You can expect something a eCPM of $1.20. In our case, that translates to like
6 cents per click (which is a metric I like more).

We have a very shallow comparative in our blog:
<http://www.androidsx.com/admob-vs-mobclix-1st-round/>

------
developer123
first 5 days $2K per day (iPhone application) - education

~~~
Concours
$2K per day , Congrats. I guess, this kind of numbers need more time on the
Android market.

~~~
developer123
also please bear in mind thia app has a brand and company behind it with lots
of market share in its niche allready through other products other than
iphone, so lots of avenues to generate awareness of the app through other
channels including facebook.

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davidedicillo
On Apple store about 3k/mo (most of those from medical) with a bunch of little
apps.

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mattwdelong
Browsing the Android market, especially in the top paid application section I
have not seen any application particularly worthy of me purchasing it. Could
you give me examples of any apps actually worth buying?

~~~
jeffcoat
The first Android app I paid for was Aldiko (<http://www.aldiko.com/>), an
ebook (epub) reader -- excellent feature set, and fantastic polish.

There's an ad-supported free version, too, but $1.99 is nothing for software I
use every day.

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mronge
I'm also interested in Mac app revenue. Anyone willing to share?

~~~
mronge
I suppose I can share my numbers, I do about 2k a month for a desktop email
utility

