

Android Income Report - androidoka
http://droid-blog.net/2012/05/13/android-income-report-12-may-12/

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soup10
I'm a successful app developer and I can't help but feel that this kind of
approach is not the right way to go about.

App-stores are "hit based", at that level of revenue you should be thinking,
"how do I make this go up an order of magnitude", not "how do I optimize my
ads to squeeze a little more revenue out". Just taking a look at some of the
reviews your apps have... you should be improving quality before optimizing
revenue.

~~~
vibrunazo
One of the reviews:

"Update: Facebook Ad is covering up my ship! I want old version back"

Yea, that certainly makes me question his focus :S

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bad_user
One pet peeve I've got with Android and Google Play is that my country is
still not supported in Google Checkout, so I can't register for a merchant
account.

This means that I cannot sell apps, so the 3 options I have would be to:

1) go with an ad-supported model

2) enable in-app payments with a third-party provider, such as PayPal, but
this is tricky because it goes against the guidelines of Google Play

3) publish the app on my own website, with payments through PayPal, being the
only sane solution for me in case I don't want an ad-supported model

I'm extremely disappointed that Google, after 4 years of Android being on the
market, is still not allowing my country. And I wouldn't have a problem
selling iOS apps in iTunes. Not only that, but there have been numerous
reports of extremely poor customer service for Google Checkout, so even if
you're blessed to live in an approved country, you can still get fucked.

And then people wonder why the ad-supported model is preferred for Android.

~~~
vibrunazo
Are you sure you cannot sell stuff even without merchant support? Here in my
country (Brazil) the merchant account is also not supported, but they give me
the option to use an AdSense account instead to receive money.

It's far from ideal, and makes me have to jump through additional hoops just
to sell apps. But it's allowed.

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mmastrac
I'm extremely disappointed that you'd choose to try an obnoxious, intrusive
SDK like SellARing. Not only are you exposing your users to it while you app
is installed, but they leave their SDK installed on the user's device after
they've deleted your application and left it a one-star review for doing
something so disrespectful. I imagine there is also a large number of users
that are just not savvy enough to uninstall this SDK after-the-fact, so you've
effectively hosed them.

I appreciate the need for app developers to make money off their work, but
this is not the way to do it.

EDIT: I misread their product description - this SDK doesn't survive an
uninstall of the offending application. I was assuming they'd use a permission
like "install applications" to drop another application. At least on this
count, you don't have to worry.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> they leave their SDK installed on the user's device after they've deleted
> your application

How does this work? I come from the iOS universe and statements like this
scare me out of ever installing anything from the Play Store. Is installing an
app not clearly reversible? I can't find anything useful for "uninstall
sellaring" or "remove sellaring" either.

Is there a golden rule to keeping Android 4 clean?

~~~
immad
> they leave their SDK installed on the user's device after they've deleted
> your application

I have worked on an Android app extensively. I am pretty sure that's not
possible.

~~~
mmastrac
You're right - I misread the product description (updated parent post).

I was assuming they'd be doing something tricky like asking for
INSTALL_PACKAGES
([http://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.perm...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission.html#INSTALL_PACKAGES))
and dropping something on the device. Thankfully they don't do that.

As someone who has hacked on Android before (ie: <http://unrevoked.com>), I
wouldn't be surprised if there were ways to silently install packages, or even
just tricking the user into allowing an install of a further package.

Quick googling leads to this:
[http://jon.oberheide.org/blog/2010/06/28/a-peek-inside-
the-g...](http://jon.oberheide.org/blog/2010/06/28/a-peek-inside-the-
gtalkservice-connection/)

~~~
drivebyacct2
Android apps can't have that permission, only the Market gets that permission.

No offense, but you're spreading some pretty false FUD. Unrevoked uses
multiple exploits and requires a lot of user interaction _and_ a computer to
initiate the process.

Further that last link basically describes how Play remote installs
applications and is all under the assumption that someone has somehow MITM the
SSL connection, something I'm presuming is not at all easily done. (Further
it's going on two years old, I wouldn't be shocked if Google is now signing
their INSTALL_ASSET messages, Play has changed a LOT in the last two years).

Apps are sandboxed overall similarly in iOS, WinRT, Android, WP7. Uninstalling
them, uninstalls them. It even removes all data attached assuming the dev
doesn't manually put data on the SD card instead of using the API to store
data on the SD card.

~~~
jonoberheide
FYI, it is possible for unprivileged apps to invoke the INSTALL_ASSET
functionality themselves. One such example described here:

[http://blog.duosecurity.com/2011/05/when-angry-birds-
attack-...](http://blog.duosecurity.com/2011/05/when-angry-birds-attack-
android-edition/)

Another variation of that attack is still unpatched, allowing any app to
invoke INSTALL_ASSET. Certainly that's not intended functionality and is a bug
that will be (eventually) patched, but I wouldn't classify it as FUD.

~~~
gurkendoktor
That is indeed a little scary. Thanks!

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Smerity
One thing I'm always curious about when I see revenue from mobile applications
is: does advertising on a mobile device really work? I'm hesitant to sell
anything unless I'd be confident selling it with my name attached to the label
and I'm not sure mobile ads are something I'd consider valuable.

The two primary issues are that 1) mobile devices slow down / severely
discourage any online form entry and 2) the age old question of "how many
clicks are misclicks".

1) is the killer for me. It's rare for me to actively click on an ad and even
if I'm drawn to an ad whether I'm on laptop/desktop or a mobile device makes
quite a large difference on the ultimate decision.

I guess you could argue that it's up to the advertiser to ensure their ad
money is well spent but unless you're just spreading awareness (or possibly
other applications?) I'd personally not feel happy selling mobile ads.

Thanks for sharing your numbers though! This sort of openness is something I
quite enjoy seeing. Best of luck hitting your $2k goal next month and I hope
the $4k goal is reached soon after :)

~~~
DenisM
You are right to wonder. Mobile ads largely do not work. I tired admob as a
publisher and a as an advertiser, results are poor. As a publisher I saw ad
revenue on the order of $5 for 1000 active monthly users. As an advertiser I
sunk in a few 100 bucks and saw I think one purchase of my apps that I
advertise. Mobile ads are destroying value. I have once met a person at a
conference who said he was making money in mobile ads. Turns out he knew
peopple at abig companies willing to spend money on brand advertising. I still
run the admob ads In my app, and I see that most ads are brand ads, and ads
from companies willing to buy their way into minds e.g. Google or Microsoft.

~~~
drone
It leads one to wonder if the mobile ad payment argument is simply a problem
with Google. That is, Google's strength is in advertising, and it works for
Google due to their size and reach, but that capability may not expand to
their app developers. Certainly, some are making the argument that there's
more money to be made by pushing your app through a traditional retailer than
a traditional advertiser. (Erm, that last word may be a poor choice there... I
just can't think of a better one.) e.g.:
[http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/31/flurrys-analytics-
apple-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/31/flurrys-analytics-apple-app-
store-amazon-appstore-android-google-play/)

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kevingadd
It kind of blows my mind that any developer would willingly integrate
something like Sellaring. It sounds like the kind of ad network no sane person
would ever want anything to do with, and if an app I used integrated it, I
would uninstall that app on the spot. I'm not shocked it had such a negative
impact; I wonder if he spent any time considering how his users would feel
about it?

~~~
RobAtticus
Exactly this. If a form of advertising would actively annoy me if it was on my
phone, I do not put it in my apps. Most users understand the need for ads in
applications. They're willing to have a 50px banner because they're pretty
easily ignored. Most users are not tolerant of apps reaching outside their
scope and pushing ads, like this Sellaring and whatever the other one was that
put ads in the notifications (AirPush maybe?).

~~~
robocat
To inspect the addons used by apps there is a brilliant app called "Addons
Detector" which you can find out about the analytics, advertising, developer
tools, social gaming, push notifications etc libraries used by the apps
installed on your Android.

I was really interested when I first ran it! I have no connection to app, just
a happy user.

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dave1619
Bit confused here. You had 1.3m Madvertise requests and 100k Madvertise
impressions. Where did the 1.2m requests go (I'm assuming 600k went to AdMob.
How about the other 600k)?

~~~
RobAtticus
Probably just unfilled. Before filling my remaining requests with House Ads,
it was not unusual to only have a 50-75% fill rate on Admob. Maybe Madvertise
is different (I've never used them) but it could be that no advert is served.

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Aqueous
3D invaders is really fun. You should be selling an ad-free version for 99
cents. (Maybe you are already? I didn't see anything indicating that,
however.)

~~~
androidoka
I'm glad you like it. There's no ad free version available at the moment
though.

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markessien
These methods will not work for long, and it's not a basis for a business. The
adverts are extremely intrusive and irritating for users.

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androidoka
Thank all you guys for the great discussion!

