

Want to make money on a mobile app? Make a game - jaredblake
http://jaredblake.posterous.com/want-to-make-money-with-a-mobile-app-make-a-g

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egb
My games are consistent sellers, both as free-with-ads or for 99c, whereas my
utility apps that actually do something useful (such as True Shuffle
<http://bratton.com/trueshuffle/> which plays through all your songs with no
repeats ever) get very few sales.

So yeah, I'm focusing on making games... Everybody wants to be entertained
while waiting for the bus, but very few people go out of their way to search
for a utility aside from a very few like Camera+/Hipstamatic/Instagram, which
all being photography-related are somewhat entertainment as well.

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consultutah
The problem with any app, games included, is that designing , developing, and
then marketing is hard. My wetwork game (
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wetwork/id410170565> ) for the iPhone took a
lot of time to develop, but hasn't really gone anywhere in the app store. I'll
be the first to admit that it isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, but
it is upsetting that my dumber apps bring in considerably more money.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to market games, I'd really appreciate
it.

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allenbrunson
so it looks like you only released your game about ten days ago? that's not
enough time to tell if it's a success or not.

i also released a low-key iphone game. it has been in the store for about a
year. it has made me a little less than $7,000 to date. i am calling that a
middling success.

<http://www.platinumball.net/hearts/>

i can't ever predict what the sales are going to be. along about august, when
i had given it up for dead, i suddenly had my best month ever: over a thousand
bucks. i have no idea why. right now it's down to about $250.00 a month. i
hope it will go back up a bit, once i release some much-needed updates.

i don't have a lot of users, but a few of them are rabidly loyal. one guy did
a favorable video review and posted it to youtube. another has been bugging me
incessantly to add game center integration. yeah yeah yeah, i'm working on it.

~~~
consultutah
Good to hear. I've read a lot about the runaway successes of other apps - it
is easy to get disappointed. I still find it strange that my Gender Scan app
does as well as it does though. There is even a copy cat app out there now!
Hillarious!

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jaredblake
Another thing to consider is making adjustments to the price at various
intervals. We have seen huge spikes in downloads when we move from $.99 to
free and then back. I think the main factor in the download spikes comes from
the app showing up on the automated lists of "bargin" apps. I am trying to get
some more concrete evidence of this, so if anyone has more examples, I would
love to hear about it.

