November 30, 2010 at 18:07How to make money on mobile applications
Under the cut, we want to share our experience in the sale of mobile applications from 2007 to the present. iTunes, Win mobile and Android market. It is based on a funny story, how a course from 2000 brought us $ 3,000 and a contract with Smeshariki.
It all started in the fall of 2007. Our company was a Microsoft Certified Partner and wanted to develop in this direction. It was decided to get the MGCP certificate (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner), as it gave us a number of advantages, starting with savings on software and ending with the increase of the status of the company.
After analyzing our capabilities, it was decided that the easiest way to obtain a certificate would be to write a certified application for Windows Mobile. One of the employees from school times left a cool algorithm for the well-known board game Scrabble, written in Delphi. We ported it to C ++ and the first time we got the coveted Gold. And then we thought, why not try to sell the resulting product.
Having screwed up minimal protection, we sold “Scrabble” from our website using one of the most popular payment aggregators “Plimus”. Having scattered the application for different software providers, we sold 80 copies, but didn’t earn anything, because we did not collect the required amount of payments on each of the providers.
After analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that in both markets (Russian and foreign) we encountered serious problems:
And two years later, in November 2009, we decided to develop a mobile direction in the company and ported Scrabble to Objective-C . Very quickly we hit the top word games. There are few games and becoming popular with the trial version is quite simple. But we decided to use this fact as an occasion for PR. We
sent out a press release with the wording “The Russian developer was in the top apple store!”.
They spent several hours working on everything about everything, a PR man who wrote a short press release, phoned several portals and threw information there. The next day, we really became the first in the Appstore in the Games category. This did not last long, but as a result, we managed to sell somewhere in the first week somewhere worth $ 1,500. Then sales fell sharply, but we still have a few sales per day.
At rutracker.org (then still torrents.ru), the cracked version appeared only 1.5 months after the release, and we were able to get it as soon as possible so that the distribution was closed, and, most interestingly, this did not affect the sales, since they were provided users who did not jailbreak.
The application logo was not deprived of attention either. They called us from Canada and asked if they could use it for publication on some blog, to which, of course, they received a positive answer. And in the magazine F5 (f5.ru) it was used as part of the word LOVE in its application, however, unlike the Canadians, we were not asked about this.
As a result, we earned about $ 3,000 on our application, and downloaded the free version of the application ~ 20,000 times. Interestingly, compared to the WM version of Scrabble, where almost all purchases were made by foreigners, 90% of sales in the AppStore were made by users from Russia.
If we talk about applications on Android, then Scrabble we do not have for him, but there is a Guitar tunerwith 50,000 active users. The application is very interesting - the best minds of the Legion fought for two weeks with the Fourier rows and the platform noise suppressor, if it’s interesting, we’ll write a separate post about it :)
It’s free, because at that time the Russian company could not sell applications in the market. Interestingly, we did not do promotion at all. This suggests that the volume is much higher than in the Apple Store. At the same time, once a month they write to us different stores (third-party market implementations) and offer to place them on a paid basis.
To summarize, for which mobile devices, in our opinion, it is worth writing applications so that you can make good money later.
In conclusion, I would like to boast of our joint project with Smeshariki - itunes.apple.com/en/app/id400898674?mt=8
We look forward to a fruitful cooperation with them.
It all started in the fall of 2007. Our company was a Microsoft Certified Partner and wanted to develop in this direction. It was decided to get the MGCP certificate (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner), as it gave us a number of advantages, starting with savings on software and ending with the increase of the status of the company.
After analyzing our capabilities, it was decided that the easiest way to obtain a certificate would be to write a certified application for Windows Mobile. One of the employees from school times left a cool algorithm for the well-known board game Scrabble, written in Delphi. We ported it to C ++ and the first time we got the coveted Gold. And then we thought, why not try to sell the resulting product.
Having screwed up minimal protection, we sold “Scrabble” from our website using one of the most popular payment aggregators “Plimus”. Having scattered the application for different software providers, we sold 80 copies, but didn’t earn anything, because we did not collect the required amount of payments on each of the providers.
After analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that in both markets (Russian and foreign) we encountered serious problems:
- Foreigners simply did not know the word Erudit, and we could not use the name Scrabble, since it is a trademark of Hasbro in the United States and Canada and Mattel in other countries.
- Russian users were deprived of motivation to buy our product, because 2 days after the release on w3bsit3-dns.com they posted a cracked version.
And two years later, in November 2009, we decided to develop a mobile direction in the company and ported Scrabble to Objective-C . Very quickly we hit the top word games. There are few games and becoming popular with the trial version is quite simple. But we decided to use this fact as an occasion for PR. We
sent out a press release with the wording “The Russian developer was in the top apple store!”.
They spent several hours working on everything about everything, a PR man who wrote a short press release, phoned several portals and threw information there. The next day, we really became the first in the Appstore in the Games category. This did not last long, but as a result, we managed to sell somewhere in the first week somewhere worth $ 1,500. Then sales fell sharply, but we still have a few sales per day.
At rutracker.org (then still torrents.ru), the cracked version appeared only 1.5 months after the release, and we were able to get it as soon as possible so that the distribution was closed, and, most interestingly, this did not affect the sales, since they were provided users who did not jailbreak.
The application logo was not deprived of attention either. They called us from Canada and asked if they could use it for publication on some blog, to which, of course, they received a positive answer. And in the magazine F5 (f5.ru) it was used as part of the word LOVE in its application, however, unlike the Canadians, we were not asked about this.
As a result, we earned about $ 3,000 on our application, and downloaded the free version of the application ~ 20,000 times. Interestingly, compared to the WM version of Scrabble, where almost all purchases were made by foreigners, 90% of sales in the AppStore were made by users from Russia.
If we talk about applications on Android, then Scrabble we do not have for him, but there is a Guitar tunerwith 50,000 active users. The application is very interesting - the best minds of the Legion fought for two weeks with the Fourier rows and the platform noise suppressor, if it’s interesting, we’ll write a separate post about it :)
It’s free, because at that time the Russian company could not sell applications in the market. Interestingly, we did not do promotion at all. This suggests that the volume is much higher than in the Apple Store. At the same time, once a month they write to us different stores (third-party market implementations) and offer to place them on a paid basis.
To summarize, for which mobile devices, in our opinion, it is worth writing applications so that you can make good money later.
- Apple's . The success of Apple with its i-devices is largely due to the huge number of applications, and the reason for their appearance is that they enable software developers to earn money without wasting time creating some kind of protection methods that are usually not at all effective. Thus, we have the largest, most popular and most successful AppStore application store, which, in our opinion, should be given the most attention.
- All Android . In addition to the well-known advantages of openness and free, there are significant disadvantages that can serve as a serious problem if you decide to engage in development for the purpose of earning. One of the main disadvantages is that users are extremely accustomed to free software for Android, and this can be a serious deterrent to the growth in the number of applications. A really working business model, most likely, will be associated with the display of advertising in applications.
- Windows 7 Phone . She too early to discount. Everything Microsoft does is worth taking seriously. In our opinion, a serious plus will be the fact that for development under w7p you need to use Silver Light and Visual Studio. Microsoft, no matter what they say, knows how to work with developers, and, in fact, now an army of ready-to-fight .Net developers are waiting for the appearance of real phones, not in order to start writing, but in order to test what has already been written.
In conclusion, I would like to boast of our joint project with Smeshariki - itunes.apple.com/en/app/id400898674?mt=8
We look forward to a fruitful cooperation with them.
