Due to a family medical emergency, I’ve been out of the country for the last 3 weeks. As a result, this has been the longest stretch (1 month) where I haven’t updated my apps. Now that I’m back, I’m pleasantly surprised to see that my two apps have been doing OK during this month.
In a previous post, I’d speculated that the path to riches and glory on the Amazon Appstore involved getting picked to be the free app of the day. Well, it turns out I was wrong, and being selected to be the free app of the day can actually hurt a developer. This was a revelation for me, and I felt it deserved a write-up.
Google paid me today for Android Market sales in the month of May. I had 12 Bus Jumper orders in May, minus 3 that were cancelled (most likely, people who didn’t like the game and returned it within 15 minutes). At roughly $0.99 per sale (the international sales vary a little), that works out to about $9. Subtract Google’s 30% cut as well as payment processing fees, and that leaves about $6. About enough to buy a couple of fancy coffees at Starbucks. Taking inspiration from another Android developer’s blog, I decided to share some numbers about how much money I’m making (short answer: not much). I’ve often wished more developers would share this kind of information, so I’ll start 
I talked about my experiences with the Amazon AppStore in a previous post. As I’ve discovered over the last few months, there are many other Android markets in existence, many of them trying to reach audiences who do not have access to the Google Android Market. I’ve listed my games on some of them, with mixed results.
I was checking the online Scoreloop leaderboard today for Bus Jumper, and there are 6 people with scores above 1000. This means they crossed the 1000th platform in the game. There are 29 more people who’ve crossed level 500. The first thing I’d like to say is, thanks for playing, and I’m glad you like the game
It’s funny to see other people playing your game, especially when they are so far ahead of you. I think I’ve crossed level 100 once, and that was at a kids’ bookstore while my daughter was distracted. It’s not like the game keeps getting harder (the speed / difficulty starts to flatten out after level 25), so it’s mostly a matter of how much time you put into the game. Now that I’ve seen how people are playing it, I feel like I should try to add some kind of achievements. I should also think about how to mix up the gameplay a little. I never expected people would play to level 1000. Suggestions are welcome.