Another month where I didn’t do any game dev stuff, most of my free time was taken up by the baby. I think I fired up Eclipse maybe twice, looked at my to-do list, and shut it back off again.
Ad Revenue
After the June spike, July was more or less back to normal:
sCatter & Drippy | Bus Jumper | Neil Rajah | Total per Month |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total per Game | $161.39 | $1071.87 | $359.69 | $1592.36 | |||||||
| Impressions | Clicks | Revenue | Impressions | Clicks | Revenue | Impressions | Clicks | Revenue | |||
| April (2011) | 935 | 16 | $0.18 | - | - | - | $0.18 | ||||
| May | 7,915 | 148 | $3.15 | 277,166 | 2,351 | $59.53 | $62.68 | ||||
| June | 17,871 | 366 | $4.55 | 212,897 | 4,081 | $63.02 | $67.57 | ||||
| July | 35,527 | 670 | $14.90 | 309,395 | 3,113 | $108.60 | $123.50 | ||||
| August | 28,031 | 379 | $4.28 | 259,481 | 2,428 | $44.70 | $48.98 | ||||
| September | 15,142 | 296 | $3.94 | 155,001 | 1,573 | $39.98 | $43.92 | ||||
| October | 28,894 | 378 | $6.50 | 243,578 | 1,735 | $58.16 | $64.66 | ||||
| November | 36,550 | 740 | $13.97 | 264,278 | 3,429 | $72.95 | $86.92 | ||||
| December | 64,640 | 1,693 | $37.38 | 432,863 | 7,447 | $169.21 | $206.59 | ||||
| January (2012) | 71,690 | 1,341 | $21.79 | 461,196 | 8,670 | $128.16 | $149.95 | ||||
| February | 65,653 | 728 | $13.59 | 332,540 | 5,459 | $82.04 | $95.63 | ||||
| March | 33,648 | 836 | $10.18 | 182,024 | 4,586 | $57.48 | 1,957 | 7 | $0.18 | $67.84 | |
| April | 22,517 | 640 | $1.33 | 62,138 | 2,931 | $12.68 | 292,676 | 5,563 | $35.27 | $49.28 | |
| May | 32,654 | 965 | $7.40 | 146,115 | 4,201 | $49.53 | 418,440 | 8,540 | $64.43 | $121.36 | |
| June | 49,241 | 888 | $10.15 | 241,703 | 3,628 | $82.94 | 296,761 | 4,138 | $187.75 | $280.84 | |
| July | 43,982 | 1055 | $8.10 | 226,747 | 4,072 | $42.54 | 246,057 | 2,976 | $72.06 | $122.70 | |
Mobclix is working on catching up with their payments. I haven’t yet received a payment from them since they stopped (which was in June, I think), but I also recently realized that my income for February-April is pretty low, so it will take 2 months’ income to cross the $100 limit. So it’s possible that Mobclix is caught up with the June payments, and I haven’t seen any because my February income was less than $100. Anyway, they still have July and August to catch up to, and I should be getting at least one payment from them.
Paid Games
Google – 2 sales, $1.56
Amazon – 1 sale, $0.69
Barnes & Noble – 76 sales, $52.44. One for Neil Rajah, all the rest for Bus Jumper
Hey Ziggy,
On June you had 296,761 for Neil Rajah => $187.75
In July 246,057 => $72.06
And what about Bus Jumper? Same amount of clicks but half the money! What happened?
I’m not sure. I’ve read different explanations for this. One plausible explanation is end of quarter spending – ad companies have quarterly budgets, so spending goes up in the last month of a quarter because they’re trying to use up the money that’s sitting around, or something like that, and then spending drops in the next month. I’ve definitely seen the per-click revenue go up and down, and I don’t really know why it does that.
The same thing happened to me, but with admob, July 13 was the breakdown day, from $22 daily to almost $8
One interesting thing is the number of sales for Bus Jumper. Neil Rajah is far superior on every point (concept, graphism, gameplay) yet people are buying Bus Jumper; which has buggy physics and overall not so much replayability.
It’s a great lesson for indie developers that making simple games can net you more money than spending months and months building up something pretty.
Heh, that’s true, and that disappoints me. You make a good point about making simple games. There’s something about Neil Rajah that just doesn’t appeal to American and European audiences. The name? Theme? Art style? Probably a combination of all of them.
Still, it was a lot of fun to make, and I think I’ll break even eventually (on my actual out-of-pocket expenses, anyway). And it’s been a learning experience in many ways, the lack of sales being one of them