June was pretty much completely on auto-pilot. My wife and I had a baby at the end of May, and if you’re a parent, you know how much free time I’ve had over the last month 
I fired up Eclipse a few times over the last couple of weeks, looked at what I was working on, and just shook my head and walked away. I’m sure I’ll get back to it soon enough, but right now, sleep is the top priority for any spare time I have
Ad Revenue
June was a fairly interesting month for Neil Rajah ad revenue:
sCatter & Drippy | Bus Jumper | Neil Rajah | Total per Month |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total per Game | $153.29 | $1029.33 | $287.63 | $1469.66 | |||||||
| 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 | |
As you can see, not much change to Drippy/sCatter. Bus Jumper is in the range it’s always been, with a sightly higher average payment per click. I noticed some high-value ads showing up for a few days, so I increased the ad refresh frequency for a week, and then bumped it back down once those ads went away. This is a shot in the dark, I have no idea if higher impressions bring better ads to your app, or better CTR, or both. But in general, it looks like some higher paying ad campaigns ran in June. This seems to be over, the July numbers are back to the normal range. One highlight – I crossed $1k in Bus Jumper ad revenue
The real surprise was in Neil Rajah. For the last week of June, one of the ad companies was running some pretty high-value ads in the interstitial ad format. For that agency, I was seeing up to 25c per click, and 3-4% CTR. Neil Rajah’s daily ad revenue was in the $15-25 range for that week. So that explains the big jump in revenue. This campaign too seems to be over, and the July numbers are lower.
I reduced the randomized display rate for the interstitials with one of the last updates, so the overall impressions and clicks are down. Also, like I said, this has been on auto-pilot, I’ve made no updates or marketing efforts.
Mobclix payments
Of course, all the income in the world doesn’t mean anything if you don’t get paid Mobclix recently got acquired by Velti. They switched their model to pay the developers even while they’re collecting money from the ad companies. Their shareholders didn’t like that, and their stock tanked after their last earnings call. Being a public company, they had to do something, so they decided to switch policy, and only pay developers once they received payment from the ad companies. I believe practically no one got paid in June, and I don’t think anyone’s been paid in July either. They’ve been putting out lots of announcements about how they’re working hard to fix this. I think they might be going back to their old payment model, not sure. It’s the usual problem of running a public company – the stock market wants short-term profits, but you need to balance that against long term growth. I’m glad my livelihood doesn’t depend on my game income, I’m sure there are other developers who have been hit much harder than me because of this issue.
Paid Games
Google – Slightly higher than usual – 6 orders, for a payout of $4.02
Amazon – 1 sale for Bus Jumper. I’m wondering if I should have released Neil Rajah as a paid app here. I average about 5-6 downloads per day. I have some new artwork that might make this look more like an action platformer and less like an Indian-themed game, but I haven’t had the time to update the listing
Barnes and Noble – I dropped the price of Neil Rajah to $0.99. I also bought both Bus Jumper and Neil Rajah and gave them 5-star reviews. But it doesn’t really seem to have made much of a difference to Neil Rajah – I sold 3 copies. Again, I need to update the art on this store to hopefully make the game seem more interesting to American owners.
I sold 83 copies of Bus Jumper, which isn’t too bad, and is an improvement over May. The total revenue for June is $60.74.
Also, B&N paid me for May (they have a net-30 payment period), and they came through on the accounting error that earned me an extra $400. So in terms of actual money received, July has started out pretty well
I don’t receive the payment for Mobclix this month, they need 3 months to pay and when the time comes, they delay the payment, I don’t use it anymore, instead I use Leadbolt, this month will be my first payment(they pay every month if you have more than U$100), and I think the payment wil not be delayed.
I suggest you to try and use the Notification ad(equals used in Airpush, only (for test), I think you will not regret.
Congratulations for the baby!!!
Well, I’ve been with them for about a year, and they’ve always paid on time until now (on time being 3 months after the income was generated, of course). This is the first payment delay that I’ve experienced, but from reading the forums, this used to be a common problem with Mobclix in the past. I’ll see how it works out, and if it’s going to stay this way, then I’ll be switching to a different ad provider. If you’re doing this for a living, I think the smart thing to do would be to always have multiple providers across your apps.
I’ve tried Leadbolt’s offer wall, and hardly got any clicks. That may work if I get more aggressive and display the offer wall when the app exits, or launches, or something like that. But I don’t really like that idea very much. I haven’t spent any time exploring Leadbolt’s other offerings.
Thanks for posting these stats every month… they’ve been interesting to follow!
I too have been using Mobclix and didn’t get paid in June, and it looks like I won’t be receiving July on time either. I’ve been pretty patient through this little incident, despite the fact that they owe me just under $4,000 for two months of revenue, but now they’re going to owe all of their developers for July too and I’m starting to get worried that this is just going to snowball and get worse. Their reassurances have not been particularly… well, reassuring either, considering the last we’ve heard from them was the 22nd when they said they were working on getting collections. /shrug
Guess I’ll be looking for a new ad provider.
Also, I advise against Fabio’s suggestion of using Airpush or any sort of super-obtrusive notification ads, unless you really want your users to detest you and uninstall your app immediately. It’s not worth it.
Thanks for stopping by, and I’m glad you find the stats interesting
You’re generating order of magnitude more income than me 
I’m still in the ‘hobby money’ range, honestly, and the effort it will take to update all my games across all the stores to switch to a different ad provider doesn’t seem worth it. especially with my current free time shortage. Like I said in my response to Fabio, my main takeaway from this is that if I ever get more serious with this, I shouldn’t depend on a single ad provider for all of my ad income.
Ziggy is back.
How many active daily users you have or monthly active? Just looking how many users you need to have to reach this number of impressions.
About 600-800 daily active users for Neil Rajah. About 3k per week, 9k for the month of June. I think Flurry counts only unique active users, so these numbers show a lot of overlap. For example, 700/day * 30 days should have been 21k if they were all unique users, but they’re not.
If you want to look at sessions, which would add up more directly – 1.5k-2k sessions per day, 11k-13k per week, 51k for June.
Asking for Neil Rajah.
Thank you.
Congrats dude. I think this is quite the achievement. I’ve engaged into app/game creation myself just for the fun of it and making something and getting it out there. And I do think I speak for most when I say your evolution is inspiring
Feel free to check my first endeavor (a 2D “Rubick Cube”-ish like game) and let me know what you think: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.game.numbermix
Thank you!
Thanks!
I’ll check out your game. Good luck with your game development endeavors.
I know it still needs work, but then again I first want to get it out there and then keep working on it.
What would you recommend in terms of marketing the game? It’s only been a few days and just a couple of installs and I’d like to spread the word and get some addoption.
Heh, you’re asking the wrong person. Marketing is one area where I have put in virtually no effort. I sent out emails to lots of blogs, and pretty much all of them ignored me. I put out a press release using a free press release site. Other than that, I haven’t tried anything. I know it’s important, but I don’t really have much of an idea of what to do about marketing. Also, I don’t really enjoy nagging people to write about my games
What free press release site are you using?
What was the download count of your game in the first month since launch?
I think I’ve used WidePR, PRWeb, and GamesPress.
Neil Rajah had around 8000 new users in the first month. That’s not exactly the download count, but it’s close. Bus Jumper had around 15,000 new users in its first month.
Hi Ziggy,
I’m having problems with Amazon AppStore.
I know you publish your game on Amazon AppStore and it’s Kindle compatible.
I want to ask you if you did anything special.
I actually published my game to Amazon AppStore here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008JDAQQI
but it doesn’t seems to be Kindle compatible.
Could you help me?
Cheers,
Gabriele Ferreri
Did they tell you why they rejected it for the Kindle? In my experience, they first approve the app for general devices, and then do some extra testing for the Kindle. It usually takes about a week or more before they approve it for the Kindle. Also, the Kindle has some quirks in terms of how the volume buttons work, not having a dedicated back button, etc. I’ve had them reject some of my games multiple times because they found specific issues where it didn’t work correctly on the Kindle. I then had to fix those bugs and re-submit the game.
Hi Ziggy,
thank you for reply.
They haven’t reject yet. They just approve my game. I publish on July 10th then probably I need to wait more. Anyway from the first release I did 2 other new versions and they approved the first one but not the second one.
Thank you again.
Cheers,
Gabriele Ferreri.
Ah. Yeah, sometimes they ‘forget’, and you have to file a support ticket and ask them, hey, what happened to this game and why hasn’t it been approved for the Fire yet?
Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll wait they approve latest version and I’ll ask them.
Looks like you have some pretty good stats here, are you making any more games? Oh I also wanted to let you know about my Android Income Reports
Hi Steve,
Thanks for stopping by. I’m not working on anything right now, I have a 2 month old baby at home
I looked through your blog, congratulations, you’re making some good income from your apps 