… and the Flurry dashboard stops updating. I saw the 666 number earlier today and thought, that’s funny, and it’ll be even funnier if something bad happens. Well, several hours later, it’s still at 666. Maybe it’s the end of the world, and no one is downloading games any more 
Are you satisfied with the income generated from the in-game coins I am aware that this is not a huge pile of money because a player base is at the moment quite small but I would like to know how this system works in practice and does it work at all?
Zero income from the Swarm coins so far
Of course, I’m only at around 700 users (yes, Flurry did finally update its dashboard 
), so it’s too soon to tell.
I’ve been debating adding more unlockable features that can only be purchased through Swarm coins, and see how that does. In theory, people are reluctant to pay up-front for a game, but if they like it, they will be more willing to spend money on IAP. At least, that’s what I hear from everyone who tries to promote their IAP capabilities
Regarding whether it works – I tested it by buying some coins and spending it in my game, so functionally, yes, it works. Also, in Neil Rajah, you can get the same upgrades by collecting diamonds, so the incentive to go to Swarm Coins is less. I put that in mostly for the more casual players who might not want to take the time required to collect enough diamonds. Maybe that won’t work because the game is too hard for casual players. Don’t know. The feedback I’ve received so far seems to indicate that people think it’s hard, but not unfair, so I guess that’s “so far so good”.
Yes, I actually feared that I would hear this, and Tapjoy how they perform? Have you thought about adding the app wall, App Brain offer SDK and they claim to have high eCPM.
Forgive me if I ask too much or if I’m boring but I am working on the game also and I am just a little scared when I see such disappointing results, and we are talking here about high quality game not some piece of junk.
By the way, congratulations on 27 x 5 star ratings.
Swarm includes a TapJoy ‘offer wall’ as one way of earning coins. I haven’t directly integrated anything besides Mobclix into my games, so I don’t have any experience with LeadBolt, TapJoy, AppBrain, etc. I follow some other developers who have tried some of these libraries, but off hand I can’t tell you what their impressions have been. I’ve been thinking about this recently, and I might investigate this, and add some kind of app wall to Neil Rajah. We’ll see.
Everyone claims high eCPM
A couple more comments:
* I reduced the prices of my Swarm store items today. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I had 2 of the upgrades priced at $1, and the 3rd upgrade cost $2. I think I used those values during testing, and never thought about it after that. Since no one has spent any money in that store, changing it won’t upset any customers. Anyway, the prices now map to about 20c and 40c respectively. I’ll see if that makes any difference.
* I signed up with LeadBolt today, figured I’d take a look at what they’ve got. The offer wall is super easy to set up if you go the HTML route, you can get by with as little as launching a URL intent, or kicking off a WebView. I’ll play with it and see if I want to try it out. I think the content unlocker will require using their SDK and registering callbacks, which makes sense, because then your application needs to know that the user accepted an offer.
* I also realized that I probably can’t use LeadBolt on the Amazon store. Their TOS forbids links to other app stores, and I’m pretty sure LeadBolt will link to the Google store. I might try it out on some of the 3rd party stores before deciding if I want to continue with it on Google.
Thanks, I will follow your reports but it looks like that there is a real jungle.
Yep. If you look, you’ll surely find someone who claims that TapJoy gave him better eCPM than LeadBolt, someone else who says the reverse, someone who says AppBrain is better than the other two… I’m sure you’ve read the same blog posts that I have.
Yes, I follow several blogs, but most of their apps are low quality products and that allowing them to use various spam services (push adds), some developers earn very serious revenues. But this is not the right way to go if you hold in hands a quality product, then you ask yourself which way to go? Personally, I laid a lot of hope in this system with coins and IAP but it seems not to work, or at least not on a small sample.
I agree, you have to balance revenue with growing your brand / products / customer base. It is a dilemma for sure.