I mean application made by individuals or groups or friends, not companies.
Is the money good ? is it worth it ?
I am asking this because I only see graphs in Google play with huge ranges like 10k to 50k... And that would be a lot of money to earn from a homemade app.
Paste.is
The first one was a test to see how viable the service was and if it was usable. I setup a quick site (half finished) at https://paste.is and built an Android app at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.uroborus.p...
The idea itself was supposed to be a "real-time syncing paste board" across all of you devices. Pretty much pastebin but in real-time, with more personal saving features. So on an os, level, a copy from my desktop would be pasted to the paste board of all of my devices. So far, I only implemented a web interface and an Android app. I also wrote a quick command line script (that I use when I am ssh'ed into a machine and would love an easy way to retrieve output). If anyone wanted to join up and work on this project, email me. I would consider starting working on it again (I think it is still a viable idea). I have not marketed this product at all (mostly due to moving on to game development) and here are the rough stats:
- 14 Total Devices Installs
- 3 Active Installs (probably my devices)
- Total Income: $0 (released it for free)
My First Game Release
So, I have been working on game dev lately and released my first game titled "The Rum Runner". Basically, you pirate a ship through the bermuda triangle and transport rum while defending your ship from sea monsters. About halfway through I realized the gameplay was just mediocre, but pushed through just so it wasn't all a waste. First I released a paid version:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.uroborus.r...
- 4 Total Devices Installs
- 2 Active Installs (probably my devices)
- Total Income: $4 (minus google's cut)
After realizing the game wasn't going so well, I went to free with ads:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.uroborus.r...
- 36 Total Devices Installs
- 14 Active Installs (probably my devices)
- Total Income: $0.15 from ad's
I quickly blogged before what I learned from the experience, but when it comes down to it, you need to promote the hell out of your apps, no matter what genre. You need to give people a reason to want to use your app.
http://blog.uroboruslabs.com/post/19365449240/lessons-learne...
So I have yet to even make money back from the original developer fee, but I have learned a lot from the experience. I plan to keep pushing forward with it all.
However, the norm for me, for personal side-project apps is between 5k and 100k downloads per month. Income is also decent. A few things I keep in mind whenever I start working on a new app:
- am I sure the target is big enough for that app ? If not, do I really love the idea enough so that I would develop it just for my personal pleasure?
- what are the other apps in that area ? What are they missing ? If all of them are super-complex, can i make a simple one? Or the other way around ? Can I make it better than everything else ?
- Are there other ways of marketing my apps than just by counting on the Google Play search results ? If yes, how hard would it be to pursue them? Is it worth my time?
- If I want to build a game of a genre that doesn't exist yet, how are those type of games doing on the PC ? Would the game be appropriate for a touch-style input ?
Basically, all of the projects I've built eventually generated enough income to cover my development time (even if it took over a year). But there were plenty of them that I just didn't start developing because the answer to one of those question was just.. "NO".
Agreed with previous sentiments. Are these overall or monthly figures you are wanting?
My personal experience:
Uploaded my first homebrew app in October 2009. Released a few others between then and now. The original app on the Google Play (Android Market) was released as a pay version as well as a free (ads) version. The free version is almost past 700K downloads while the pay version has done a small fraction of that (respectable, but not life changing).
Overall counts across all my apps and all markets (Amazon, Gooogle, Nook), total app downloads (free and pay combined) is over 1 million.
These apps are made by one person (me). For my next app, I'm contracting out the graphics in order to try to step things up a notch as I branch out into the iOS world.
Here are some links to the apps: Google Play: http://goo.gl/7iXKB Amazon: http://goo.gl/kyyGs Nook (B&N): http://goo.gl/gkQZk
Looks like I get around 10-30 installs a day http://socialblade.com/c/2012-04-02_1300.png
That being said since it is a widget and not an app itself most people don't understand how to use it so I also get about 10 uninstalls a day.
End result: Since Aug 14 2011 I've had 4572 installs and 845 "active device installs" exist today. So that's 19.7 installs a day and a growth of 3.6 actives a day or 591 installs a month and 108 active growth per month.
Oh yeah, and my app/widget is free. I do it to give users of my website an extra utility, not to make money from the app itself. Since the cost to get into android is basically 0 ($25 one time) as opposed to the huge cost to get into ios it is totally worth it.
http://appsforartists.com/get_app/cognicube/
It's currently being featured by Sony on their Tablet line:
http://app.sel.sony.com/sonytablet/us/s/en/#cat-games-2/item...
Think of it as an experiment. If you make money, cool. If not, you created something people hopefully enjoy and have real data to explore the economics of the app economy.