In business-incubator “Ingria”, 9th Apple Developers Community meeting was opened by Vadim Bashurov on October 18.
In his speech he told how to earn millions of rubles by selling iOS applications in cooperation with publishers.
Introduction
This report will be interesting for people who write programs for iPhone and want to make money doing this. I want to share my experience on developing and promoting programs, pitfalls I’ve encountered and familiarization with publisher who helped to increase income.
I started developing apps in 2009, with programming knowledge below average and without any art or music education. Nowadays I’ve extended developers certificate for 3rd time.
Application development
Initially I developed games for myself, since iPhone implies that person who has mathematic and physical knowledge - must implement them in this wonderful device using accelerometer, graphics, microphone, etc. During the first year I wrote a game that was implemented in web interface, as well as for Nokia phones in Java 2ME. Reading the wonderful stories how everyone become millionaires I also thought that I would become a millionaire, because 70 million iPhones was already sold. Till the end of the year I earned $200, which means that my game has been downloaded approximately 300 times. Later I was shown appani.com site, where you can check how many applications there are in Apple store. For now, there are about 500 thousand applications. For example, you come to buy cheese and there will be 500 thousand different varieties, how do you find your favorite kind of cheese or cheese which your friend recommended you? I find it difficult to answer. 500 thousand varieties of cheese and 100 thousand developers from 100 countries. No matter how brilliant your program will be, even if you’re brilliant musician, designer or artist, if you would not do anything - your program will be accidentally download by 1-2 persons per day. I decided to write 100 programs and accidental download would be raised to 100-200 people per day, multiply it by 30 and I could get 3-4 thousand dollars a month. On 26th application I was so exhausted that I quit writing them, by that time I was earning $150 a month. Some of them became hits and were downloaded 5-6 times per day, some of them were not downloaded and they died. As a result I now reached a level of $300 per month, with applications that I didn’t advertise or promote. Once I understood the concept of current state of business within Apple Company for iPhone and iPad programs, publisher came to me and said that he will help me making money.
Program promotion with publisher
Publisher found me after I wrote an article on habrahabr about my game for iPhone, where developing experiments and different useful things were listed. First question publisher asked me – which game we are going to sell? Then I realized that none of my 26 games was ready for sale, each of them had defects which I know about, but I was too lazy to fix them. Next I had to choose one of the games and show it to publisher. He told me that it's impossible to earn money with this game, so 100% profit will be mine, but in exchange I should write a good article on habrahabr about us and should advertise this publisher on conferences.
The Game
The game is called “Towers of Sarov”. I’m from Arzamas-16 and recently historical name Sarov got back to Arzamas-16, since latter historically canonized saint in Russia - Sirofim Sarovsky lived there. There is a tower of Sarov, Serofim fell twice from it. For the first time he fell by accident and it became known that he was a saint. Second time he did it on purpose, to check whether he went the right way. Once publisher checked this game, he said that he would not give me 100% profit; we’ll share it 50%/50%. I agreed. Later publisher formulated concept of current state of AppStore.
Working within AppStore
Main idea of this concept – money are earned only by people whose programs are in top-25 USA. This idea entirely matched my seeing of this problem. Then publisher said that application should be free and I need 3 developer's things: add advertising on all pages and add button that allows you to remove it or buy additional features for additional dollar. Anyone who want to develop software for iPhone – need to make these two essential steps. Finally, third step which I had done – I started doing all of applications in 320x480 resolution, because I had an old iPhone. It turned out that it was incorrect and applications need to be done in 640x960 resolution, in this case graphics on iPhone 4/4S will look better. Thus, I spent 3-4 days on these actions and they were executed. I inserted ads, improved graphics and put two buttons: buy additional content and remove ads.
Income
All this happened in August and publisher began promoting game in UK store. Suddenly, during one day, game took first place and then he promoted it to top-25 USA. Here's a chart on this game for iPad in the USA, from September 11 to October 16 it was in top-3 almost all the time. Let’s take a look at download statistics for this program. During one month it was downloaded 1.87 million times: 873 thousand iPad downloads and 1 million iPhone downloads.
iPad version income - 15 000 purchases, we received 70% of income, while 30% Apple leaves itself.
Before we began promoting the game, publisher said: only 3% out of all who will download our game – will buy it. This means, if game is downloaded 1 million times, 30000 will buy it. 30000 multiplied by 0.7, so we get $21000. If you want to earn $40000 dollars, game must be downloaded 2 million times, etc. This is income from downloads, while advertising income was three times bigger, but advertising works only in the USA. I did not insert Google advertising, because I'm lazy programmer, so I limited myself with Apple ads. During this period we received 27 thousand dollars on advertising. 27+11=38, half of income goes to publisher, so I earned $19000 on iPad application. As for iPhone application – it was even better, each day I managed to earn up to $6000.
Concept of publishers work
These schedules reflect publishers work. I think he works in a following way. Since application is free, assume publisher has 100 thousand AppStore accounts. In order to create 100 thousand accounts – you need 100 thousand dollars, which wouldn’t be spent; you will need them to open virtual accounts. Then you start systematically download app in the right proportions (5000 per day, 10000 per day)with your free subscription and it begin to rise to the top. Once application is in the top, it’s being downloaded by other people and if application is successful, it will stay in top for 2-3 days. For each day in the top, application will generate minimum $3000. Here is a simple arithmetic, unfortunately or fortunately at the moment and within a year or two this method will work in AppStore, so it would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
Software
What useful programs for developers I used? First of all you need library for in-app purchase mechanism – so-called purchasing app. Search line MKStore Lib in Google, download and use it. I have not changed anything in that library, except links to bundles of my application. Each time I was confused in what order applications need to be registered for in-app purchases, so be careful. Twice I missed the boat uploading application with non-working shop and lost some money. Second thing you need from developer is advertising. Example which can be found at developer.apple.com is excellent, but it has one drawback, when you press "cancel advertising sales" while in test mode – your application will show black screen. It takes entire game screen by 500 pixels down, no one writes about it and then have to return this screen back. So, carefully test your application while placing advertisement.
Publishers contact
As promised, I posted my publishers’ contact info: pavel.golubev (skype)
Add comment