How to make money on mobile applications
Under the cut, we want to share our experience in selling mobile applications from 2007 to the present day. iTunes, Win mobile and Android market. It is based on a funny story, as a coursework from 2000 brought us $ 3000 and a contract with Smeshariki.
It all started in the fall of 2007. Our company was a Microsoft Certified Partner and wanted to develop in this direction. It was decided to get an MGCP (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner) certificate, as it gave us a number of advantages, starting with saving on software and ending with raising the status of the company.
After analyzing our capabilities, it was decided that the easiest way to obtain a certificate would be to write a certified application for Windows Mobile. One of the employees from school time left a cool algorithm for the well-known board game Scrabble, written in Delphi. We ported it to C ++ and got the coveted Gold the first time. And then we thought, why not try to sell the resulting product.
Screwing the minimum protection, we sold "Erudite" from our site using one of the most popular payment aggregators "Plimus". Spreading the application to different software providers, we sold 80 copies, but did not earn anything, because we did not collect the required amount of payments on each of the providers.
')
After analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that in both markets (Russian and foreign) we faced serious problems:
And then two years later, in November of 2009, we decided to develop the mobile direction in the company and ported Erudite to Objective C. Very quickly, we hit the top word games. There are a few games there and it's quite simple to become popular from the trial version. But we decided to use this fact as a pretext for PR. we
sent out a press release with the wording "Russian developer hit the top apple store!".
We spent several hours on everything about everything for a PR manager who wrote a short press release, phoned several portals and threw information there. On the next day, we really became the first in the Appstore in the Games category. This did not last long, but as a result, we were able to sell in the first week somewhere in the amount of $ 1,500. Then sales fell sharply, but we still have several sales a day.
On rutracker.org (then torrents.ru), the cracked version appeared only 1.5 months after the release, and we were able to achieve in the shortest possible time that the distribution was closed, and, most interestingly, it did not affect the sales, as they were provided users who did not jailbreak.
Not deprived of attention and application logo. We were called from Canada and asked if they could use it to publish in a blog, which, of course, received a positive response. And in the magazine F5 (f5.ru) it was used as part of the word LOVE in its application, however, unlike Canadians, we were not asked about it.
As a result, we earned about $ 3000 on our application, and the Free-version of the application downloaded ~ 20,000 times. What is interesting, compared to the WM version of Erudite, where almost all purchases were made by foreigners, 90% of sales in the AppStore were made by users from Russia.
If we talk about applications on Android, we do not have Scrabble for it, but there is a Guitar tuner with 50,000 active users. The application is very interesting - the best minds of the legion fought two weeks with the Fourier series and the platform's noise suppressor, if interested, we will write a separate post about it :)
It is free, because at that time the Russian company could not sell applications in the market. Interestingly, the promotion we did not do at all. This suggests that the volume is much higher than in the Apple Store. At the same time, once a month different stores write to us (third-party market implementations) and offer to stay there on a paid basis.
To summarize, for which, after all, mobile devices, in our opinion, it is worth writing applications so that you can make good money.
In conclusion, I want to boast of our joint project with Smeshariki - itunes.apple.com/ru/app/id400898674?mt=8
We hope for fruitful cooperation with them.
It all started in the fall of 2007. Our company was a Microsoft Certified Partner and wanted to develop in this direction. It was decided to get an MGCP (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner) certificate, as it gave us a number of advantages, starting with saving on software and ending with raising the status of the company.
After analyzing our capabilities, it was decided that the easiest way to obtain a certificate would be to write a certified application for Windows Mobile. One of the employees from school time left a cool algorithm for the well-known board game Scrabble, written in Delphi. We ported it to C ++ and got the coveted Gold the first time. And then we thought, why not try to sell the resulting product.
Screwing the minimum protection, we sold "Erudite" from our site using one of the most popular payment aggregators "Plimus". Spreading the application to different software providers, we sold 80 copies, but did not earn anything, because we did not collect the required amount of payments on each of the providers.
')
After analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that in both markets (Russian and foreign) we faced serious problems:
- Foreigners simply did not know the word Erudit, and we could not use the name Scrabble, since it is a trademark of Hasbro in the United States and Canada and Mattel in other countries.
- The Russian users were deprived of the motivation to buy our product, because 2 days after the release, they posted a cracked version on w3bsit3-dns.com .
And then two years later, in November of 2009, we decided to develop the mobile direction in the company and ported Erudite to Objective C. Very quickly, we hit the top word games. There are a few games there and it's quite simple to become popular from the trial version. But we decided to use this fact as a pretext for PR. we
sent out a press release with the wording "Russian developer hit the top apple store!".
We spent several hours on everything about everything for a PR manager who wrote a short press release, phoned several portals and threw information there. On the next day, we really became the first in the Appstore in the Games category. This did not last long, but as a result, we were able to sell in the first week somewhere in the amount of $ 1,500. Then sales fell sharply, but we still have several sales a day.
On rutracker.org (then torrents.ru), the cracked version appeared only 1.5 months after the release, and we were able to achieve in the shortest possible time that the distribution was closed, and, most interestingly, it did not affect the sales, as they were provided users who did not jailbreak.
Not deprived of attention and application logo. We were called from Canada and asked if they could use it to publish in a blog, which, of course, received a positive response. And in the magazine F5 (f5.ru) it was used as part of the word LOVE in its application, however, unlike Canadians, we were not asked about it.
As a result, we earned about $ 3000 on our application, and the Free-version of the application downloaded ~ 20,000 times. What is interesting, compared to the WM version of Erudite, where almost all purchases were made by foreigners, 90% of sales in the AppStore were made by users from Russia.
If we talk about applications on Android, we do not have Scrabble for it, but there is a Guitar tuner with 50,000 active users. The application is very interesting - the best minds of the legion fought two weeks with the Fourier series and the platform's noise suppressor, if interested, we will write a separate post about it :)
It is free, because at that time the Russian company could not sell applications in the market. Interestingly, the promotion we did not do at all. This suggests that the volume is much higher than in the Apple Store. At the same time, once a month different stores write to us (third-party market implementations) and offer to stay there on a paid basis.
To summarize, for which, after all, mobile devices, in our opinion, it is worth writing applications so that you can make good money.
- Apple The success of Apple with its i-devices is largely associated with a huge number of applications, and the reason for their appearance is that they enable software developers to earn money without spending time creating some kind of protection that is usually not effective at all. Thus, we have the largest, most popular and successful AppStore application store, which, in our opinion, should be given the most attention.
- Android In addition to the well-known advantages of openness and gratuity, there are significant drawbacks that can serve as a serious problem if you decide to develop for the purpose of earning. One of the main drawbacks is that users are extremely accustomed to free software for Android and this can be a serious deterrent to the growth in the number of applications. A really working business model is likely to be associated with the display of advertising in applications.
- Windows 7 Phone . It too early to be discounted. Everything Microsoft takes on should be taken seriously. In our opinion, a serious advantage will be the fact that for developing for w7p you need to use Silver Light and Visual Studio. Microsoft, whoever says, is able to work with developers, and, in fact, the army is already ready to fight .Net developers are waiting for the appearance of real phones, not to start writing, but to test what is already written.
In conclusion, I want to boast of our joint project with Smeshariki - itunes.apple.com/ru/app/id400898674?mt=8
We hope for fruitful cooperation with them.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/109091/
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