How to earn your first $ 100 in the Google Play Market - my experience
In this article I will tell you how I managed to earn the first $ 100 on my applications in the Google Play Market. Which strategies are more successful and what should a newbie pay attention to?
Summary of the article for the lazy:
I earned US $ 1,126.75 and spent US $ 1,051.73.
The money was spent on AdWords advertising.
Applications about 2 years. She did everything herself.
Hard and thorny path beginner in the Google Play Market. Large players in this business produce applications of excellent quality and sell it cheaply; competing with them is still a challenge.
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I have 3 applications that I am trying to earn.
1st application - E Numbers. The application scans the product packaging and finds a list of E supplements. For lovers of healthy food.
The project was absolutely a failure. The subject is not interesting to anyone, there are very few installations and attempts at promotion in AdWords did not give anything - people simply do not use the search queries of “Food database,” “Scan food for E numbers” and the like.
This is the first app I released. I tried to unwind unknowingly with the help of motivated installations. This is a failing way. I do not recommend this type of promotion, that is why:
Another bad luck. I myself accidentally clicked about 10 times on my ad during testing. For this, I got a ban. Account has been frozen for 2 weeks. Please do not click on your ads, do not ask mom / friend to do it. This may also be the cause of the ban. It is very difficult to get rid of bans, Google corporation doesn’t care about individual problems and you can hardly count on a quick, understanding reaction from those who support them.
Seeing that the narrowly themed application is difficult to promote, I released the following - lullabies for babies. This application was much more successful, it brought 98% of total profits. Time spent on development was 4 times less than the previous one. But the market doesn’t care how much time you spend. This application is much easier to monetize. Here are a few reasons why:
It is important to attract users from solvent countries - the USA, South Africa. Their actions in the application (clicks on advertising, purchases) bring the greatest profit.
For a click on a banner from an American user, on average I get 0.15 USD, for a click on the same banner from a Russian user - 0.02 USD.
I tried to transfer the entire budget to the United States, but it did not succeed. I started to get fewer users, because such users are more expensive. The number of installs per day has fallen by 3 times and my place in the list of Google Play applications has decreased.
Thus, I made a conclusion for myself - users from the USA are needed for income, users from poor countries - to ensure a high number of installations. Both types of users are important.
And what about Europe? For European countries you need to translate the application into European languages, and most importantly the translation of AdWords advertising. After all, by creating an advertisement you inevitably indicate the language of this advertisement - the user from Germany will not be shown an advertisement in English. My AdWords contains only English and Russian ads. 70% of cheap installs I get from the Philippines.
Seeing that the market doesn’t care how much time and money you spent, the market wants a product, I created a new application on the basis of the existing code. Office application for text recognition (uses Google Vision API). The first time I tried to attract other people to the development. I did it for the sake of gaining experience in the customer’s face on fl.ru and upwork.com. I ordered the design of the application on the first site. And I hired Junior Android Developer to pull the design on the second site. It took almost as much time to prepare the TK and work with the shortcomings if I did everything myself. But the experience was still received and quite positive.
Chart of application revenue for all time. You see a sharp jump up after connecting AdWords ads.
Schedule of advertising costs for all time. Prices in UAH. It can be seen that Cost / conv. In the beginning was the highest. I could not even assume that the installation can cost less than 1 hryvnia, therefore the first 2 days I paid 5-10 UAH for the installation.
General recommendations:
Summary of the article for the lazy:
I earned US $ 1,126.75 and spent US $ 1,051.73.
The money was spent on AdWords advertising.
Applications about 2 years. She did everything herself.
Hard and thorny path beginner in the Google Play Market. Large players in this business produce applications of excellent quality and sell it cheaply; competing with them is still a challenge.
')
I have 3 applications that I am trying to earn.
1st application - E Numbers. The application scans the product packaging and finds a list of E supplements. For lovers of healthy food.
The project was absolutely a failure. The subject is not interesting to anyone, there are very few installations and attempts at promotion in AdWords did not give anything - people simply do not use the search queries of “Food database,” “Scan food for E numbers” and the like.
This is the first app I released. I tried to unwind unknowingly with the help of motivated installations. This is a failing way. I do not recommend this type of promotion, that is why:
- Motivated installations are very expensive - about 0.1 USD, while AdWords installations cost half the price.
- People after receiving money delete the application, it is not interesting to them. If you paid for the install with a positive review - 80%, that review will be deleted. Google Play Market perfectly detects bots.
- If the application is paid, you will have to pay the cost of the application + fee to the bot 0.1 USD. Thus, promotion for paid applications becomes very expensive. Even if we consider that 70% of the value of the application will be returned to you as a profit.
- Users on sites where you can buy motivated installations, in 95% of cases from Russia and Ukraine, but this is not the market you should focus on. This market has very low rates of return. Need to focus on the United States.
- Google Play Market uses a secret algorithm to determine the position in the list of applications and to form the TOPs. It is highly likely that the formula takes into account how much time passes before the user demolishes the application. The average time can be viewed in the Google Play Console, so there is no doubt that Google is paying attention to it. In our case, the data will be bad.
Another bad luck. I myself accidentally clicked about 10 times on my ad during testing. For this, I got a ban. Account has been frozen for 2 weeks. Please do not click on your ads, do not ask mom / friend to do it. This may also be the cause of the ban. It is very difficult to get rid of bans, Google corporation doesn’t care about individual problems and you can hardly count on a quick, understanding reaction from those who support them.
Seeing that the narrowly themed application is difficult to promote, I released the following - lullabies for babies. This application was much more successful, it brought 98% of total profits. Time spent on development was 4 times less than the previous one. But the market doesn’t care how much time you spend. This application is much easier to monetize. Here are a few reasons why:
- A large number of search queries like “Free lullabies”, “Baby relax music” - people are interested in this topic. Easier to get installs in AdWords.
- AdWords installs are pretty cheap. For a user from the USA, South Africa I pay 0.05 USD, for a user from other countries it is much less - 0.012 USD. For this price, I get 70-150 installs per day.
- People often click on advertisements, because advertisements are slyly placed on important buttons.
It is important to attract users from solvent countries - the USA, South Africa. Their actions in the application (clicks on advertising, purchases) bring the greatest profit.
For a click on a banner from an American user, on average I get 0.15 USD, for a click on the same banner from a Russian user - 0.02 USD.
I tried to transfer the entire budget to the United States, but it did not succeed. I started to get fewer users, because such users are more expensive. The number of installs per day has fallen by 3 times and my place in the list of Google Play applications has decreased.
Thus, I made a conclusion for myself - users from the USA are needed for income, users from poor countries - to ensure a high number of installations. Both types of users are important.
And what about Europe? For European countries you need to translate the application into European languages, and most importantly the translation of AdWords advertising. After all, by creating an advertisement you inevitably indicate the language of this advertisement - the user from Germany will not be shown an advertisement in English. My AdWords contains only English and Russian ads. 70% of cheap installs I get from the Philippines.
Seeing that the market doesn’t care how much time and money you spent, the market wants a product, I created a new application on the basis of the existing code. Office application for text recognition (uses Google Vision API). The first time I tried to attract other people to the development. I did it for the sake of gaining experience in the customer’s face on fl.ru and upwork.com. I ordered the design of the application on the first site. And I hired Junior Android Developer to pull the design on the second site. It took almost as much time to prepare the TK and work with the shortcomings if I did everything myself. But the experience was still received and quite positive.
Chart of application revenue for all time. You see a sharp jump up after connecting AdWords ads.
Schedule of advertising costs for all time. Prices in UAH. It can be seen that Cost / conv. In the beginning was the highest. I could not even assume that the installation can cost less than 1 hryvnia, therefore the first 2 days I paid 5-10 UAH for the installation.
General recommendations:
- Beautiful icon - very important.
- The application should work without critical bugs.
- It is necessary to encourage the user to leave a review in the Play Market - give him playing coins, etc.
- Advertising should not be intrusive. "No" - noisy video advertising in applications for relaxation.
- Look for the team.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/354260/
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