How I make Money On Android Application

How I make Money On Android Application

I wrote my very first app for an open source home/commercial security software called. I open sourced my software so people could improve it. I also made the desktop versions free.

I launched it in the app/play store in Jan 2017. The Android app has so far made around $15,000 in sales (actual income would be 60% of that, less returns). Compare that to sales in iOS app store, which is around $10,000

This is obviously not a runaway success, but it far exceeds my expectations. Plus the app are some things only alittle you look after users (who are DIY home security folks, and who use that specific software) would use.

I am not a coder, this was my first app - I learned Javascript/Angular in 2015 after waking up one morning and deciding I needed to create something. I missed it dearly. So this was a labor of love and learning. A few things I learned (that go beyond your question)

Chances of success are good if you don’t create the app thinking of money. You should feel for it and be passionate.

Customer support is vital - if people engage with you, engage back. I make sure I always respond to folksContinuous improvement is important.

If you don’t care about money, you also have the right to thwack customers who complain for the heck of complaining and who think spending a couple of bucks gives them the right to be rude (I’ve done that several times in response to play store reviews that I’ve found unjust, because I give a damn about what I wrote)

The Android play store is so much more engaging than Apple. Its critical to let the developer respond to reviews - even if its a thanks, but especially if its a complaint.

I’ve done absolutely no promotion of it as far as ads or cross app promotions. People discover it via the open source server and by googling. I also write a medium publication about it that keeps my users informed of what's arising

Personally our super-simple developed in a week collection of arcade (non-gambling) Bingo games has probably earned $60k since we released them 4 years ago. Over the past two years we have probably only done 1 or 2 updates but they still receive downloads and earn around $1k per month in Ad revenue (double around Christmas). We used Revmob and Vungle for our ads and whilst we could probably earn more looking at increase eCPM's etc.., we have found that a lot of the of marketing spiel provided by the Ad Providers is nonsense.

At first we also had non-intrusive IAP (including a pay-what-you-want IAP which interestingly had 75% of purchasers paying the minimum, 20% paying the maximum and 5% in between) but we removed this last year because it is was pretty pointless.

The 'long tail' for apps is still valid especially for an 'evergreen' type product, however we have stopped worked on apps now and even four years after first releasing the products, the continued revenue will probably mean we can sell it on to someone else to develop further.