Ok to sum it up right at the beginning, revenue fell hard this month. It’s not all bad news though. I changed a few things around which seemed to make things worse, but the knowledge I gained from this is very valuable.
At the end of the last income report I had 36 584 downloads. 1 month later I am sitting on 41 889 so I am still getting roughly 5 000 downloads a month, which isn’t going to make me rich, but is better than a lot of people achieve. So I am expecting to crack the 50 000 download mark at the end of this month, or come very close to it.
Before we look at the other figures, let me explain what changes I made in an update at the beginning of the month
- Improved the graphics slightly again
- Banner ad back to the bottom of the screen
- In the “Select a Rule” drop box, I changed the default value to not be a link to my paid version
- Moved the Leadbolt offerwall to a bonus set of rules
- Had Admob ads running on one set of rules in the game, and Leadbolt banner ads in the 2nd and 3rd sets of rules.
Google Market Sales
Moving the link to the pro version from the default selection to just an option in the drop down box had an immediate effect on sales. I was selling between 25 and 30 a month and all of a sudden it dropped to 9, with almost no sales in the last 2 weeks. And sure it could just be luck or a bad month but the timing seems too good to ignore. I am going to move the link back to the default location and also put a dialogue in at the end of each game asking the user if they would like to check out the pro version.
Total Sales $13.08 – $3.93 (Google’s Cut)
Sales Revenue = $9.15
Advertising Revenue
Admob
Once again this is way down. This time its not due to fill rate, more to do with the fact it is only being displayed on a third of the game as opposed to other months.
This was the interesting one. Now I haven’t had the internet at home for about 4 months now so any update/changes I do are usually late at night and then I upload them to google via my mobile. In a rush to implement Leadbolt I didn’t even consider refresh rate. Unlike Admob and most others, you cannot control the refresh rate of banner ads from your account. You have to load a fresh ad in the application code itself. So for the whole of this month, only one banner ad would display during a round of the game. This lead to some low numbers for impressionsLeadbolt
Impressions: 5146
Clicks: 270
Revenue: $12.39
I am in the process of changing my code so I can call new banners during the game. I have found that the banner changing from one ad to another actually catches the corner of the eye. The click through rate most days is 6 – 8% which is awesome, however because they show both cost per click and cost per action ads, most days I earn zero dollars. But by beefing up the impressions and letting it run for another month I will see what this does to my figures.
Summary
Overall a fairly bad month from a pure dollar perspective but what will be interesting is if I reverse some of these changes, will I see revenue go back up.
2 comments
1 ping
FacingObstacles says:
November 10, 2011 at 6:39 am (UTC 0)
I see the eCPM for leadbolt has also dropped since you started it. Probably due to it being cost per action instead of it being cost per click.
Not being able to change the refresh rate for it remotely though seems to be a big negative for it though.
arpreb says:
November 13, 2011 at 7:14 am (UTC 0)
Correct with both statements. I am adding some code at the moment to re-fresh the ad banner at set intervals. I think overall I may run it for another month before deciding if I want to continue with them or try something else.
Android Income Report #7 » Android Hobby Development says:
December 20, 2011 at 6:24 am (UTC 0)
[...] arpreb Ok lets see how November stacked up. You will remember from my last income report that I had mad a few changes to try and increase revenue, and actually caused a large downturn. I [...]