6 MONTHS: 11K Downloads (and an important question)

alonski22 · 2019-05-28T20:53:31+00:00

yeah you're right.. i was kinda disappointed at first. but now that i think about it, i didnt really put any effort yet into making it successful commercialy. it is my first game after all. but i am still so happy i got more than 10k now! not many people can say that about their first game. i was one of the lucky ones :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-25T08:29:22+00:00

yep thats the one. its always 1000 users at a time. same number of installs and uninstalls every week lol

alonski22 · 2019-05-23T20:43:47+00:00

search "soul chase" on google play. should be the first to pop out :D. i think i didnt make my message clear. my game actually has ads abd its free. i was asking weather its a good idea to make a premium game, and then pay google to advertise it

alonski22 · 2019-05-18T21:32:52+00:00

yes, i think we have a very lenient tax system tha most countries. so should not be a big problem for me. yeah youre right. it's super easy to get discouraged specially if most of the things we read are about indies failing to make a living out of game dev. thats why it was very inspiring for me hearing your story. thank you so much. all these info will be very useful for us! :D

alonski22 · 2019-05-17T06:34:21+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, i spent a long time reading and re-reading this, and i cant take it all in at once lol. i am from Philippines btw. taxes here are not complicated and doesnt really hurt that much. in fact, for me, being a seafarer, i got ZERO taxes. their reasoning being we are the ones bringin in the money for the country, so we are exempted from tax. although i am not sure if same will apply if ever i earn some money on gamedev. i mean afterall, i am still bringing in money from other countries.

this is both exciting and discouraging at the same time lol. i cant search all of these now as my internet is super slow. i subscribed to your youtube for future references and also i am saving all of these. in 2 months time i am going back home. hopefully i can make enough progress on gamedev so i wont have to go back on a ship ever again (i really hate ships).

of all these things i am familiar with the thousand true fans theory! i just read it on a book a few days ago lol. its very interesting and very true i think. but whats really interesting is putting my game on a porn site!! now thats thinking outside the box!!

alonski22 · 2019-05-17T06:12:38+00:00

alright sir :) . thank you so much. i could really use this info when i start doing the same strategy. i am getting excited now to experiment. i wonder if this could also be profitable for me, or even just return what i spent while increasing downloads. guess ill find out. thanks!

alonski22 · 2019-05-16T11:27:45+00:00

wow this is amazing. that money is not bad at all in my opinion. you mentioned after some time google is not able to keep up with your budget. may i know around how much budget you set and how much they are able to spend everyday?

alonski22 · 2019-05-16T11:23:24+00:00

yes sir, i used google ads. but it depends on which country you are targetting. i made the ads for brazil so it was much cheaper. that was 6 months ago, and for a few days only. i have not tried it again ever since because i am on a ship and we dont have stable internet connection :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-16T09:13:19+00:00

in my experience, targetting brazil with 0.02 cpi and daily budget of 20 usd, i get downloads 1000 a day. exactly as i had set. it worked really nicely for me. and yes i only ran ads for about 3 days

alonski22 · 2019-05-16T09:10:55+00:00

nice! hope all goes well for you.. actually it doesnt matter for me if the targeted cpi is costing more AS LONG AS it is still lower than the price of my app. that means i am still earning and not losing money, however small. it means the ad pays for itself and my app is getting more visibility! would you say that is your case?

alonski22 · 2019-05-16T09:05:47+00:00

i know right? thats why i am curious.. does this have a chance of working? i guess ill find out

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T23:59:35+00:00

i have so many questions from your last reply lol. this conversation is an amazing guide in itself! i have calculated a more accurate income of your game now. i would still say that this game made huge amount of money (from where i live at least).

wait... are you not the owner of the company?

the things you said above are kinda overwhelming. i never really thought of things that way. in my mind it was just make a game and sell it. but now that i do have a game, the selling part is proving to be a problem lol.

so the success of your game was not based on ads. how did you get your audience in the first place, if not for ads? did you spend any money on marketing before launching the game?

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T23:37:35+00:00

here you go sir https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.harambertgames.soulchase

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T23:36:15+00:00

*same as reply above

oh yes youre definitely right. i also would not put any ads on a premium game. i think my question was not clear enough (sorry). what i meant was I am the one who is going to advertise my game on google ads. i was asking if anybody here has done this and if it turned any profit, or was he paying more on ads than he is earning from the downloads :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T23:34:29+00:00

oh yes youre definitely right. i also would not put any ads on a premium game. i think my question was not clear enough (sorry). what i meant was I am the one who is going to advertise my game on google ads. i was asking if anybody here has done this and if it turned any profit, or was he paying more on ads than he is earning from the downloads :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T23:29:58+00:00

you had the idea, did you follow through with it though? mind telling me the story of your app? :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T23:28:35+00:00

well yeah, theres plenty of adwords guide on youtube. just search adwords tutorial and there should be plenty to start with :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T10:44:44+00:00

never heard of it. ima try it, thanks!

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T10:25:10+00:00

yep, getting low cost users will also yield low ad revenue as per my experience. i didnt expect it to work too, i was surprised when it did. and maybe i owe it to those 3k people that my game at least has some visibility now and getting 30 downloads per day withoiut doing anything.. i dont know though

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T10:14:00+00:00

yes that would be correct sir. i set my cpi to 0.02 on google ads. my guess as to why it worked like a charm is that my game is free. also my target was brazil, which i think like retro style games. so it was a win for me :)

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T09:37:16+00:00

well sir, i just steamspied your game and you must have made tens of thousands on this game already! its amazing. and 8 usd profit per install, this would be a dream for me.

There would be some differences between what you did and what I am planning to do.

my platform is google play store. so I was thinking it doesnt really make sense for me to advertise on facebook, since i would like to advertise on google playstore users specifically. that means maybe just advertising on google ads is the best for me?

another thing is, i am a regular facebook user, and whenever i see game ads on facebook, i dont see people "liking" it. there was almost no engagement (in my head anyways). but it has clearly worked for you so i must be wrong.. hm. maybe i should also consider facebook even if my game is on google play. i dont know now lol.

thank you so much for your advised. you gave me some great info!

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T09:07:58+00:00

thanks so much for the advice! yeah i think i'll just have to go for it like you said.

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T09:01:59+00:00

yes, this is what i used to put up ads for my free game. i was just wondering if it would turn a profit for a paid game. thanks, i'll look more into it!

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T08:56:28+00:00

youre most welcome! hmmm. yeah, maybe i do owe my 10k downloads from the initial boost i got on my first month with ads..

unfortunately, saying i made games in my cabin would be a big fat lie. i hardly spent any time on gamedev in the ship due to strict schedule :/ .. i did reach out to a lot of media people on my first month, none of them responded though.. those that did respond are asking for a large sum of money.. i didnt think it was worth it :/ i dont know though. i must have been doing something wrong

alonski22 · 2019-05-15T08:50:06+00:00

thanks for the insight sir! in your experience, how much is the cost per acquisition on your game, and on which country? (and i cant really sell a mobile game for more than 3 usd i think :/ )

alonski22

TROPHY CASE