Has anyone actually made a profit on their FIRST game???

Everything I'd read online said the only way to make money off games these days is with the Freemium model. The articles all said that I *must* have ads and sell In-App Purchases, and I believed it, despite the fact that I personally don't like Freemium games much myself. I hate the idea that I don't know how much this game is actually going to cost me in the future, and I hate ads interrupting gameplay.

I made $100 in the first 8 months after Puzzlewood Quests was released as a freemium game. Talk about a letdown... That doesn't even begin to cover the cost of the art. So the other day, I made it a Premium (Paid) app instead, retooled it a bit, removed ads and have no IAP, as discussed here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=279277

Now that I've made those changes, it's a much better game, it's become more popular, and I've been generating considerably more revenue, but it's too early to tell if it's going to continue at this rate.

My advice to all indie game developers: Be Realistic.

Be realistic with how many downloads you need in order to be successful. For a freemium app, be realistic about how many people who download the app will actually buy something. Don't underestimate the difficulty of marketing. Be realistic with your advertising. Don't spend $30 per day to make $5. Don't expect that one person who installs the app will tell 10 of his friends about it.

2% seems to be a magic number. You can *usually* expect 2% of the people who see your ad to click it. 2% of the people who see your app store page will install the app. 2% of the people who install your freemium app will actually buy something. These numbers come from my own experience and from ad statistics I've seen online and in The Four Hour Work Week book by Tim Ferriss.

That's not to say that others won't have higher (or lower) than 2%. There are always exceptions, and I think we all hope to be one of those. I'm just saying that 2% is a fairly safe number for your calculations when you have no other numbers to go by.

I did *NOT* have realistic expectations when I released the freemium version of Puzzlewood Quests last year. ;-) I made every mistake possible, I think. But my main problem: I did a lot of hoping when I should have been doing math.

Dave

 

I think it is easy to mischaracterise and misrepresent free to play as being "the only way to make money". I do see either that exact phrase or something similar to it floating around a lot. And it is wrong.

Usually what people mean is that free to play is t"the only way to make a lot of money" which I'd consider mostly correct. The exception to that in 99% of other cases with premium titles being "Get featured prominently by Apple", but that is less under the control of the developer (but not completely).

What is certainly true, under any monetisation model, is "mobile is hard" and being profitable in mobile can be very challenging. And I think you are definitely sending the right message with your "be realistic" advice as it becomes very easy to over invest.

If somebody is going to choose mobile as a platform to develop for, I will almost always recommend their first game to be simple so they can learn the ropes and keep the costs down, and to keep their expectations in check.

 

Planets Jump

We are making a buck or two every day just through inviting a few beta testers. And we know what will happen when we release it. If any of you are looking to test our game, follow this LINK and send us your email.

 

Yes, our first title. We started with 5 people and end up with 12 people.