99¢ or ads?
LuMa Games
USAMember Posts: 129
I feel like ads are the better way to go as far as making money. Think about it, if your game is free more people will download it. And if your game is good so everyone that downloads it plays it multiple times, that means they get showed ads multiple times. that will most likely give you more money than 99¢ in the long run. What are your guys thoughts?
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I've had 0 luck with ads, but others swear by them.
You're game has to be incredibly awesome to really make it work, there is so much competition out there in the free market. My new game is going to be priced $1.99 and have no ads or in app purchases. I personally can't stand them.
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ads + free
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Even free, if your game is not that great then people will just delete it right away which will earn you maybe $0.001
At least if you make a game payed worthy, you are guaranteed that initial $$.
It can go either way, it all depends on how fun, engaging and polished your game is.
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I think $.99+ is the way to go for the independent developers as the FREE market is just too competitive...
If you have a huge mailing list or can cross promote like a promo god then you can probably survive on FREE...
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Free + ads. I make more with ads than I have ever made with a paid app (400% difference). You could make $.99 a person if the paid app is popular. On the other hand you could make $3+ a person if they click an ad in your game and download a free app. You have to see which one better suits your app. People are more prone to downloading a free app than a paid app. I use iAds and Chartboost.
If your app gets really popular you can always change the app price for iOS.
I'm not big into to ads, so 99c for sure. You have to have a large user base and very well placed and timed ads to really make money. Free to me is less of a money maker and more of a marketing tool to gain brand awareness and a User base. I think either way the most important thing is to have a good game. No matter what it's a tough market.
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You need hundreds of thousands of downloads to make any reasonable cash with ads. Just because it's free doesn't mean people will download it... the market is incredibly saturated.
One of my most well received games was free with ads... it's also by far my worst performer, monetarily.
Depending on content, I'd probably stay away from 99c apps, too. I've had the best results at the $3.99 price point. I think people perceive quality in something that costs a bit more. I certainly made a heap less money when I had my game Get Gravel on sale, odd but true!
@POLYGAMe said:
It's a very valid point, something will often make more money sold at a higher price (like you say depending on content) whereas it may well sell a whole lot less if priced much cheaper . . . or if it doesn't sell as many at the higher price then the number it does sell can often earn more than a higher volume of sales at a lower price.
Of course there are other factors that come into play, it's not a linear relationship between cost and earnings (otherwise we'd all be selling terrible games for $3,000), but if you get it right you can find the perfect point on the relationship curve between price and sales.
There is a lot of psychology going on here of course (something not lost on the makers of branded/luxury goods), people/the market, will tend to have a perceived idea of where quality sits, price wise, and products that significantly deviate from that perception may well be seen as 'inferior'.
The same can be said for the memory footprint of a game, you will often hear people ask how they can get their game down below 20MB or 50MB, the idea is that a smaller game is more convienent to the customer, faster download times, less space on their device and so on, and while there is an argument to be made for mobile network downloads I'd say for the most part (where/when people are connected over Wi-Fi) you can, within reason, ignore this concern as people may well perceive a small (memory wise) game as 'inferior' to a larger game, people are happy to download a 400MB game (or even much larger) and pay $1.99 when they feel they are buying something 'valuable'.
In fact there is an argument for inserting 360MB of unused assets into your game to give it some psychological 'weight' . . . maybe
@socks I agree with your psychological weight statement. I as an app consumer check size before I download a game, but most of the games i download are on the road where i have no wifi. i think around 50-70 MB would be the best if you charge more than $.99. I'm going to release two games around same quality sometime soon one free with ads at less than 10mb, one $2.99 ad free with 50-70 mb and see. This should be an interesting "Study"