Continue reading »]]> This is my third income report now for my Android Games. After a slow start in January things got rolling in February with the release of Dental Drill. The fun app went up the TOP lists and the revenue raised together with it. Also my other games got a bit more attention.

Now, after Dental Drill dropped out of the NEW list, the downloads went down from over 3000 a day to 150 in average. I did not release any other new stuff and so downloads, impressions and revenue dropped significantly. Here are the recent numbers from my ad provider Greystripe:

The eCPM is now at a very low rate of under a dollar. At the end of March this was going up. I hope this trend will remain and eCPM will go up the next weeks to the level of January.

Revenue from Greystripe went down over 50%. Quite disappointing! But at least I received my first check from Greystripe this month after my revenue reached the $100 threshold!

Oh, and I sold 3 (In words: three!!!) copies of lubajaX last month! Another $2.82 for my pocket!!

Together with the $9.98 from my J2ME games this gives me $57.38.

Ah, wait. There was another $10.95 from Clickgamer. They closed down their J2ME section and send me a final payout.

Whats next?

Most important thing is, that I have to release a new app to stop this trend. The problem is: I do not have one ;o)

I have started a new game and I think the idea is really good. But there is a long way to go before I can think about a release. So far, I will have to watch my numbers declining…

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Mr.Buckethead

You are coming to this site because you are looking for J2ME games for your mobile phone? You are interested in games like the “Mad Cow Martha“ series, “Raupe Ab“ or “Mr. Buckethead“?

This is the correct site but after my web page has been hacked and after I started developing Android Apps the decision was easy:

I won’t restore the old pages and start a new blog about my progress in Android App developement.

Mad Cow Martha 2

You can still download all of my J2ME games for free (ad supported) on pages like Mobile Rated!

I’m actually surprised, how much people still download the games and that I’m still making some money with them!

OK, not much, but enough for a Chicken Dinner ;o)

Continue reading »]]> Inspired from Blogs like Ziggy’s Games and others I have decided to publish my own revenue reports for my Android games.

Here is the second one for February 2012. There is a good and a bad thing. I start with the bad one: I’m still not getting rich! Damit! The good one is: everything is going up smoothly.

The release of my fun app Dental Drill boosted downloads, ad impressions and revenue. It got listed at spot 8 in the “New Entertainment” list, at least in Germay (I have found out, that these lists in the Android Market are sorted different for different countries)

So here is the money:

I still use Greystripe as my ad provider. They prefere to deliver full screen ads. In the following table you can see the result for February:

More than $84 in the second month and an increase of over $50 makes me quite happy! Together with the January revenue I have reached one of my goales: I have reached more than $100 and will get my first payout from Greystripe! I have to define new goales, because I have already reached 3 out of 5!

One sad thing is the drop of the eCPM. Last month I had a stong $3,59 and now it is just $1,72. Why this? The reason is very simple. Dental Drill is bringing in most of the ad impressions. For some reason (that I will never understand) 30% of all impressions are generated in Germany and 25% in Brazil (!!!). Just 1,8% are comming from the USA. Greystripe has a much higher eCPM in the US and very low rates in Europe.

The last half of the month Greystripe started a global campaing and my revenue raised. Hopyfully this trend will remain and the revenue for March will be even higher! My goal: $100 in one Month.

Happy coding!

Bandler

Continue reading »]]> Here is the updated table of the download numbers of Marbleution in different Alternative Android App Stores:

The new store this month is the Samsung Apps store. It took quite a while to get through their quality gates. Marbleution got rejected once and then there was a delay in the device test. Finally it is live now and it gets downloaded 100 time a day in average. Best thing is, that it is climbling in the most downloaded list. I look forward to the next couple of days. Hopefully more and more downloads are coming from Samsungs own store!

Pdassi and Appoke are still not worth to be mentioned.

Looking at the new numbers, the clear winner is SlideMe. Still most alternative downloads come from there. But this was just a bit of luck, because my other games do not performe as good as Marbleution does.

Disapointing is the Opera app store. I expected a lot from this one. But 3 downloads the last four weeks is absolutely poor.

AndroidPit and GetJar are, well, hm, lets say OK. Nothing more nothing less. Just some downloads but not more.

Claim Token TGZKEKNUGHE6

Continue reading »]]> Inspired from Blogs like

-MakingMoneyWithAndroid
-KreCi

I have decided to publish my own revenue report for my Android games.

I have started Mid-December with publishing lubajaX. There is not much to report for this app. So my reporting will be based on the figures for Marbleution, released at the beginning of January.

Downloads Stats:

Marbleution is available at quit a lot of alternative app stores beside of the Android Market. I have reported about this here: Alternative Android App Stores

The most downloads now still come from SlideMe (17300). Compared with the Android Market (192) this is quit much! I have still not figured out why Marbleution was downloaded so often and lubajaX got more or less ignored on SlideMe. Anyway.

Revenue:

I use Greystripe as an ad provider at the moment. They prefere to deliver full screen ads. In the following table you can see the result for January:

Impressions 9,226
Revenue $33.14
eCPM $3.59

Over 33 Dollars in the first month is not to bad. Or to say it the other way round: I had expected less! An average CPM of 3.59 Dollars is also pretty decent.

I hope that this month, with the release of Marbleution Blast and my fun app Dental Drill the ad impressions are increasing a lot and I can make 100 Dollars in February. This would lead to my first payout, because this is the treashold of Greystripe…

Continue reading »]]> And here they come…the top facts about the Android Market you always wanted to know!

Feel free to leave your favorite fact in a comment.

I have executed different searches in the Android Market and I will face you now with the one and only truth.
Because the search in the Market does not show more than 1000 hits the AppBrain search is taken as a reference in some cases.

So lets get started:

• Anyone affraid he is stupid?

At least many people wants to know it. Or the app creators think people wants to know it. Anyway.
“Stupid Test” (187 hits), “Moron Test” (199) and “Idiot Test” (129 hits) gives you lots of chances to find an app telling you that you are just as normal as anyone else.

• Bird flu hits market harder than mad cow disease

There are by far more “angry birds” in the Market (more than 1000) than “mad cows” (22). Just if you have ever thought about that.

• Fart or not to Fart, this is the question

I can not believe it! I am shocked!! Incredible!!! There are 238 hits for a search for “Fart Board”!!!! Puh, is there a bad smell in the air?!

• Facebook is bigger than Google+

AppBrain shows it: Facebook (21596 hits) has more apptension than Google+ (15016). Still it is unclear for what all this apps are needed?!

• The good overrules the bad!

A search for “God” and “Devil” in the Android Market brought more than 1000 hits. So I used the alternative AppBrain search. The result is quite calming: God overrules Devil with 2428:809. There is still hope that this will get a better world!

• There is so much useless stuff

More than 1000 hits on the Android Market and 418 hits in AppBrain for a search for “useless”! Are you really installing something telling you it is useless? Seams so.
66 apps actually mention that they are rubbish…

• Buy an Android Smartphone if you want to have an IPhone

AppBrain brings up 5728 hits for “IPhone”. Make your Android look like an Apple thingy seams to be more important than God (see above).

• And now sports: ManU beats Barcelona!!

At least in the AppBrain search. Manchester United (200) is the clear winner. FC Barcelona (131) and the FC Bayern Munich (66) are far behind.

Uh, wait! Real Madrid got the title: 252 hits!

• Android users are interested on politics

“Obama” gives you 260 chances to learn something about the current American President. If you can learn anything with the Obama Soundboard? I am not sure…

The german chancellor Angela Merkel gets only 20 hits, the frensh president Nicloas Sarkozy 55. The Android Market is clearly ruled by Americans.

That is it. These are the most furious facts I found in the Android Market. If you have another one, please leave it as a comment. I look forward to your results!

Continue reading »]]> So you have an app in the Android Market and you can see it in the developer console: no one is downloading it and you ask: Why?

One thing could be, that no one is seeing it. The Android Market is strongly based on the search…and nobody really knows what the Search is taking into account and what is left out. There are many tips going round in the internet and some companies already offers SEO for the Android Market. Look there for details help.

Anyway. Today I just started and tried to optimize our game descriptions to get a better search rank. And the most important thing I found out is:

Changes are going directly into the search index.

That is great! So you can type in your favorite search expression you want to be at the top. Then you can play around with your description and watch the impact on your ranking.

I did not make it to the top with our games and the search expressions I have choosen. I guess the reason is my bad English

…but Marbleution raised in the search for “marble puzzle” to the second page. Better than nothing and a good point for more improvment!

After some more investigation I found out, that the app title is weighted very high. I have included the term “marble puzzle” into the titel and Marbleution got second now for this specific search.

One last thing: This seams to be only true for the online version of the Market. It does not work directly in the Android Market App.

Continue reading »]]> First in the series of development articles, I will collect some alternative stores I have found beside of the Android Market.

If you are a Android developer and you have tried to sell/distribute an app or game on the Android Market you know the problem: the game is listed somewhere far down the lists. No one even notice you game and so no one is downloading it.

There are some things you can do about it:

Advertise

I found that this is mostly a waste of money. Sure, you get some exposure and some people will download your game. But in the most cases this will not pay out.

Trying to get reviewed (or buy a review)

Not as easy as it seams for a small indipendent game studio. The big sites are ignoring your requests, the small pages tend to request money for their reviews nowaday. Still, you should try it and send your game to as many sites you can find in your favorite search engine.

Ignore and just develop another game

This is always a good idea. But still, you should do some marketing!

So what should I do?

One thing I found very promissing is adding your game to other stores. Android Market is not the one and only. Here is my short list of stores you should give a try. I also add my first download figures for Marbleution.

There is also an Opera App Store (5). I have also tried Pdassi and Appoke but got no download from them.

Additionally, there are a bunch of stores directly taking the app info from the Android Market after you release it there. I made the experience that this automatic mechanism sometimes fails. So it is a good idea to check if they list your game. Some of the most importand of this kind is AppBrain and AndroidZoom.

It is to early to give a final vote. On some stores Marbleution is just added and on others it started two weeks ago. I will update my conclusion when I have some more detailed numbers…

Continue reading »]]> We have been hacked!

Google send me an E-Mail complaining about my site is distributing malware. Some hours later my provider stoped my site and displayed a warning message. After a quick check I found several compromised pages.

I take this chance and start the hole thing right from the beginning. I have deleted all the old stuff and now there will be new content…soon.