Number downloads for you app ?

I have over 10 apps in the store that I have pushed in the past 4 months. My best apps have about 10,000 downloads every month. My worst apps have about 100 downloads a month. Keep in mind my apps are not breaking new ground like the other developers here since I committed myself for the first four months to producing commodity apps like Checkers and Blackjack in order to get the process of developing apps perfected. I will start pushing out original concepts and marketing in the coming weeks. I anticipate the results will be much more substantial.

Woah Keith, that's a big number, are of the highest paid download?

My first app "Color Machine" has had very few downloads, but is growing hope that the number of downloads increases, and I think I finished a promo video and make more noise in the apps forums.

Guys they are free apps so I won't be retiring soon. Blackjack Smack has seen about 6,000 downloads this week and I released it in late November I believe. Poor little Checkers Electric which I labored the most on has a mere 500 downloads since release last Thursday.

Yesterday i sold 1 app and my two free apps had 2 downloads each. Iad revenue last 7 days $0.32. I made my paid app free for 2 days and received 700 downloads.

So far games are costing me at least 10x what they earn to make, not taking in to account my time but its early days and i hope one day i can make a game that is worth the time.

Keith i have played most of your games and never seen a single ad, do your free apps use iads ?

And Paid Apps?

Keith, how many downloads of your paids apps?

@Koji I only kept one app paid long enough to recover the investment cost of $600 USD which took less than three weeks. At it's peak as a free app it was doing about $40 a day in iAd. I've switched it back to paid for now to see how it performs. All my apps going forward have and will be free.

I believe the key to success is to create a portfolio of diversified apps that spreads out your risk and reward. You also need to time box your efforts. Spending dozens of hours creating an app is a substantial investment that I'm not willing to take. Example: I spent 15 hours creating Pyramid Solitaire Redux which is doing terrible, but I was able to reuse quite a bit of that effort to create Tri Peaks Solitaire Redux in less than 5 hours and it is doing about $250 a month in ad revenue after Apple's take. Over the course of 12 months it will teeter off I'm sure but I stand to get a net positive gain regardless even after factoring in costs such as licensing assets and software to build it.

All it takes is 1 app from a catalog of apps to be downloaded 150,000 times by US residents and played infrequently to see six digits of iAd in a year. It is really not an unrealistic goal and you stand a better chance to achieve it if you diversify your app portfolio. Creating many little apps creates other opportunities as well. By creating many little apps I can operate in the gaps created by mega studios. By making them free more people can use my apps and advertising allows me to still monetize them. I just had my 1,000,000th game played since my first app went live in early September. I'm getting 25-30k ad requests a day for ads and while only about 60% are from paid locations that is still an okay number 4 months in. Maybe when I start releasing high concept apps over the next few months I will look back and laugh at these numbers, but right now I'm happy considering the commodity nature and simplicity of the apps I've created. I could not put all my eggs in one app basket given the risk that creates, but by releasing an app a week as I plan to do this year I stand to really put out a portfolio where some apps fade to obscurity and others become brands I can embrace and build upon. Maybe then I can make them full-fledged apps and see the kind of downloads that would really enable substantial revenue.

I would like to add that marketing is a key element I am not doing, but that's because I believe that games will gain critical mass if they warrant it. Otherwise they will remain niche and still serve a purpose in realizing acceptable revenue.

To be fair I've been coding for 25 years (Java, C#, VB, etc.), using Photoshop since it came out with UMAX scanners in 1991, and have used many tools similar to MMF in the past (Director, Flash, Authorware, etc.) so I do have a leg up on delivering apps quickly. One thing that has been a pain is writing extensions in C++ and then Objective-C. If I had one wish for 2012 it would be the ability to do programming using LUA that would port to iOS. Games like Checkers with computer AI built on Minimax w/Alpha Pruning are really a pain to make happen in C++/Objective-C but fundamentally simple from a pure declarative programming standpoint.

Lastly, I look at the Clickteam community as a family so don't hesitate to PM me. We're all trying to do the same thing and each of us will have lessons learned that are invaluable.

I had some little succes with brutal Billy Please login to see this link.
and night terrors for the ipad, I put it up on itunes for 5 dollars or something and it get's downloaded 3/5 times a week.
Brutal Billy had over 800 downloads (079,) still getting 6 downloads a week.
Stumble Tumble doesn't do that well I have 23 downloads it's really a flop

Well, many thanks for your advice @ Keith and I think you're on the right track, I thought the same, make a catalog of apps that I perimiter an expectation as a developer in the App Store, I think we should have everything Apps payment and Apps Free Apps Free with iAds (the latter does not work well as income level) so we can build a catalog interesting. I also program for almost 30 years (I started at age 12 with a Sinclair ZX81) and I see this as a hobby that can be traced in a profession, I feel like in the 80's when the big studios did not exist and good Ideas worth gold. Please get the order, as I am for what you need.

Miballs has only had 112 downloads so far.

I was a little disappointed considering the amount of effort we put in on twitter, facebook and the fact that It was mentioned in a National newspaper. It has also had quite a few 5 star reviews.

It was a very simple game though. I do have an update in the works and what is coming will be much better.

Well done on your results Keith. Seems I may need to look into my strategy a bit...

Keith thanks for the post. Very inspirational.

You've got a good plan and it looks to me you are executing and shipping.

I've always felt that everyone will have fantastic ideas from time-to-time and the biggest challenge is actually sitting down and creating. That is what separates many from the the possible successes of having a finished and shipped game.

Great thread!

If you game doesn't get featured your pretty much hopeless on the app store

15 hours a lot? You're definitely on a different plan from me =)

Not to say there's anything wrong with that. And not to say that me putting several months of work into my game will pay off. It's an experiment more than anything. I'm attempting some free marketing using facebook, youtube, and forums. And my hope is to attract a built in user-base of retro gamers.

But I have read articles about people who've put 6-12 months of full time work into their games, and then are disappointed that they're not making a full time income. I feel like being able to go from concept to product in 3 months is already a substantial advantage. Especially since I'm trying to create a game that would have cost $50 in the 80s.

So the two schools of thought seem to be many simple apps, or a single more full fledged experience. The latter I'm sure is the riskier play, and I'll find out the results soon.

Happily, typing clash force into google returns my game as the first two results. Typing 'clash force ipod' gives me the first 3 results. So it's a start. . .

jregork I think it is certainly worth it to create bigger apps if you can monetize them effectively. What I am doing is building libraries of apps that build off of the prior assets/structure so that over time I can build bigger apps in less time. Every app that I have done so far reuses either structural code and/or Extension code culled from prior versions. Although I am a developer I do not like raw development as it abstracts itself from creative synergy you get from composition-type development. I believe MMF2 is great because it can let you tap the power of raw code, but most of what you can do is achieved through real-time interactive design.

jregork is right, if you're not going to market it, you need to have a reason for people to buy your game. There are so many games out there, why would they buy yours and not others, unless they were catering to a particular niche?

The problem with marketing is that all these 69p apps, well, unless you get a snowballing viral phenomenon, most of the profit you make from a sale will have already been spent when that customer clicked your ad.

iInsultU (my non-MMF app coded entirely in Objective-C in Xcode) has had 892 downloads, Cow Boom has had 37, Hungry Beetle 19. Cow Boom was just for 'practise' so I wasn't really aiming to make any money from it, Hungry Beetle seems to have bombed though, which is a shame because it's a great game, however, no time or money was put into marketing it.

DistantJ why don't you release it free and use iAds..? you might more downloads if it's free.. seems a shame to make a game that only 19 people played!

So I will share what I consider to be some pretty useful and valuable things I have learned from creating iOS apps thus far:

1. What day of the week did you release your app?

I ask this because apps that are released on a Thursday tend to be exposed more as people become more active towards the weekends and kids download more games during that timeframe. If you put your app in the store on a Thursday it will show up in the top 75 in your category under Release Date more often than not and be visible throughout peak download times until mid-Sunday. Remember also that Thursday in the US is Friday in Asia so you ensure you get weekend exposure there as well; it's a quickly growing market as I can attest first-hand from working there for nearly 5 years recently.

2. How well did you categorize, keyword, and flesh out the details of your app?

This stuff really makes a difference. I'm not an SEO-fan by any stretch but make sure you keyword out your apps well or at least use phrases that will result in people looking for an app likes yours can find you. If you have a game about block puzzles called Blister Box then make sure you put things like puzzle, blocks, block puzzles, etc. etc. For tic tac toe electric I used all the international names for the game of Tic-Tac-Toe as keywords.

3. Have you ever considered the name of an app affects exposure?

What's the first thing you see when you go to a category for new apps on your iOS device by Release Date? It's usually the letter A (though a number and sometimes Chinese characters make it to the top). Naming your app Wolf versus Animal can really affect performance.

4. How often do you enhance features?

Releasing a v1.1 with new features not only makes your app better for users, but it also gets you back on the app store under "Release Date" as if your app was brand new. I have bought and tried just about every app on here and I will tell you that you are a very creative group. We all may just need a little bit more features here and there in order to take advantage of the exposure that being under "Release Date" brings.

5. Have you considered leveraging iAd?

My only paid app sold several hundred a day then teetered down to less than 5 after a few weeks. 5 a day seems nice, but I found that on iAd I could generate the equivalent of 57 a day. Upgrade to MMF2 Developer it's well worth it and iAd is a great way to monetize and spread your apps. My only paid app is used nearly 10,000 times a day and sees a solid 250 downloads a day week after week. I can make more on iAd and I allow more people to benefit from my app so it is win-win.

Nice tips Keith! But I think you'll find that point 4 is no longer true, updates don't put your game back on the first page by release date (but they used to!)
Good luck with your Game a Week plan