Let’s be honest, You are not just building apps for fun! There is a lot of money in mobile applications. Creating an app has become a business, and actually an app makes you money. But only definite applications make you money, and the rest won’t bring you any profit at all.

The vast majority of developers earn very little, however, a lot of them make a good living, some succeed in  business on the app stores and a few at the top are even creating multi-billion dollar companies. So, what’s different about the developers that are making very good money versus those that are living in app poverty?

There are two major differences when considering the success and fails in app’s building.

First is that developers often ignore many previous mistakes and may do exactly the same. Second is that due to the fact that developers have a successful app, they often confuse correlation with causation. There is no special rule for profit on the app stores. All you have to do is try to avoid being entrapped.

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Do you have a ready-made application, and do you want to monetize it? Do not know how to promote a brand-new project, a brainchild of yours? Read what first steps to take to effectively promote your mobile application.

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This article will show you tips and tricks of how much money does an app make, how much does it cost to build a mobile app and how your app and how your app will profit for you too!

There has been a substantial growth in the mobile devices market, along with significant developments in mobile interactive technologies recently. Market forces continue to increase.

If you are new in the mobile app development industry but you have a fully-formed idea for an app, you probably put yourself a fair questions: how much money apps make? how much money does an app developer make? or what is the ad revenue from apps?

Here in the article we would like to share with mobile game developers how much money you can earn by creating games, considering the most popular 5 games as an example (angry birds, flappy bird, clash of clans, mobile strike, pokemon go). You may find some useful information on how much does the average app make and the cost of developing a mobile app.

GAME CHANGER

Above: Digi-Capital tracks huge mobile apps growth.

Image Credit: Digi-Capital

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Mobile internet is only 8 years old, having hit the marketplace more rapidly and crucially than the original web 20 years ago. Mobile usage has grown five times in four years to approximately 20 percent of media consumption last year. From 2009 to 2013, the compound annual growth rate for mobile apps was 50 percent. Meanwhile, mobile app investment is gathering steam. It has doubled since the third quarter of 2013, with $10 billion invested in the last 12 months.

The estimated global apps revenue is $46 billion in 2016. Mobile games are notable for their high earnings. Mobile game app revenue is supposed to hit  $75 billion in revenues by 2018.

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to develop a mobile game, however, we all can agree that getting profit from amazing games that people love to play is a very nice feeling.

However, earning money isn’t so simple, even concerning the gaming industry. The reason is not in slow sales that cause lower profit. Usually it is due to the fact that so many developers leave money-making opportunities out of their games and miss out on cashing in.

According to Digi-Capital an investment bank for mobile apps and games:

So games took around three-quarters of global app revenues last year. Higher growth rates across sectors other than games could drive non-games revenue share to almost half by 2018.

In a world of thousands of mobile games, what makes an amazing mobile game? Everyone who plays games wants to have fun. But after all the amusing, what keeps the player coming back? And it is something that immerses the gamer’s attention, involves users in a fantasy. The mobile game should be easy to comprehend within 2 minutes, during this short period of time, users usually decide if they want to play more.

If you are a mobile game developer you must focus on the followings things:

• • What kind of game you are going to create.

• • The level of the game.

• Game advertising.

Most game apps are free, but developers have revenue through in-game purchases.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

So what makes games like Clash of Clans, Angry Birds, Pokemon Go, Flappy bird, Mobile strike so popular? There are so many reasons. And if someone has an answer to this question, he would be a billionaire. There are two common rules for the game’s success:

1. 1. A game should be able to be played with 1 finger.

1. A game should use bright colors and cartoonish characters.

ANGRY BIRDS

How much did angry birds make and how Rovio made Angry Birds a winner?

None of the other mobile games in its portfolio have come close to the “Angry Birds” franchise in terms of download numbers or revenue. Every day, users spend 200 million minutes, playing Angry Birds. This game is the number-one paid app on iTunes in 68 countries, as well as the best-selling paid app of all time. In total, the “brand” has taken more than €50 million. And the game itself costs €100,000 (the company has since invested more) to make. Rovio has had 20 million paid downloads for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and 20 million ad-supported downloads on Android. Rovio generated just under $200 million in revenue for 2012. It also reported $71 million in profit for the year. Angry Bird’s full-year revenue grew by 101 percent in 2012, up from approximately $96 million in 2011. According to the PC World article “The origins of Angry Birds,” it took Rovio 8-9 months to develop Angry Birds.

FLAPPY BIRD

How much did flappy bird make?

The developer Vietnamese artist and programmer Dong Nguyen created the game over several days. Flappy Birds was launched in May 2013. However, the game worn its massive popularity only in 2014. More than 50 million people having downloaded it. The Flappy Birds earnings were $50,000 per day. A game like this (a very simple game monetised with ads) usually make between $0,01 – $0,02 per download on Android, and slightly more on iOS. It is confirmed by many independent developers reports. Everyone was talking about Flappy Birds so that motivated the users, and increased average session length of the game. You got a lot of ads during a session. So we can expect the developer could have got about $0,04 per download. Combining it with total of 50 million of downloads it gives 2 million of revenue.

CLASH OF CLANS

Clash of Clans is a preemium mobile strategy  developed and published by Supercell. According to Reuters the game’s developer made $2.3 billion in revenue in 2015. This marks a 30% growth over revenue of $1.8 billion in 2014. The company announced that a significant portion of the 2015 revenue came from in-app purchases from Clash of Clans. It is a free to play game but offer in-game purchases that enhance the gaming experience and generate revenue for the company. Approximately in 2016 it has 25 million players actively playing. So it the 1 out of every 2800 people on earth is playing Clash of Clans. It is the most viral game ever.

MOBILE STRIKE

The company is earning $3.8 million per day. The game has over 30 million downloads since its 2013 release. Mobile Strike is one of the very largest mobile install advertisers. Mobile Strike was one of the first free-to-play app games to have gotten on board with TV advertising, coupled with an A-list endorsement by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. The aim of the game is to build up your forces, complete challenges and generally obliterate the opposition. Mobile Strike has its own in-game currency, which players can earn by completing challenges – or by making in-app payments of real-life cash.

POKEMON GO

Pokemon Go becomes the fastest game to ever hit $500 million in revenue.  It became one of the most downloaded app in its first week ever and the fastest to reach 50 million installs on Google Play. The game reached the new milestone in just over 60 days, App Annie says that the game had been downloaded over 500 million times worldwide since its debut. App Annie had previously reported in early August that Pokémon Go was on track to exceed $350 million in revenue to date, since its early July debut. Pokemon GO managed to attract 20 million new mobile gamers across the US, UK, Germany, and France.

CONCLUSION

There are multiple opportunities in the app market. It has experienced substantial growth since their first conception and it shows no signs of slowing down. Over 25% of developers earn over $5,000 per month on the iOS platform and Android sees 18% of theirs faring good as well. Games hit the market nowadays and are the most profitable. Most of game apps are made in spare time. So, the cost is not too high to develop mobile app in terms of money. However, it takes a lot of practice and desire to become real good at making games, even small ones. And it takes even longer to learn how to market and sell them.