How are devs earning with Windows Phone?

Nemory Studios

New member
Jul 29, 2014
1
0
0
Visit site
I'm a BlackBerry developer and thinking of developing apps for the Windows phone platform. just want to hear from some devs how you guys doing with this platform. Thank you. :)

Posted via Windows Phone Central App
 

impe83

New member
Sep 3, 2013
7
0
0
Visit site
Me too, im coming from iOS, would be nice to know some numbers.

And also what ad network u suggest for monetizing? is Pubcenter good? (I just check the official forum and looks full of angry devs.. :p)
 

Henrik Barna1

New member
Aug 4, 2014
12
0
0
Visit site
Here in WP I think the app monetizing is not show much result. pubCenter has approx 10% fill rate, I tried adMob but it isnt as good as is on android. So I think the two available options are paid apps and inapp-purchase.
 

Donny Tytgat

New member
May 14, 2014
20
0
0
Visit site
I've been using AdMob, and recently added PubCenter to my ad rotator. To be honest, ad earnings have been very low for me. All combined, I still can't pay 1 hour of my working hours, let alone the 100's of hours that actually went in making these apps. For AdMob, the 'Request RPM' lies at 0.07Euro (average from 100k+ impressions). For PubCenter, the 'eCPM' lies at 0.16Euro (average over 10k+ impressions). I've moved 80% of my ad impressions to adduplex for this reason (I'd rather have some advertising for the app instead of the marginal income from the ads).

Main contribution to these stats is the Cover - Facebook edition app which is ad supported but has the option to remove the ads via IAP. The revenue of this IAP is slightly higher than that of the ads (though still very limited - approx 0.2% IAP purchases / download).

As I said, with all combined earnings I can't even pay a single hour of my normal wage from building these apps. Luckily I'm doing this as a hobby ;).

I'd be happy to hear the experience from other devs!
 
Last edited:

LaikaGlove

New member
May 11, 2014
35
0
0
Visit site
I've been using AdMob, and recently added PubCenter to my ad rotator. To be honest, ad earnings have been very low for me. All combined, I still can't pay 1 hour of my working hours, let alone the 100's of hours that actually went in making these apps. For AdMob, the 'Request RPM' lies at 0.07Euro (average from 100k+ impressions). For PubCenter, the 'eCPM' lies at 0.16Euro (average over 10k+ impressions). I've moved 80% of my ad impressions to adduplex for this reason (I'd rather have some advertising for the app instead of the marginal income from the ads).

Main contribution to these stats is the Cover - Facebook edition app which is ad supported but has the option to remove the ads via IAP. The revenue of this IAP is slightly higher than that of the ads (though still very limited - approx 0.2% IAP purchases / download).

As I said, with all combined earnings I can't even pay a single hour of my normal wage from building these apps. Luckily I'm doing this as a hobby ;).

I'd be happy to hear the experience from other devs!

I've been using pubcenter for about 7 months. In the first month my eCPM peaked at about $0.24, then for four months straight it dropped to $0.11 and fluctuated between that and $0.02. The past two months however have been showing a spike in eCPM to $0.45 and now currently $0.88. But now my ad requests have declined compared to the buzz when the app was first released.

To date I've made a whopping $9.41 in pubcenter in 7 months with 64,212 ad requests...But it's not even money in my pocket because we don't get a payout until $50. In my eyes, paid apps are the only reliable way to make any income on this platform, but even that proves difficult because paid downloads are much lower than free downloads.

Good luck.
 

tgp

New member
Dec 1, 2012
4,519
0
0
Visit site
Slightly off topic, but how do these earnings compare to a similar situation on iOS and Android? There are probably some devs raking it in on WP, but with comparatively few devices out there I would think the revenue potential is not nearly as high as on iOS or Android. This shows at least par tof the reason why app development is an issue on WP.
 

LaikaGlove

New member
May 11, 2014
35
0
0
Visit site
Slightly off topic, but how do these earnings compare to a similar situation on iOS and Android? There are probably some devs raking it in on WP, but with comparatively few devices out there I would think the revenue potential is not nearly as high as on iOS or Android. This shows at least par tof the reason why app development is an issue on WP.

I have no doubt that on iOS/Android my numbers would be much higher, since they have the lions share of the mobile market. I've heard that paid apps are a little more difficult to get any traction with on android due to the sheer number of apps in the store, but I'm sure the ad revenue is much better. iOS seems to be the best platform for paid apps, but objective-C is a terrible language.
 

Donny Tytgat

New member
May 14, 2014
20
0
0
Visit site
I have no doubt that on iOS/Android my numbers would be much higher, since they have the lions share of the mobile market. I've heard that paid apps are a little more difficult to get any traction with on android due to the sheer number of apps in the store, but I'm sure the ad revenue is much better. iOS seems to be the best platform for paid apps, but objective-C is a terrible language.

I believe that, IF you get noticed on the iOS/Android store, you can indeed get much better gains. Its more difficult however to getting noticed there, so it seems more like an 'all or nothing' type of deal. In my experience, its easier to get noticed on the Windows Phone ecosystem, probably due to the fewer number of apps. One of our apps was developed for the three platforms for instance, and the Windows Phone platform has about 30x more downloads at this point than the other platforms. Market share isn't the complete story.

Note: if you have big budgets for marketing, you're probably better of with iOS/Android. For indie-type development however, I still believe Windows Phone is a great platform.
 

tgp

New member
Dec 1, 2012
4,519
0
0
Visit site
I have no doubt that on iOS/Android my numbers would be much higher, since they have the lions share of the mobile market. I've heard that paid apps are a little more difficult to get any traction with on android due to the sheer number of apps in the store, but I'm sure the ad revenue is much better. iOS seems to be the best platform for paid apps, but objective-C is a terrible language.

One thing that WP has going for it is that the potential for a good developer might be higher because the app store isn't yet saturated. iOS's and Android's stores both have 1 million + apps, and WP is at 350,000 or so, roughly one third. (That sais, how many apps would be left if you'd remove the Swing Copter clones????:smile:) It would probably be easier to get noticed with a good WP app than with a similar app in Apple's or Google's stores.

Edit: I didn't mean to copy you Donny Tytgat. We were posting at the same time.
 

Mike Gibson

New member
Apr 17, 2013
192
0
0
Visit site
My WP80 app makes, in a year, about the equivalent to one day's worth of sales of my Win32 programs ... and that's before MSFT takes their 30% cut. I only made the WP80 app because I have an irrational emotional attachment to the company and because I could use quite a bit of my Win32 code (mainly Direct3D). If I was a good businessman I would avoid WP like the plague. Simply not worth the hassle.

Note: after proclaiming for years that I would never develop anything for AAPL (for personal historical reasons) ... I'm now slowly looking into what it would take to make iOS and Android versions of my programs. MSFT would be smart to buy Xamarin and make Visual Studio cross-platform. VS is far superior to the other dev environments and would offer a way for ISVs to create WP versions of their successful iOS/Android apps.
 

Kevin Rush

New member
Aug 11, 2010
1,039
0
0
Visit site
Thank you for these behind the scenes, frank, comments. Where would I go to learn more? Is there a podcast where this is discussed?
 
Last edited:

Gatusko

New member
Oct 26, 2014
23
0
0
Visit site
Damn. That is a really low win. How many apps do you have? I think the best way of winning money is via pay-per download apps.
 

danglingneuron

New member
Nov 30, 2011
74
0
0
Visit site
You have to have several apps in different categories
You have to use all models - Paid, Free with Ads, Free with IAP
You need to be lucky :)

My 6 games on Windows Phone use a mix of these monetization models and make around $2K / month
Details on my dev blog: https://danglingneuron.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/lessons-in-mobile-app-monetization/

My games have over 4 million downloads, 4+ star rating:

Air Soccer Fever Online multiplayer Soccer game
Bit Raid old school retro game with a new spin
Hyper Cell Music Rhythm 3D psychedlic platformer game
Tank Arena 3D SciFi Tank Action game
Super Polygon Music Rhythm twitch survival game
Sea Quest 2D submarine shooter game
 

Gatusko

New member
Oct 26, 2014
23
0
0
Visit site
Wow that's amazing! I'm just a rookie app dev. I just have one app in the store and It's not getting a lot of downloads like spected. But like I said " I need at least 10 app for getting money" This is my first app
Best Quotes! | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)
And my second app is on the way, and the third too. I love to see you are gaining money I hope I can make money like you is my dream to live like an app dev!
 

MasterKelli

New member
May 19, 2014
12
0
0
Visit site
It is really hard to make money on Windows Phone 8.

Our game Hopping Penguin has over 300k downloads and we have tried different monetization methods. Advertisements don't pay well, the best advertisement option we tried was through VServ.com; around $0.6 eCPM and over 90% fillrate but even with that it generated around $200/month which is lousy for 5-10k daily users and long sessions. Currently we have In app purchases with Fortumo mobile payment and we get around the same than with advertisements. We will try to improve our IAP strategy even further but it's difficult as people are so hesitant to make a purchase even if they love the game and spend enormous time with it.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
322,908
Messages
2,242,874
Members
428,004
Latest member
hetb