During the last 12 months, I have been working as an App Store Optimisation Consultant and, with great excitement, I have seen how the word ASO has become more and more popular within the developers’ community.

In the beginning, everyone seemed a bit sceptical about the importance of ASO, but nowadays everyone seems to realise that a Search function is extremely important in every single app store on the marketplace.

The interesting point is how little information is being published about app store optimisation. We still find the same concepts that were published in 2011 and many developers ignore the fact that app stores are investing heavily in improving the way their algorithms rank and behave versus certain other variables.

So today I want to break the mold and move away from the typical “five steps to optimise your app” and instead talk about the “five things in ASO that nobody is talking about.”

Algorithm Weaknesses

Everyone seems to talk about how the manipulation of the App store algorithm can only be done by purchasing or incentivising downloads, but the weaknesses in the way app stores work go beyond that.

As in any Search ecosystem, as soon as a “search engine” opens its door for new variables to be calculated in the algorithm, weaknesses will happen.

The interesting point is how these weaknesses seem to be less discussed and less implemented like in the SEO world.

The reason is obvious. As soon as an app gets caught cheating the system or manipulating the algorithm, the app usually gets banned or kicked out of the store.

This simply means: Bye bye App = bye bye all the time spent on the app.

So although this encourages real app developers not to “push their luck,” developers producing apps “en masse” to try and flood the market usually play with the system and are the same “mass-producers” of low quality apps that seem to enjoy the weaknesses of the ranking algorithm.

So for now… app spammers may be winning the battle.

Reviews Matter But Not In The Way You Think

Every time I read about reviews, I read about how important it is to get positive reviews…and then the topic seems to die.

The reality is that reviews have become one of the core points for apps to detect the “growing” velocity of an app. Similar to the famous link velocity in SEO, App stores have already implemented in the algorithm ways to detect unnatural behaviours in reviews that allow them to detect odd behaviours from apps without any clear “trust.”

Trust

If you are Rovio (an “Angry Birds” mum and dad company) and you publish a new app, the Algorithm will treat your app differently than it would treat a brand new developer. The concept of trust is not new in app stores and Apple is already learning that from Google in the Search game.

Implementing a trust factor helps to create a “sandbox” effect, where brand new apps produced by new developers may not rank until a certain buffer of real downloads, real reviews and normal growth pattern is developed.

Social Is Not Just A Nice Word

Social links matter…a lot. Just look at Google+ and how it has integrated Google reviews. Social signals are one of the factors app stores have started to implement and provide more and more weight.

Real social factors are difficult to fake and app stores have a huge amount of data to understand what represents a normal amount of social signals. Not only can social signals help ranking, but they can help identify apps that don’t follow a “healthy” behaviour. An app with a rapid spike of downloads and no reviews or zero social signals can literally trigger a red flag to the algorithm.

Huge downloads with no “real” human interaction only means the app is purchasing the downloads or artificially increasing its numbers to increase the ranking.

The Rise Of The ASO Tools

ASO tools are not the same and need to be treated as experimental tools. Although there are six different tools to compare competition levels and do keyword research, it’s important for developers to compare data from different sources before making a decision.

In the same way, you shouldn’t consider treating the Google keyword tool data as the “divine gospel.” It’s better to be a bit sceptical regarding data provided as it can give you a more accurate approach instead of being ultra-optimistic.

ASO tools provide a very smart and professional guestimate of competition levels and potential download numbers and searches originated from different app stores, but regardless of how accurate these figures are, they’re still only guesses. Comparing data from different sources and doing proper keyword analysis is not an easy task. Developers really need to understand how to utilise these tools and how to interpret the data they provide.

Not doing proper keyword research and marketing analysis before launching an app is the fastest way to fail in the App store optimisation game.

App store optimisation is new and we’re now seeing signs that ASO will eventually grow even more. We’re still in the infancy stage where we see many mistakes done by developers and app stores. But eventually…like all babies…they grow up and provide a more stable environment.

Hopefully, at the end of the day, the winner will be the developers of quality apps, waiting to be found and downloaded by future users.

Gabriel Machuret
gabriel@asoprofessional.com

Want to learn more app store optimization, check my App store Optimization course at http://www.asocourse.com or check my blog at http://www.asoprofessional.com

“My primary life study has been about love. Second comes economics, so here, in the form of a few rules, is a little amalgam of the two fields: the economics of love.” – Ben Stein, Economist

I just spent the last month facing as many fears as I possibly could.

I woke up a few weeks ago, bought a ticket to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and shut my computer. Do I speak Spanish? Barely. Do I know anyone down there? Nope.

But, I do wake up some days in the grip of fear…and that’s unacceptable to me. I define fear as a sort of lurking resistance. We all feel it from time to time – not wanting to leave your apt, feeling apprehension to do something, whatever. It is the arch nemesis of change. It’s that looming cloud that pulls us back to the safe zone where everything is predictable. It can be comforting. It’s sneaky.

I refuse to live my life at any level less than 9000 RPM, peak performance, whatever you want to call it. I had a deep and un-ignorable thirst to break myself from the iron clench of all the things that contribute to this fear – convenience, technology, ease, security.

In many ways, these all represent the highest apex of our evolution. For so many reasons, they have given us everything we ever hoped for.  To me, they have become a burden, slowly eating at me until I am nothing more than a profile picture and a clever tweet, unable to grow my own food, get in a fist fight, or turn off my iPhone.

Fuck that.

As I prepare to return to my home in the United States, I would be remiss to not share a piece of what I have learned on this life changing journey. What better way to do that than to fuse the two loves of my current life – personal growth and the app business.

So, here are some thoughts.

1. There’s a reason why there are fundamentals. When you add your ad network interstitials to your app, there’s a reason why the ad networks tell you where to put them. They work. Maybe you’ll break through and get a 5% increase or maybe you’ll think of something wildly creative that can alter the ecosystem slightly, but chances are your best bet is to rely on the research of hundreds of billions of impressions. There’s a big difference between trying to hack the market and trying to beat the market – spend more time trying to beat it.

With apps, you can spend a lot of time trying to re-invent the wheel or you can listen to the people that already have invented wheels that work mighty fine. Of course there is something to be said for being creative, but just be aware of it.

In life, I have found the same thing to be true which I will touch upon. Life is short – don’t spend all your time trying to find answers that clichés can answer in five minutes. Listen to the wisdom that’s out there already, then add to it. Be kind to people. Give back. Be healthy. Be happy. Spend 15 minutes talking to someone who’s older than you and hear what THEY’VE learned.  You’ll save yourself years of angst.

2. Focus on install rates for high eCPM. Your earnings quotient (eCPM) is a factor of impressions, clicks, and installs. There are different ways to maximize each of these and different strategies from different networks. Looking back at a year’s worth of data, my best revenue drivers were the apps that had great install rates. They didn’t get the most downloads, but they served up the best ads for the right people.

Apps can be lucrative by focusing on the traffic and driving more all the time (flipping apps works on this). But it also shifts the focus away from the apps and towards the portfolio. All apps gets a little love, none get a lot. He who is friends with everyone is friends with no one.

If you want something, in this case I will use the example of finding a significant other, it’s better to focus on winning over one person than it is to get in front of a thousand to “see if there is something there.” Of course, this is assuming you’re in it for the long haul, but the general idea will still hold true – you’ll get the biggest return when you make an effort to provide value with the right person even if the pool is smaller.

3. There is no correlation between how much money you invest in your app and it’s success.   The most popular post on my site is one about how much it costs to develop an app. A lot of people contact me and ask about how much they should be spending, wondering if it’s worth it to spend more, spend less, etc.

Over the last two years I’ve had the privilege to talk to hundreds of app entrepreneurs and hear their stories. There is absolutely no data to lead me to believe that any of them would have made more money if they had spent more. They weren’t looking for investments and they didn’t start with much money or free time. The #1 characteristic that all these people have in common? They wanted to win.

I just spent over 3 weeks surrounded by people happier than I’ve ever seen. I was asked about my job a total of four times in that period, all of which were from Americans. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just different. Most of the time I talked to people about travel, language, family, love, and happiness. I met really rich people and I met really poor people. The ones that were consistently giving off great vibes were the ones that wanted more out of their life. They didn’t spend the most and they didn’t have the most – they just wanted to be happy. A lot.

Not having money to start with is a bad reason to think you can’t get everything and all the riches you want in your life. You can be just as happy with small victories as you can with big ones. In fact, some of the greatest achievements of my life happened when I had no money. Learning to add Revmob to my code? I threw a huge party (not kidding).

Having a big upside is all relative – the amount you spend is much less important than how much you think you can make back.

4. Long term high ROI occurs in great games. There’s a powerful launch cycle on the app store (Apple in particular) that helps with eCPM and is one of the founding principles of all flipping. When a new product is introduced to the market, the natural inertia of that product attracts new users who are excited about checking it out. They loved the screenshots and the fun description! When they download the app, they may click on your free game ad and you make money. You’ll only get one, maybe two shots at this on a medium to poor quality app.

To consistently drive value to users over the long term (as measured by eCPM) you have to have an app that provides value over the long term. Did you check all the bugs? Do you actively update your game to listen to feedback? Does your gameplay make sense? Users can smell this a mile away and will dump your game after one use if you don’t change it.

You can attract a lot in the first few weeks of something new – the energy is high, it’s all smiles, every night’s a party. But after a while, reality sets in and the real tests start. Ever tried to quit a habit? The first week is OK, then it sucks until about 3 weeks later. Same with meeting someone new. To consistently drive value from life over the long term, you need to be a high value individual. You need to have discipline and spend time to really invest in yourself if you want to make a lasting change.

Pour energy into the parts of your life that you want to change for the long term. It’s not easy, but that’s why not everyone lives the life they want. Remember that you need to work on yourself just as much as you work on your business. Often, when we step back, we realize that the success we want for our apps is actually to fill in a hole we feel in our current lives.

Long term returns come from strategic investment.

5. Freemium is the best way to make money. In pretty much all cases, especially games, free to play is considered the golden standard. Flood your game with users, then monetize them through awesome game play. This is a deviation from the older Paid model.

Why does this work? Because you are giving away something before asking for anything in return. You are making the first step and offering value for free in hopes that it is good enough to get value back from someone. Granted, this also gets you a much higher download volume, but the psychology is the same.

This is a lesson that’s been around for centuries – you must give before you get. If you think that you are so awesome that people should flock to YOU and automatically think you are amazing before you give them anything, you’re in for a rough journey. The most successful and happiest people know that they must swallow their pride and output free energy before anyone comes back with reciprocal energy.

Anyone who’s done this knows that the returns on giving first are ten fold anything you would get without doing so, both financially and emotionally. It’s nature’s way of balancing. Give and take…but you must give much more at the beginning.

6. Focusing on your daily metrics will drive you insane. I don’t think I need to convince anyone of this. I talked to a few of the ad networks about their website metrics – on average, each developer visits their sites 6 times a day. eCPM is out of whack? Shit storm on Facebook. Revenue is higher than yesterday? Massive euphoria.

The morning coffee buzz is replaced by that dopamine flood driven by logging into your Chartboost account. It makes or breaks your entire day. All the work you’ve put in, all the progress you’ve made in your app journey means shit. Your daily rev is down 30% and life sucks.

If I measured my self worth with everything that happened each day, I think I would go insane. In fact, I DO go insane sometimes. Fuck is this the right shirt to wear? I’m not being healthy! Ugh I sounded like such an idiot speaking Spanish in that café. Sometimes it sends me into a tailspin.

But that’s why I’m down here – to break that daily cycle. All the mundane, daily crap that everyone has to deal with means nothing in grand scheme of things. My brother and his friends came down here and we ran a marathon through the city. At mile 10, I thought my legs were going to collapse. I also had this power moment of realization that I am living one of the biggest dreams of my life. In the middle of a busy street I yelled out “YEAH!!!” which prompted someone else to yell out “Yeah!” which led to the crowd laughing and clapping.

If you wake up every day and need a big revenue day to make you feel great for the next 6 hours, realize that you’re feeding a bad addiction. Try waking up writing down everything awesome you accomplished the day before. Focus on your goals and take five minutes to be grateful for how far you’ve come. Shit – be grateful that you get another day to give it a shot.

Days will have highs and lows because we get so many of them. Can’t say the same about life.

7. Follow a plan to get expected results, roll the dice to get unexpected results. With apps, there are a lot of people that have made a lot of money. Chad, Trey, Quoc, and others have all crushed it with apps. They all lay out blueprints that show you different ways to reach your goals. I try to do that with app flipping and re-skinning in the hopes that I can help all of you get to you to where you want to go.

There’s a certain amount of creativity involved, but for the most part these plans will help you make good money making assets that will
consistently make you money back. Following a plan is the #1 way to get an expected result.

Similarly, not following a plan is the #1 way to strike it big. It’s also the #1 way to completely eat shit. The only difference is if you believe in what you’re doing.

I can’t recommend one or the other because we’re all in different situations, but I can say that I would not be where I am today if I hadn’t rolled the dice. I put up a bunch of apps with celebrities and rode a fine line of trademarks and copyrights and it paid off big. I quit my life managing monster attorney web strategies to build fucking skee-ball games! It worked out.

Being a “risk taker” is relative. Some people think sky-diving is risky. Others think driving down the street is risky. What’s the difference? How deeply you believe that it will work out the way you want it to.

Some people think I take big risks but I don’t see it like that. When I close my eyes, I see the world I want and the life I want. I think it’s risky to be safe. Waking up in 50 years and wondering what my life could have been is a risk I am not willing to take.

Making shit happen is step one. Hustling is step two. The rest is up to you. The most powerful and exciting moments of my life happened when I said “Yes” to situations that I felt uneasy about, then went so hard that I refused to allow failure be an option.

Being in Argentina has taken my level of faith to epic proportions and has taken me to places I never thought possible, spiritually. I was forced to make every situation positive. Every day required my being positive to do things as simple as go to the grocery store or order coffee. Total focus for the simplest of tasks. There isn’t time to think about the negative possibilities because I feel like I’m in survival mode all the time. You don’t entertain failure when your biology thinks your surviving. You HAVE to make it work.

After this trip, there is very little doubt that, no matter what, everything will work out in life. It just will.

It’s not about taking out a mortgage on your house and “going for it!” That’s just dumb. It’s about saying yes to life. It’s about waking up in the morning and focusing on the one reason why it can all work out instead of the 500 why it might not. It’s about re-defining what you think is risky, stepping back and asking yourself what’s important in your life.

The foundation of all faith, in my opinion, is the acknowledgment of possibility. If there is something that you want and you can say “yes it is possible” (even if you don’t know how), then you’re on your way. Accepting the fact that there is a path opens you up to knowing that you can realistically fulfill your dreams.

Rolling the dice gives yourself the opportunity to win big.

Apps are an amazing opportunity for all of us. Every day I wake up grateful for everything I have and
everything I am able to share you guys. I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I can leave one thing to this world, especially the app world, I want to be a reminder that any one of you can be successful. I am just another guy who wanted to make it, that’s it. All I’m here for is to provide tools and energy to help you do the same.

Remember that the science of it all will pale in comparison to the success that comes from believing you can crush it. It WILL work out for you. Who knows, maybe you won’t be making millions of dollars…

….maybe you’ll just start to feel like you do.

Build great apps. Build great lives.

Rock and fucking roll,

Carter

A while back I heard something about this guy. I think a lot of us did – he was young, smart, and somehow came out of nowhere to drop the HAMMER on the Apple store. Not only that, he managed to sell off that company to a huge publicly traded venture and see how the big dogs play. Some serious work accomplished for a guy who only started a few years ago.

What I like about Quoc is that he’s straight up. His advice on marketing is straightforward and easy to understand. He provides useful tools and insights that I never used or heard of before joining his program. It was one of the first courses I read and actually paid for. Fast forward a couple years and I’ve had the pleasure to chat with Quoc offline a bit about his success. I asked if I could share his thoughts with the world and he agreed.

So – check it out below.

Dude! Thanks for taking the time and it’s a real pleasure to have you on here to share with everyone. What’s your story?

I started making apps in 2009 when I decided to quit his full time job and start 3 different app companies. My biggest success was Free the Apps which ended up being acquired by a public company in 2011. Free from the 9-5 and living the passive income life, I spent most of 2011 in Southeast Asia volunteering for non-profits and participating in medical missions (more info here - http://www.freetheapps.com/2011/05/the-passive-income-life/). I am now back in the states still working on apps and getting ready to launch a new app company with his first game launch for 2013!

Awesome. You crushed it – big time with marketing. A lot of that success was in 2009-2011 (right?). What’s the biggest difference between then and now?

I started out in 2009 with 3 different app companies and I was fortunate enough that all 3 were able to start making a profit after a few months. One of the things that we always focused on with our apps was to make the app look great and work well. It was important that whether it’s a game or a utility app that it should be simple to use and look polished. That strategy worked well for us. The biggest difference that I see now is that compared to 2009 the app store has gotten ridiculously huge. So even if you create the best looking most useful app you might still have a hard time getting downloads. How to market and get your app noticed is more important than just getting it built nowadays. Back then if you had a good solid app you could get it up in the charts a lot easier.

What’s the biggest misconception when it comes to marketing an app?

Thinking that since your unique app idea doesn’t exist on the marketplace that people will download your app. There’s always that killer idea that no one has ever done that will change the way we use our phones, but those are rare. Sometimes if your app idea or at least something similar doesn’t exist then chances are people don’t really need it or aren’t looking for it. I find a better strategy is to follow the trends and see what works well and make it your own and make it better.

What kind of apps are you making now?

I’m still focusing on apps for Medical students and professionals with hipposoftllc.com. I’m also working on my first big multiplayer game which is exciting but a bit scary. I’ve always thought that games were risky and they’re either going to make it big or flop but now is a better time than ever to take that risk. Did you just see that SuperCell is making $2.4 million a day from their 2 games Hay Day and Clash of Clans? That’s crazy! I just want a sliver of that pie and I’ll be happy.

If you could invest in a business that had to do with apps, what would it be? In other words, what’s the hottest part of the mobile “world” – publishing, analytics, user acquisition, etc?

I think user acquisition / marketing. As fast as the app market has been growing and as crazy as it is I feel like it’s still pretty new and people are still trying to figure out the best way to market these things. There are a lot of companies out there claiming to market your app for a ton of money but how many of them actually work? There are only so many press releases you can put out for your app before you realize that they’re not increasing your downloads at all. I think the trend back then was to become an app developer and make money. There are tons of app developers out there now that can make a great app but know nothing about marketing so I think the hottest part of the mobile world would be marketing now and figuring out how to get someone to download your app and keep using it.

Do you go cross-platform? How has that gone?

I’ve only dabbled with porting some of my apps to Android. For some reason the same apps on Android makes significantly lower money that their iOS counterparts. I can’t really explain it but that’s just my personal observation. I do have to admit that I’m an Android user though. I had an iPhone 4s for a couple of months when it first came out but I had to switch back to Android. I’m just much more comfortable with Android and I like it better.

What’s the biggest difference for someone who’s just starting out vs someone who’s got a big budget when it comes to marketing?

It’s always harder for anyone to do anything vs someone that has a big budget. Someone with a big budget and buy ads for their apps on big networks like admob and chartboost. Someone with a smaller budget won’t be able to afford those kind of campaigns, so their best bet might be to contact individual developers and ask to be featured on their apps. At Free the Apps, we used get those advertising inquiries all the time. We used to sell out space on our more apps pages to other developers for a pretty good deal too.

Where’s the market going?

I just saw an article yesterday that said something like iPhone sales in India will be bringing in $1 Billion in revenue this year. With the US app market getting so saturated I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start looking into emerging markets like India and China. Might not be a bad idea to invest a little development time and hiring a translator to have your apps translated for those markets as well. Depending on your app it’s probably not a huge amount of translation that needs to be done. Probably just a few menus and buttons, but it could definitely pay off in the long run.

What are your 3 best tips for someone who’s trying to market a game in a category that they might think is “too crowded”?

1. Higher a good graphic designer/artist. The graphics will only cost a fraction of the development costs but will be the first things users see before downloading the app. With all of the games that are out there now if I see an app that doesn’t look pretty or professionally done then I’m not going to bother with it.

2. Is your game something that you would play and enjoy playing? Daily? weekly? A lot of people come up to me with ideas for apps and I always ask them “Do you see yourself playing this game?” You would be surprised at how many times people say, “No…but it’s a good idea and I’m sure someone will like it”.

3. Social/Facebook integration. What better way to get more people to download your game than to have people invite and play with their facebook friends. Candy crush is a great example. It let’s you compete with friends for the highest scores on each level, and in order to go to the next stage of levels you need to ask 3 friends for help. If anything at least you can use your game’s facebook integration to invite all of your friends to play it when it first releases.

If you want to check out more from Quoc, I highly recommend checking out what he has to say over at his newly polished 2013 course for app marketers:

Click here to learn more of Quoc’s secrets

Keep rocking,

Carter

I was lucky enough to meet Chad last year and speak at his conference. Not only is he a total gangster in business, he’s an awesome dude. Check out this interview and hear some insights about app flipping and all around app crushing.

Carter Thomas: App Store secrets from App Empire on Vimeo.

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

Anyone who doesn’t know Elaine is missing out on a lot. A LOT. Not only is she a great person, he is super smart and super motivated. True story – when I was heading home after Chad’s App Empire event, I saw Elaine walking to breakfast, laptop in hand, to “slay some Revmob integrations.” She’d been up for 4 hours already. What a gangster. For anyone interested, I definitely recommend checking out the rest of her stuff at The Chocolate Lab Apps. She’s a great teacher and even has a course that’s been very helpful for a lot of people.  - Carter

There are a few simple ways to increase your advertising revenue.

1. Show more ads. Usually this means making new games, adding an extra ad to an existing app (don’t go too crazy though) or increasing your user retention so people stay playing your games for longer. More time in your game = more ad impressions = hopefully more installs.

2. Filter your ads. You can choose to show ads that you think will appeal to your target demographic. So if you’re making kids games, show ads for other kids games. This should mean more installs for every ad shown.

3. Bigger payouts. Increase how much you get paid when people install a free game.

The first two points above are fairly self-explanatory. For the third, the secret to getting paid more money for ads is to find out which ads are paying the most money and see if you can target them.

Go to campaign > analytics and put in the options below. To to this accurately you’ll have to have no ad filters set up in your campaigns.

The file will be too large to view so after about 30 seconds you’ll be able to open the CSV file. Open it in excel or similar.

First do a ‘find and replace’ to remove all of the $ signs. Now create a pivot table.

Select all the content in the spreadsheet, and then (in Office 2010 for PC) you can create a pivot table by selecting “insert > pivot table” from the top menu area.

When the grey popup box appears, be sure and select the ‘new worksheet’ option.

Now that you have your pivot table created in a new sheet. You should revise the parameters to show Row labels: “App Name” and Values: “Impressions”, “Click”, “Installs”, and “Money earned”. You can select these in the pivot table on the right of the screen.

Go into the ‘row labels’ column, so drag them as needed to the ‘values’ column.

Then you need to change update the ‘impressions, clicks, installs, money earned’ to the SUM of. You can do this as in this screenshot, for each of the 4 columns.

So select ‘sum’ instead of ‘count’ for these 3 columns. Save this file as an xls / xlsx file, and then copy all the data in this sheet into a new blank sheet. Create one extra column (seen here in green) and call it money per install. Then put filters along the top headings in all of the columns.

Money per install = Sum of Money Earned / Sum of Installs. In this case, I will type this into the first cell under ‘Money per install’ =E5/D5 and then copy this the whole way down, so it automatically generates the CPI of each ad. Then I use the filter on ‘Money per install’ and select it to show from largest to smallest.

Here is the list of top paying ads per install. Note this is a very good indicator but not quite exact…

1. The ‘sum of money’ earned column also includes any clicks paid for these ads as well. This pay very little so I’ve ignored them for now and they shouldn’t make a big difference.

2. From what I understand these CPIs are 70% of what the advertiser actually pays, with the ad company you signed up to taking 30% commission or thereabouts. Also worth noting if you qualify for direct deals you can get 90% of what the advertiser is paying.

So what can we learn from these stats? What ads pay the most when people click on them in your game and install the promoted free game? Stats change every minute of course, but here’s whats happening now….

- 21 games are paying more than $2 eCPM right now
- The highest eCPM by far is Bingo Rush which is paying approx. $5.60 per install
- 9/21 (42%) top CPIs are for casino games. This is the biggest category.
- 8/21 (38%) are fantasy games. Nearly as many.
- Then there’s a crime game, a war game, a sports game and a game called ‘BoA’ if you can figure that one out

So two massive game types are dominating the top paying ads list – casino and fantasy games.

The question is: how do you plan to use this information to your advantage?

Learn more about maximizing Chartboost revenue in your iPhone apps by checking out my course here.

Quitting Your Job Is Not About the Job – It’s About Your Life

I had someone message me on FB the following:

Hey man! How you doing?!

Alright, first things first – your blog has been a huge fuckin’ inspiration.
It tells me one thing – a focused persevering man can never not win. From your posts over the last year that I have been following closely, I really could imagine myself doing as much good financially and spiritually as you seemed – the satisfaction of job and money.

I just want to ask you a couple of things – nothing technical, just personal human experiences.

When you left your job to devote your full time to app development, did you have any panicky feelings or were you totally sure about yourself? Did you have any fear – what if my apps would flop, what if I couldn’t get my job back if my app business failed or I couldn’t just persist and focus more on it or got bored of it? 

I will be 22 years old in June. I passed out last year, completing my B.Tech C.S degree,and I do have a placement in an MNC with a decent salary package (atleast for Indian cost of living), but haven’t got my joining yet. I’ve waited too damn long enough. 

I’m thinking of starting my app business seriously, along with a friend who might join me in a month probably, if I were to start my shit tomorrow.

Dude, I don’t know if you got my question or not by now. Answer this maybe.
How did you know, that “YES, THIS IS IT”? How did you know that yes my app would be perfect, that yes, I could make do financially with these apps on the market?

I’m confused as f**k. I am working in a startup (because I did not get joining in the MNC yet), and I feel like I should be starting up myself. 

Also could you give any pointers like as to what two dudes definitely should be doing when starting an app business?

Thanks a lot man if you read this far. 
Alrighty then.

Here’s what I wrote back:

Hey dude,

Thanks for your words. You’ve got a good vibe and I dig that. 

Dude – quitting my job was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was 25 and it was a startup, managing all the internet marketing. The CEO was a billionaire and when I told him I was leaving he said I was making the biggest mistake of my life and that I was a failure. I walked out two week later with zero plans, little money, and was TERRIFIED. 

I went home and read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand for a week. It changed my life. I finally realized that I have to go after my dreams and work harder than I ever thought possible to bend reality to what I wanted. 

I didn’t get right into apps. I spend 2 years doing websites, SEO, and all that for people in a small town. I worked 19 hours a day for the first few months because I needed to make money. I would literally build websites for companies then walk in and try to sell them already built! It was desperate times because if I didn’t sell, I was fucked. 95% of people said my websites sucked, told me I was a joke, and a failure. I failed at almost anything I did when I started on my own. 

Things went on and I started to make some money, at least enough to pay my bills and not stress out all the time. Then I started messing with apps and did my first project. Flipped a $13,000 app (Alpha Combat). Maxed my credit cards, worked 300 hours on it, and released. It didn’t do that well haha, but I made it my mission to find out why and to share it with the world. 

It was do or die. I refused to die. So I rocked as hard as I could, all day every day, until I got what I wanted. Success.

During 2012, I kept grinding but also doing SEO stuff. The hardest part (which most “gurus” dont talk about) is starting with little money and not being able to write code yourself. So I made a plan to execute as much as I could for as little money as possible while still earning dollars on the side. The goal was not to get RICH, it was to get SMART. I realized the most important priority was to learn as fast as possible, and the money would come after that. 

Starting in August, things clicked. I understood how to publish and I understood the market. I had a team in place that I worked well with. I was manufacturing apps and could publish hundreds at a time. The money started to come in. 

The rest is history, I guess.

To answer your questions – remember that the opposite of fear is faith. Ghandi once said “A spoonful of faith can move a mountain” and I believe that. What if’s can easily be “what if this all works out?” or “What if I get what I dream of?” Optimism is incredibly powerful. Every night I spend 20 minutes watching videos or reading books that remind me that the only thing stopping me from getting what I want in life is myself. It has changed everything.

There was no “Yes this is it” moment for me, but rather a series of small “fuck yeah” moments when I made something happen. Those all add up to moments when I realize that I am extremely happy with my life and the choices I’ve made. 

I know those feelings of confusion very well. The answer that I have found is that what I wanted was not financial freedom or millions of dollars or whatever – it’s that I wanted to stop being confused. The only way to do that is to take action. Indecision will end you. No matter what you decide, realize that it’s going to teach you something for good or for bad, and that’s all that matters. 

Its also easy to feel like you’re watching the mobile gold rush happen and you’re standing on the sidelines while everyone else gets rich. I can assure you that being successful is not about “hitting the bubble” at the right time. Successful people can do it in any economy, in any industry, any time. Your goal should be to learn to be successful, not to make money on apps. 

I’d recommend reading two books – Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and The Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen. You’ll understand why once you do. 

Remember that you deserve to be successful just as much as anyone else. There is no reason why you cant or shouldnt be. Fear is the root of all spiritual evil – treat all decisions equally and believe that any decision will make your life better (because it will). Life is one big experience and you will crush it no matter what you do as long as you remember that. 

Rock and roll man. Here’s to your life and the endless possibilities you have. 

Keep in touch. 

Carter

His response:

ALRIGHTY! Thanks a lot man. That was so deeply more than what I expected. Thanks a fuckin’ lot man. I’d read those two books you gave, and I’d start taking action. I’m undecisive right now whether I should leave the startup or not. 
Just, thanks again man. That was so truely enlightening. Man, do me and yourlself a favour, put that whole message as a blogpost. Others deserve to see this. I know I’m not the only one who’d benefit from all those words.

You take care. 
Alrighty then.

And that’s what’s up.

Carter

Keep Rocking!

Carter

In case you are living under a rock and don’t use Revmob or haven’t heard of it, they just re-vamped their dashboard. And it looks sweet!

The whole process happened quickly and these guys are so busy they haven’t had a chance to lay out what you need to know. Because I want to make sure everyone out there makes mad money and uses the dashboard most effectively, I asked Gui if I could walk everyone through what’s going on while he’s getting a tan down in Brazil (kidding – that dude works his ass off).

This is pretty straightforward. I just want to make sure everyone goes through and sees it all.

Dashboard

Boom! Look at that thing. Smooooooth and silky. The new dashboard layout is pretty much the exact same, just with a cleaner design.

App Page

Once you’re in the app page, there are a few small changes besides the new layout.

1. You can easily copy the app ID to your clipboard. Just click that little icon next to the ID below your app name.

2. This is where you now access reporting. When you click that blue button on the right side, the following opens up. See below:

Here you can export pretty much anything to see the information you want to see. This was available before, but they cleaned up the data pulls.

3. The placement stuff. Some people use this, some people don’t. If you don’t, you should. What it does is allow you control where the RM ad is shown and also to see which places produce the best results in your game. Opening of the game, Game Over, Pause screen, etc.

If you want to check out the daily metrics, just click the link above-right the red box and it will show you a display similar to the previous dashboard. With this one, however, you can just see the roll up and averages easily. Definitely a shift that Revmob is stressing using placements because it can make you so much more money.

OTHER RANDOM TIP: This is a good thing to correlate to your mobile analytics like Flurry. If you can match the ad placement to where the users are jumping out of the game, you can test how much of an effect the ad has on people leaving the game.

Campaigns

Campaigns are for advertisers. If you’re not looking to advertise your apps, you don’t need to worry about this.

What is interesting is that this is showing us that Revmob is starting to open up CPC bidding (previously they were all CPI) which may help increase fill rate and smooth out eCPM curves.

For any advertisers out there, you should poke around and see how they offer it. Lots of control, especially with the callback URL, so the tracking is a lot easier. You can target by OS version, location, devices, the works.

Sites

Personally, I think this is the most exciting stuff to offer. The site SDK was available on the previous dashboard, but wasn’t really used. They’re still getting the kinks out, but I see HUGE possibility here. What this does is display the Revmob full screen ad on a website when it’s loaded via mobile device. Web traffic becomes mobile install traffic. If you can get the conversion funnel down, it’s going to be party time.

While Revmob tweaks that eCPM and gets the install rates higher, all of you should be thinking about how you can drive monster traffic to mobile websites. Hint: You can’t use google adwords. But you can use other traffic methods.

SDK

The SDK section hasn’t changed. You can still use Revmob while coding in:

• iOS
• Android
• Amazon
• Unity
• Corona
• Adobe
• Phone Gap
• Titanium
• Mobile Websites
• Gallons of ice cream (joke, bad one)

Payment Schedule

This is a new one – showing when the payments will be delivered. This is SO helpful. There’s also some stuff about how they payout under the Payment details section that may be helpful (like you need a $250 threshold before they pay you + there is a wire fee). You can choose between wire and PayPal. This page is still in production (from what I hear) to take into account minimum payment information and status.

That’s it! Maybe nothing too different, but clearly a step in the right direction. Thanks Gui and team!

If anyone has any suggestions or questions, leave a comment here so I can pass them along. If you haven’t checked out Revmob for yourself, go do it now by clicking here!

Keep rocking,

Carter

“Speed provides the one geniunely modern pleasure.” - Aldus Huxley

In case you didn’t hear, I sold my app portfolio. Woo!

Now that the champagne hangover has passed, I wanted to address a question a lot of people asked me.

“Carter, if you started over, what would you do RIGHT NOW? How would you approach the app market?”

I think this is a really good question to ask because it forces me to address the age old “if I knew then what I know now” type of thinking. Even more than that, the market is so different now than it was in October 2011 that there is a lot that I would do now that is completely different. What’s hard at this point is that there is a sense of urgency mixed with a million different options about how to move forward with apps. It’s overwhelming. I totally feel you on all counts.

In a lot of ways, I am starting over myself. I’m launching new apps with new models. But it’s different – I have money to play with now, I’m not beholden to a job or other responsibilities. I’m 29 and don’t have to think about a lot that many of you do, which allows me to roll the dice a bit more. So this post is for everyone out there trying to make the TRANSITION that the internet and internet marketing have promised for years. That life of passive income and excitement that grows to a point that can be your full time gig.

Let’s be honest, this post is about how to make money as fast as possible using apps.

Here’s what I would do.

Step 1: Buy Low, Re-Skin, Repeat. Only Make Games.

Call it app flipping, re-skinning, or just good business, the best way to enter the market is to hit the ground running.

In other words, leverage the work that someone else has done by licensing or purchasing source code. My drug of choice is Apptopia because you can get an app in the store immediately before having to re-skin. If you go to another source code marketplace, you have to re-skin the game before you can launch. It just adds time to your bottom line, although sometimes you can get powerful engines for cheap. Also, if you can get a universal (iPhone & iPad in one) you’ll have a big boost in revenue.

Typically you want to get a code engine that is “endless” or has an enormous number of levels. There are a few reasons for this:

• More opportunities to advertise
• More opportunities to advertise
• More opportunities to advertise
• Sell some In app purchases
• Make the user happy-ish
• Re-skin multiple versions a LOT more easily
• More opportunities to advertise

I’ll get to this in a minute, but the golden rule is that you want to be re-skinning GRAPHICS and not re-skinning CONTENT. That’s a huge difference.

Once you have this re-skinnable engine in your hands, move to Step 2.

NOTE: DO NOT try to build something from scratch. I say again – this is not about pride or being a revolutionary. This is not about your idea being great. This is about making money. 

Step 2: Monetizing in 33 Days

So you have an endless runner engine ready to send to your designer and/or developer. Awesome.

Now you need to strategically place advertisements to maximize your game’s value. This is not pretty, but it makes money.

Without fail, the best place to place advertisements is at the beginning of the game. Use full screens and don’t be afraid to layer them. I use RevMob and Chartboost for iOS and launch them at the same time. It’s very aggressive, but it makes money.

The next is to place both these fullscreens on the Game Over action. The user jumps off a cliff and dies…BOOM you serve up both Revmob and CB. Same with when they hit the pause screen and exit back to the main menu. If they’re trying to leave the game, try to get them to leave in a way that makes you money.  These ad networks hinge on selling installations of other games so you need to get users to click on the ads, go to the app store, then install the displayed game.

Within this framework, you should also be using banner ads. The revenue won’t be nearly as good, but it’s something. I use iAds and MoPub. I hear OpenX is pretty good too. The trick is display as many ads as possible. Banner ads typically refresh on a 40-60 second interval, so you need to keep a user playing for about that long OR find ways to increase the number of times banners are served up.

Example would be: User opens game, sees RM/CB ads, picks level, starts playing, banner is displayed while they are playing. Play for 30-40 seconds, then end level or die which leads to Game Over screen. RM/CB fire off and while the the user closing those ads, you’re serving a NEW banner impression behind it all. That creates a secondary impression for the core user flow. This doesn’t work quite as well for CPC (cost per click) campaigns, but helps a lot of CPM (cost per impression) campaigns.

HOT GANGSTER TIP: On the game over screen, make the level score tick up from zero to whatever score they achieved. That way the user has to wait for 4-5 seconds while the scoreboard gets to their score…while they stare at the banner ad. Not only does this give the servers enough time to download the ad and increase your fill rate, it will increase your click rates A LOT. I did this on some of my runner games and it crushed it.

When it comes to IAP (in app purchase), you’re not going to make nearly as much money on these type of games. Even if you put tons of cool stuff in your store, the IAP will be a joke compared to what you make on advertising.

The best thing to do is offer some ridiculously high, very clever options for the few people that are die hard lovers of your game (maybe 1% of users). Adding things like “Unstoppable Kid Mode!” where it’s impossible to die for $29.99 type of stuff. Remove ads for $0.99 is not going to help you retire. Sorry.

The reason for this is economics – the top 1% should pay for everyone else’s marginal cheapness. People who love the game should pay for everyone else who doesn’t have the money or find the value to spend the money. NOTE: that is not a political reference so please don’t go there. 

What’s the 33 day reference?

33 days is my window for making a 100% return. If I spend $600 on a re-skin, I give it 33 days to make $1,200. I’ll watch it and update it and do whatever, but after 33 days, I forget about it. Everyone’s got their own number, but after the first month, these low quality games really aren’t worth your time relative to the value you get from focusing on the next game.

That bring us to….

Step 3: Choosing Your Theme

This is something I talked about in my App Empire talk. The one difference that I had early on was that I chose themes that weren’t “hot” themes – I chose themes that would provide qualified traffic for advertisers. Revmob’s top advertisers last summer were Pocket Gems and TinyCo, so I made animal style games that crushed eCPM.

When you choose your theme now, you have a few options:

• Find the top advertisers on the networks you’re using and cater to them (casino, mafia, fantasy, young women, etc)
• Capitalize on popular trends (I’ve seen plenty of examples of this being an AWESOME strategy for fast ROI)
• Capitalize on hot apps (If Temple Run 2 is coming out, might want to make a game similar….)
• Capitalize on flashy design (No matter how crowded, if you have a sick racing icon and screen shots, it will crush it for a week or two)

Bottom line is that you should choose your theme based on where the money is and where the volume is. When you can match those two together, it’s party time.

Step 4: Publishing

The #1 thing I tell people to do when they ask where to start is to get awesome at publishing. Publishing is the process of going from having an Xcode project sent to you and then having a live app in the store. What it includes:

• Title
• Screenshots
• Description
• Keywords
• Provisioning Profiles and Archive uploading
• In-app purchase setup
• Game Center setup
• All ad network setup

You’ll find that with the re-skinning model that this is almost always the bottleneck. The better you get at doing this, the more money you’ll make. Developers and designers, especially when they are using the same code over and over, can pump out projects for you. Then you have to move them to the store. Over and over. And over. Ugh.

Step 5: Repeat

Do this again. Do it often. Start slow and do it right, then ramp up once you can publish apps like it’s a part of your body. Everyone I know who’s making $50-100K a month has gone through this exercise so many times it makes their head hurt. They are total masters at this 5 step process. They have a lot of it outsourced, but only after understanding the mechanics first hand dozens and dozens of times.

Step 6: Go Get Started!

The obvious next question is that you have to get the source code to start with! Duh. If you’ve been watching the charts lately, you see that there’s a very clear starting point. Some of these people build their own apps, but most are buying source code somewhere.

There are a lot of marketplaces out there but I think they can be overwhelming and also FULL of garbage. It’s hard to know what’s good and what’s not. That’s why I am selling codes on my own site. I’m just getting started but also only put up stuff that’s top quality and easily ROI positive.

Check out the source code area here. 

Kick Some Ass

And that’s it. These efforts will start compounding and you’ll find yourself making more and more money. It’s SUPER intense for a while and really doesn’t get less intense, but it’s how you make money with apps when you start with a few thousand dollars (not even!).

Hope that helps you guys. Everyone I know who’s done this makes more money every month than they did the month prior. That’s all that matters. Every month has to be more than the last. Do that and you will make a lot of money

Good luck! Keep rocking! Get the champagne ready!

Hear more on my Facebook Page or Follow me on Twitter. Or both (even better!).

Carter

“People often panic when the markets go down and sell off their stocks – but then they aren’t in the game when the markets are doing well.” – Suze Orman

Is it me, or does it seem impossible to get straight answers when it comes to comparing these two markets?

Which makes more money? Should I port my game over Android? What’s the marketing like? All questions I asked myself and all questions that I keep seeing over and over.

I figured I should do an experiment and see what the real deal is. This wasn’t rocket science, but it did have some unique insights that will hopefully help someone of you out there wondering how to squeeze more out of this insane mobile gold rush.

Android – A Virus Made Of Money

The facts are pretty staggering. While all of us iOS app marketers have our heads buried in the latest App Store algorithm changes and churn and burn models, the rest of the world was buying Android phones (see article here). Android is crushing the overall market in volume – everyone and their sister seems to be adopting to Android via the savvy marketing of companies like Samsung and Google (Nexus).

Beyond the distribution side of it, the Google Play store (Apple App Store equivalent) now has just as many apps as Apple. Developer accounts are easy to set up, there is virtually no review time, and apps have fewer restrictions. It’s a market much more so than Apple is and has attracted a lot of really great talent.

Needless to say, I’m sick of ignoring this beast.

Justin Bieber Helped Me Understand Mobile Markets

Or something.

I needed to have a game engine that was the same for both platforms. I couldn’t buy one Android app from Apptopia then compare it to one of my iOS games – they had to be the same. Before I tackled this whole project, I had  the following assumptions:

• iOS is where the dollars are (duh!)
• Android is growing very quickly, especially outside the USA
• Marketing is very different between the two for certain reasons
• iOS heavily relies on chart volume

And so on. In a nutshell, I thought “iOS makes more money…but maybe not for long.”

The #1 conclusion I wanted to determine was about monetization – do Android apps make as much as iOS apps?

Before I begin, you need to know a few insights I have, as well as general observations.

1. The “monetization” gap that everyone talks about hinges on the payment systems – In-app purchases and paid downloads. This is why the entire gap exists and trickles across all other monetization strategies. Android apps aren’t necessarily worse, their users are just cheap compared to iOS users.

2. A huge percentage of in-app purchases and paid downloads on Android are refunded daily because of fraud. There’s a lot of hacking going on out there folks. Lock up your kids.

3. Google Play listings can be updated at any point, without review. You can edit everything and see the results. It’s more similar to SEO and web optimization than selecting keywords in Apple (the description is searchable in Google Play).

4. Google Play makes it very obvious that they care about NET installs. The number of people that un-install your game makes a difference.

Without further ado – let’s party.

Pack It Up, Pack It In, Let Me Begin

Here’s a general breakdown of the two games.

iOS

Name: Celeb Style Runner FREE – Dance With Justin Edition
URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/celeb-style-runner-free-dance/id592616862?ls=1&mt=8
Categories: Games-> Music, Racing
Monetization: Revmob, Chartboost, In-App Purchases

Android

Name: Justin Bieber Is Gangnam Style
URL: http://bit.ly/1075YfG
Categories: Games-> Arcade & Action
Monetization: Chartboost

Answers the questions I know you are asking right now:

1. No Revmob in Android. Why? Because install rates are extremely low on Android for some reason. I called a few large Android companies about this and they all said the same thing. I had it in there when I launched, but took it out after the first 1,500 impressions with 1 install.

2. Title. I originally named the iOS “Justin Bieber Goes Gangnam Style” but it was rejected for various trademark reasons.

3. Categories. I’m confident in knowing the iOS categories, but have little understanding of how it affects Android volume. I researched a lot of other apps and chose this one. Originally I had it as Racing until I realized all the other games people installed/viewed were CSR Racing type games.

4. No IAP on Android. It would have been a pain in the ass to integrate the IAP on Android and I really wasn’t trying to make this a big project. So I just dropped it.

Dude. What Happened?

So check this out – here’s a snapshot at the Android campaigns vs iOS campaigns that have the same basic pricing tiers on Chartboost.

iOS Chartboost Metrics

Android Chartboost Metrics 

Now, here’s a snapshot at download volume:

iOS Downloads (from launch) 

Android Downloads (from launch)

Woah! Cool! Wait…wtf does all this mean?

I’ll let you deduce your own conclusions since I know a lot of the people that read this blog are really smart, but I still want to distill a few key conclusions that this test taught me.

1. eCPM is similar across these platforms for Chartboost. Granted, those iOS numbers are based on other apps as well, but the averages are what matter. In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing overly awful about either and thus can conclude that Chartboost may be a viable monetization platform for both iOS and Android.

2. Like most iOS games, the launch spikes, dies, then goes away. Android has a much longer and flatter curve. This is based on the charts and their power on iOS. Of course, this is only 2 weeks so I don’t think I am in any position to make full conclusions here, but from talking to others it seems that having great publishing (especially great copywriting) on Android can have a much more positive long term effect than trying to select perfect keywords on iOS.

3. Install Rates are much better on Android. This shocked me…until I started using my Samsung Galaxy. The SDK integrations are doing what the iOS StoreKit framework SHOULD be doing – opening the store while the game runs in the background.

You know how when you click on an ad in an iPhone or iPad game, it leaves the game and has to open the app store? Then you close the app store to go back to the game? In Android it’s much more seamless. Less time and less actions for the user means more revenue.

The rest – I’ll let you decipher. Leave comments with your experience or questions for everyone to see.

Lastly (and probably what you’re all wondering)……

Should I Develop My Game On Android?

Here’s a basic equation to answer that:

a) Cost of iOS app * 0.5 = Cost of porting to Android

If (net revenue from Chartboost) > (Cost of porting to Android) -> Do it.

50% is a ballpark cost I see for developers to move an iOS app to Android. Based on my test, if I make enough money on the iOS version to justify the cost of developing that app, then awesome. This does not take into account Lifetime Value (LTV), so make sure that revenue isn’t just from your launch.

Also remember you’ll have to learn how to manage a whole new developer account, new publishing dashboard, and marketing strategy. I personally find that really exciting, but it can also be a LOT to take in at once.

Most importantly, ask yourself if it’s worth it to make an Android version of your game, or create a new re-skin on iOS (similar cost). 

From The Horse’s Mouth

One of the benefits of being in San Francisco is that I get to meet all the awesome people that are part of the mobile gaming community. I went down to the Chartboost offices to catch up with Nate and hear about what they’re up to. We ran through a few optimization techniques and also chatted briefly about Android.

What he said was pretty much on par with this – Android monetization through their network is almost up to iOS. In certain overseas markets like Brazil, the market is growing incredibly fast and thus the bids are increasing (meaning higher eCPMs for all of us).

Additionally, there’s a lot of upside left for Android. After walking through Chartboost’s office and seeing what these guys are up to, it’s safe to say that this is the tip of the iceberg.

Always remember – when there’s a market as massive as Android, someone’s going to figure out how to monetize it well.

So – hopefully that gives some info to anyone wondering about if the Android market is worth it. I think yes if your app can monetize via Chartboost and IAPs well.

Keep kicking ass!

Carter