Everyone gets bored, even annoyed with boredom sometimes. But the sight of a very bored 20 something guy waiting in line is quite rare nowadays with the rise of smartphone users. There are apps that can keep boredom at bay after all.
Game apps don’t have the highest retention rate but it is the most engaged app category. Games are engaged 10 times more per day compared to other app categories (as a whole). Strategy games average 3 sessions a day, closely followed by adventure games and then cards and board games*. Session length is longest for card and board games with users engaging on the app for 12-14 minutes. Strategy games place a far second with an average of about 11 minutes. Adventure games start in the same range on the first day before plummeting down to 8-9 minutes per session.
This just shows that users open game apps frequently but doesn’t really sit down for a long time to play, not even with the best of apps. It’s difficult (almost impossible) to ascertain what users are doing while playing these games but what is sure is that they spend some amount of time with the app and then return to it several times later in the day, which brings on the following questions:
Why are users engage this type of app more than others?
What makes the user continually return to the app?
To answer these questions, let’s have a look at common features of best apps that fall under the category of adventure, card, and strategy. All these boredom-busting apps have these common denominators:
Fast action
There is more time for gameplay instead of following through a storyline. Unlimited lives or tries is also a big bonus. While gameplay set against time gives the impression of time quickly passing by in real life.
Metagames
Mini games and adventures can keep users from leaving the game since has an option for quick and manageable sessions for non-hardcore gamers or for those who do not have plenty of time to sit through a full game session.
Easy interface
Access to navigation and gameplay should be only a few taps away. Most importantly, controls should not be something that needs a learning curve – it should be almost instantaneously instinctive.
No linear progress
There are level advancements but no storyline to follow with only one recurring goal in the gameplay. Games like this are called “Super Casual”. Some of the best apps are considered as super casual.
Strong character connection
This is in combination with interactions in the game environment wherein the user can customize characters and other game elements. Examples are the collection and combination of objects they can keep as accessories or as aides in gameplay. The user should have something to fixate upon.
Offline play and guest user option
A casual gamer should be able to access the app anytime, anywhere. Some users are also more inclined to download an app if it can be played offline since Wifi availability is limited in many areas.
Immediate feedback
Users should immediately learn how they did in a single game and not wait for the entire storyline or multi-level chapter before they receive scores and other stats. Immediate gratification should be at play.
Competitive play
Attract competitive players through leaderboards and social players through co-op plays. You want competitive and social players in your game. As long as they have someone they know to compete (or cooperate), they would return to the game again and again.
Game attachment
Facilitate attachment to the game with progress investment (the amount of time and money the player already spent on the game). Give a sense of progression even if they just started playing (free coins after the first game, etc.).
There are certainly more features and genre-specific formulas. If you noticed more features in game apps that could’ve contributed to its time killer status, let me know in the comments.
Incentivized app downloads can go a long way but only organic downloads can sustain the growth of your app. Here are eight ways to boost organic app downloads:
Good ratings and reviews.
Ratings are often used as a basis for an app download. Most users won’t even give apps with below 3.5 rating benefit of the doubt. Often, poor ratings are coupled with isolated review/complaint about a technical problem. You can avoid these type of reviews/ratings from surfacing by providing in-app feedback and great support for your app. Not only does poor reviews/ratings affect organic downloads, it can also be a sign of user dissatisfaction.
App previews.
Apps get to have their own trailers too! Introduced in September 2014 by Apple, App Previews gave an opportunity for app publishers to showcase and market their apps in a new dynamic approach. Show how your apps work and the screen flows. Users are more likely to download apps that they know works according to their expectations. In the end, it’s all about impression. The app with the best impression gets downloaded most.
Regular app updates.
Regular app updates help in keeping your app visible in the app store. It also assures users that there is an active technical support for the app. Bugs and other technical issues are often the subjects of negative reviews so it ties up with other factors that boost app downloads. Regular app updates do not only increase the app’s user base, it also increases retention and contributes to app ranking.
Viral loop through social media and other channels.
A viral loop is a marketing strategy in which users become the product’s own marketers through the power of social sharing. It starts with a call for attention that then encourages users to share information about your app. It soon becomes a cycle, something that keeps on giving. About 77% of app users downloaded apps recommended to them by friends or family.
App localization.
We’ve discussed app localization before. App localization is a driving force in increasing app downloads. It enables an app to extend its reach to a previously untargeted market. With localization, there’s much room for scaling.
ASO for every iOS update.
For almost every iOS update, there’s also changes in the App Store algorithm. This is especially true with iOS 9’s deep linking and search capabilities, ASO practices need to also upgrade in order to adapt. Optimizing content and not only the app’s copy is now the forefront of ASO. It’s not only about visibility in the App Store anymore.
App indexing.
In iOS 9, ASO emphasis falls on in-app content indexing. An app content index may include events, screens, and even user-generated content. App-related search triggers are now more common. Therefore, app content is would a common sight in mobile SERPs. A high ranking in mobile SERPs is also believed to produce the same conversion rate that web pages enjoyed in the heyday of SEO.
App Website.
A website for your app is important, not only for support and promotional purposes but also for ranking in mobile SERPs. Google also crawls content from an app’s website. As a result, more app website content rank in SERPs. It is important to design your app website so that it is mobile-friendly. Provide a description, screenshots, previews and download links to further convince the site’s visitors that your app is fit for download.
Pokémon Go Plus is an app peripheral that can be used as a companion for the Pokémon Go app. The peripheral is paired to a smartphone via Bluetooth LE . Some of Pokémon Go Plus features include:
You can wear the peripheral as a wristband or as a clip for your tie or lapel.
Light and vibration alert whenever a Pokémon is nearby. The peripheral eliminates the need for constantly checking your phone for the presence of a Pokémon.
You can throw a Poke Ball with just a press of the button. The peripheral would vibrate to indicate that your attempt was successful.
The peripheral will also notify you if there’s a PokeStop nearby. It is also possible to collect items like Poke Balls, berries and Pokémon eggs.
There’s a Demand but Is It Really Practical?
As one reviewer in GameStop stated, “The anticipation is unreal!” Even with the $34.99 price tag, it is sold out prior to its September 30 release date. But do the benefits of having this peripheral outweigh its shortcomings? Accept it, even if you’re a die-hard Pokémon fan, you still want to get what’s worth your money, right? Here are several issues that can undermine the need for an app peripheral like Pokémon Go Plus:
Except for the purpose of convenience, it doesn’t really offer any new functionality which is the selling point of most standalone peripherals.
And since Bluetooth is used, the paired smartphone should be within the range of the peripheral. Even with the one-time setup, Pokémon Go Plus can’t be truly considered a “standalone” peripheral since it can’t function without the app.
The smartphone and the peripheral would vibrate at the same time whenever a Pokémon is nearby.
You can only catch Pokémon species you already captured.
You can’t control the throw of the Poke Balls. A lot of Pokemon Go users worry that the peripheral is just another way to burn through Poke Balls, facilitating more in-app purchases.
Pokémon Go’s bugs and glitches would affect the peripheral’s performance.
You may need to stake out more money to have one. The peripheral is no longer available for pre-order. A lot of people took advantage of this and started selling guaranteed deliveries ten times the original price. You may have wait longer to have one after all.
App reskinning is just a venture that can either be profitable or a complete failure. It all depends on how you approach and keep the venture going. Some get into reskinning for fun; some to develop a budding career and then there are those who want to play the game. No matter what role you play in this industry, your success will depend on how much you’re willing to risk and how ready you are to lose.
How much would you really earn?
Source codes in some mobile app marketplaces include information about the amount that it earned for its owner. Most of the time, the figures are accurate but there’s no assurance that you can earn more or even close to that amount. But while it isn’t very reliable, these figures can help in ascertaining the earning potential of your reskin.
Most of the time, app reskinning is promoted as one of those new age passive income opportunities – not as a quick-rich fix. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any reskinners that made it big. Let’s take a peek into real developer app income and learn how they maneuver their way into the competitive industry of app development. (Hint: Some luck is needed!)
A Look into App Income Reports
Reskinner No. 1: Chris Punke (Made his $30 crap out $1,673.73)
Punke decided to give reskinning a try after the world became crazy over Flappy Bird. He doesn’t like the game but he thought that he could have fun creating a clone similar to the ones he always sees in the app stores. In short, Punke wants to spoof the hit app. He bought a $30 source code from Ragdog Studios. It was a complete source code. The only thing Punke needed to do was change the graphics and sound assets. His app reskin was done after 8-10 hours. He called it Crappy Bird because of its – crap.
There were a couple of setbacks. First, the review process lasted for more than a week. When Punke finally published his reskin there were already lots of Flappy Bird clones in the App store. Three of these clones were also called “Crappy Bird”. One of the authors of the Crappy Bird clones started to heavily promote his app. He was leveraging on people who were constantly searching the app stores for anything close to Flappy Bird. Punke benefited from this heavy advertisement as people started searching for “Crappy Bird”, increasing his own reskin’s exposure. As a result, he earned considerable amount before his reskin tanked out a month or so after.
Reskinner No. 2: Walkabout Media, LLC (Just keep on going)
The man behind Walkabout Media, LLC is Harlan. He quit freelance work and started generating passive income through self-publishing, app development, and YouTube marketing. His income reports aren’t that impressive (sometimes he earns nothing for a month from his projects) but he’s actually not discouraged by it. Take for example his April and May 2015 app income report (below). Some of his apps that had gone live late 2013 weren’t earning much to make mention. But he kept on reskinning and he now has 11 apps in the App Store – apps that he reskinned by himself.
The “20 Line Slot Machine” source code was bought from BlueCloudSolutions.com for $750. It’s not cheap but since it’s a source code from Carter Thomas, Lee Rankinen and Justin Malik (the duo that runs the blog) took a shot at it. You can see below that they haven’t broken even the source code’s cost yet. But another reskin using the same source code would only cost $60 (their estimates).
These are just three app income reports representing common scenarios in app reskinning. Sometimes big revenue would come as a surprise and sometimes it can become disappointingly low to only pick up after a few months (like what happened with Flappy Bird). The app stores’ volatility is a big factor in an app’s performance. That’s why a comparison is not that reliable as a benchmark especially with app reskins.
Estimating App Income
App monetization models aren’t created equal. Even the way you use different monetization models impacts not only app income but also user experience, impressions, click through and retention.
Things are different with app reskins since retention rates are commonly low. Consecutively, download and revenue could tank after a month – really bad. This is actually normal since the initial boost of the app’s release is already gone. But this time is also a great time to test monetization models. How much would ads and in-app purchases amount to if your app tanked and you hold on it for a year? Would it be enough to give you a steady income?
For an app reskin where you spent $980 (including the source code and outsourced work without any allocation for advertisements), the least amount you can earn using different monetization models can be:
A paid app that costs 99¢ with 1,000 downloads in the first month and 5 downloads a day in the succeeding 11 months can still earn you $2,643.30. Based on statistics, the average revenue per download of an Android app is $0.01875 and $.1 for the Apple platform. So if your app had 2,670 downloads, the average revenue for Android will be $50.0625 and $267 for Apple. But also according to statistics, the average downloads per app is 60,000 for Android and 40,000 for Apple. So an average Android app will make about $1,125 and $6,000 for the average Apple app.
In-app purchases have an average conversion rate of 1% – 5% with some games reaching up to 10%. If the app had 1,000 downloads in the first month and 5 downloads a day (average freemium app download is about 10 a day) for 11 months this will be 2,670 downloads total. Calculating downloads with a 3% conversion at $14 per transaction (overall average), you’ll be earning $1,121.4.
Stanford Venture Lab has a generalized formula for calculating mobile ad revenue. It’s a long formula but it boils down to the number of impressions and users who retained the app in a certain length of time over other influencing factors. The result reveals that for every 100,000 app users, the ad revenue will be $12,240. So, if there are 2,670 downloads for a year, the ad revenue will be $326.808.
But there are different advertising models (CPC, CPI, CPM) that are used by different mobile advertising networks. Degrees of effectiveness varies depending on the average eCPM (effective cost per mille). Below is a comparison of the performance of popular ad networks.
* Ad Networks eCPM (iOS and Android) July 2015. Source:
** Based on a case study as advertised by Tapjoy. Source:
The formula for eCPM is, total earnings/impressions x 1000. Most mobile ad networks don’t disclose average figures (regional and global) for some metrics like impressions and click-through rates (CTR) that are important in estimating future app performance and revenue.
Estimating an app’s revenue can be tricky especially if the factors aren’t constant. It’s comparing a fixed price to CPC and CPI rates that change from campaign to campaign. As seen on the sample app income reports, reskinners are often near or slightly above the median in terms of revenue. This is not accounting the number of live apps that a reskinner has at the same time. But the cost of app development wasn’t considered in the statistical comparison of revenue over downloads. So it could mean that a reskinner has more leverage even to a regular indie developer since on average app reskinning would cost anywhere from $100-1,000 while an app made from scratch would cost around $1,500-250,000 depending on the complexity.
But as what the numbers are showing, reskinning only offsets the cost, but not necessarily increases profit. The problem of profitability and sustainability in the app development industry is not only limited to reskinners. Even some app development companies are struggling to get out from the app poverty line.
The App Poverty Line
About 60% of app developers are considered to be below the app poverty line. These app developers earn lesser than $500 a month – an amount not even enough for subsistence much more in covering development costs. Only 10% of app developers are in the “safe zone”, earning about $10,000 a month. Reports say that app stores cannot sustain the rising population of developers and their apps. It doesn’t help that indie developers and small app development companies are seeing it harder and harder to compete with the app stores’ “Top 1.6%”, composed mostly of the big names and earning more than twice than that of the rest of the other developers combined.
Many reskinners are in the App Poverty Zone. Image Source:
With this in mind, it seems like app reskinning cannot become a main source of income. Former reskinners that are now selling source code earn more than the reskinners they cater to mostly because the risks are almost non-existent. But this doesn’t mean that there’s no chance of making it big, the probability isn’t just cooperating – yet. But there are actually ways to make reskinning pave your way into success.
How to Stretch App Income
Volume is the key. The first reskin you publish may cost up to $1,000 but publishing another reskin of the source code can produce a real profit. You can save a lot if you did these things in your first reskin:
Buy a multiple license source code. You can reskin to your heart’s content and if the first app reskin fails, you can just tweak some aspects of the reskin like slight changes in the UI or sprites.
Buy in bundles. Graphics and sound assets that come in bundles can save you not only money but also time. You can tweak the assets (a few color changes here and there) to mix and match them with your next reskins.
Find good outsourced work. There is no shortage of freelancers to outsource – it’s harder to find a freelancer that would suit your needs and expectations. You may have hired a great graphic artist but his style doesn’t suit your tastes. You’ll waste time and money while being unsatisfied with the output. This will make you lose the advantage of fast publishing. You can save as much as 40% from the amount you spent on your first reskin. But if you want your next reskin to be quite different from the first, it would take almost as much time as the first reskin. An app created from scratch would cost as much as 10-20 app reskins so it’s still a bargain.
If your app starts to tank and updates aren’t helping in lifting up the numbers, pull it out of the store and repackage it, giving it a new title or other features so that it can benefit from the boost that a launch creates.
Set your goals into scaling from the beginning. If you’re just thinking of making app reskinning a new source of passive income, you would almost subconsciously take things slow with minimal risks. But if you want to make it big, you should keep the mindset of growing the business model from the very beginning.
Never cease to track your app. App analytics can actually give you good insights into your targeted market and how people that download your app behaves. Tweak and rework your ASO and ad filters from time to time to adjust to seasonality and keyword trends which can boost your downloads. Also, by tracking your app’s performance, you can immediately see what doesn’t work like an underperforming ad network or in-app purchase.
Online passive income opportunities had come and gone in the past decade but some are still profiting from it. After the fad is gone, only those who are willing to work hard and have a clear perspective for growth would remain. The numbers may not be promising right now but it doesn’t mean that it would never be. Just like the Android app developer, Maty who waited for more than two years before his apps took off. Maybe the real investment in app reskinning is the time it would take before you finally master the app stores and not the cost of a single app – which if you think of it, is a better ROI.
Understanding your app’s target audience goes beyond knowing who your audience is. It is also important to understand their needs and expectations as it intersects with the function of your app. Understand this audience down to their behavior patterns since more often than not, you’ll get to encounter different user segments in app reskinning. But as a rule of thumb, some level of market research is necessary before undertaking any marketing endeavor. So here are some things to consider when creating apps for a target audience:
An app should begin with the audience, not the idea. There are times when we see apps in app stores and say, “That’s a great idea!” and wish we could’ve been the first to think it up. But then after a few weeks, the app fizzles out since no one seems to share the same enthusiasm for the idea. In app reskinning you market the app’s general concept to another audience, so instead of thinking “LookFor seems like a good app to reskin to locate people you don’t like in the crowd”, think “I will create a reskin targeting the 12% of adult smartphone users that regularly use geosocial services. LookFor seems like a good app to emulate.”Users that perform certain tasks or download apps that have similar features to your app are easier to persuade into downloading your app.
“I am my own target audience” works if you’re an island. Always perform market research. Users that perform certain tasks or download apps that have similar features to your app are easier to persuade into downloading your app. App ideas that appeal to you may not appeal to a bigger market.
Your target audience may be the wrong audience. This is especially true with apps targeted for children. There are times that adults actually like these apps more than kids. More often than not, the parents and not the kids decide which apps to download and IAP items to purchase. There’s also the issue of engagement. Check your target audience’s level of engagement. Casual smartphone users on average, use no more than 3 or 4 apps regularly.
Your target audience may not need or want for your app. App users download an app for two reasons: interest and need. The app has to either offer unique features, improved user experience or a new concept. The app has to stand out amidst the crowd of apps.
Make sure that your target audience uses the device of the platform you are developing in. The difference in the user demographics between iPhone and Android contributes greatly to the performance of niche apps. Android users are more interested in action or horror films. iOS users, on the other hand, are mostly interested in comedy and drama.
Bonus Tip:
More than demographics, peek into user psychographics. Psychographic profiling can give you details that demographic profiling cannot provide or just broadly define. Psychographics digs deep into the user’s emotions and mentality as a consumer. This is possible through tools that use algorithms to gather social profile data, behavioral data, and customer lifecycle data. Examples are polls, surveys, third-party services or specific A/B tests.
