One of the challenges of free 2 play is that most app can’t relay on a single source of revenue. Sure, SuperCell and King.com pulled advertising out of their games and are relaying purely on In-App Purchases. Here is a news flash – you are not them. More likely than not – you are averaging somewhere between $0.01 to $0.10 ARPDAU and need additional revenue sources. If you look through our blog – you can find a few ideas how to monetize your game. Balancing between them, however, is a totally different story so here are a few tips for doing just that.
The cutoff point for introducing ads is $0.05 ARPDAU
Based on a calculation made by InMobi, if you are making more than $0.05 ARPDAU you shouldn’t worry about advertising. If you are making less, advertising can become a big source of revenue for you. In fact if your users play 5 minutes per day you will be making more revenue with ads compared to IAP at that level.
Even the payers start as non-payers
Some games start off by blasting their users with ads and offer an option to remove ads for a $1. That’s not a great practice. If users don’t like the ads they are much more likely to choose another game than to pay you a dollar. This means that your game can lose potential whales for a small profit of a few cents. A much better strategy is to focus the first few days on increasing game engagement and getting the user to make a real commitment like sharing, rating or engaging with the in-game coins.Simple segmentation on the client side
Unlike some really sophisticated services that will take you a month to integrate and master, the method suggested here is rather simple and doesn’t even require a server. Simply flag the users who made a purchase and apply the following behavior:
- Reduce ads and focus them on cross promoting your own titles. If you don’t have other titles – try to get a premium deal for those users.
- If you are offering an ‘earn coins’ option in your game (you should) – remove that option for payers
- Make sure they always have more items to buy by updating your app with more content
