Hey, great to hear about your success! My numbers are still strong, and they are getting better as I'm making more wallpapers. In fact according to StartApp's policy, you get to negotiate a new rate once you reach 300k installs. Your ratings are bound to take a hit as you add ads. Most people don't like ads, and would prefer to have the app free with no strings attached, especially if this is what they were used to before. You will also miss out on users who don't install apps that have ads, or request a number of permissions. But that's just how it works. We have to make money somehow too, right?
@Vas - Glad to hear it! I just got the update on my first "day" worth of downloads, which was actually only a few hours worth, but already $6, and my paid version has more downloads today than any previous day, so I'm happy with the results so far. Time to get cracking on some new wallpapers...
Ooooh $6 on the first day? That's awesome! People really don't seem to mind Startapp from what I gather because the EULA is very visual and simple. It's not like a super wordy cluttered "Terms and Conditions" kind of thing that nobody reads but suspects of nasty stuff. Out of curiosity, are you just using Startapp at the moment? Or did you implement push as well?
Guys I'm using leadbolt with push notification and I am finding it very well! leadbolt always pay, are serious, in my opinion is the best!
The previous 6 comments are exactly what I was afraid of with start-app. Those negative/virus reviews are there forever, and they will negatively impact the your lwp forever. I bet as I type this all your install rates are falling. I'm sorry for everyone who got burned, I'm glad I stayed away. Kfir, Thank you for your detailed explanation of start-app. I was very close to implementing the start-app sdk until I saw these posts here about false virus positives and negative reviews. I have also seen these reviews on their app pages, with some virus reviews coming in as early as yesterday. I cannot implement the start-app sdk if it so destructive to the developers user base. I am confidant that start-app will correct these problems in the short term, but what of the long term? How many more virus protection apps will report your sdk as a false positive? How many more bad reviews and dropped install rates are coming for the developers who use start-app? I cannot take that risk. My meathod, which is a very light, LeadBolt only push schedule, hardly ever generates negative press and it has never, nor will it ever generate false virus positives. All the negative reviews I get are from people who have a genuine problem with my lwp's, or who can't get the the live wallpaper work because their phones suck, or they are to dumb to figure out where to find the live wallpaper. I suggest that everyone focuses on making content that people actually want (like themebowl, your stuff is pretty cool) instead of spamming the crap out of live wallpapers that have barely any users.
@Maximus - Just using StartApp at the moment. I will say, I installed my own wallpaper and accepted the StartApp application, and it was not very intrusive. It took me less than 3 minutes to get rid of the icon it installed and change my browser homepage back to Google. Overall, it wasn't a horrible user experience at all. That's the good news... on to the bad... +@Stollo770 - I have gotten a handful of bad reviews based 100% on the permissions requested. People do not like that it reads the browser history... honestly, I don't like it either. My daily installs have PLUMMETED from the 700 (lowest I've had in the past 3 months) to 1000 (average around 900) a day, down to just 225 installs for yesterday. My overall active installs dropped by 1,532, the biggest drop ever by more than 300%. My revenue for the first day was $6.36, a pretty decent number for just 285 downloads over a 6 hour period. Unfortunately, today is a different story... 185 total installs out of the 225 downloads, $3.61 made, total earnings for the last 30 hours comes out to just under $10. Realistically, that's not horrible. That equates to roughly $150 a month for just the one wallpaper... but I'm definitely worried about what it's doing to my userbase, especially daily installs. Going to ride it out for the rest of the month and see how I do, then make the decision to remove StartApp or not. Stollo - Definitely would like to hear what you have to say about earning potential on LeadBolt, as well as how many/what permissions you need to add. I would love to be able to keep my userbase happy.
Certainly, What I like about LeadBolt is that they are classy, they don't harass users, they don't force download shit onto user's devices, their ad schedules are completely control able, and their ECPM's are consistent and reliable. Their customer service is also second to none, and as soon as you join they assign you your own customer support assistant, who is the same guy forever, and he is available almost 24 hours a day. During regular business hours (9am-5pm PST), you can even live chat with them, with ether google play instant messaging or video to talk about the ads in your apps. They are very knowledgeable and will help you craft the plan you want in order to satisfy your monetary needs and maintain your user base. Their ad sdk is also very easy to implement and Vas's tutorials cover 100% of it. Here is the strategy I use and the reasoning behind it (prepare to read a lot): The live wallpapers that LWC currently produces are O.K but they cannot at all compete with the better ones from either Kittehface, aniFree, and other same-level competitors. LWC also has trouble competing with the lwps that are just animated GIFs depending on their complexity and design. So right off the bat you have to know: that as soon as you try and compete with/enter any live wallpaper category that is over saturated, or has software in it designed by any of the big guys, you won't be able to. No one will download your stuff because it can't compete, and also because Kittehface and the other big guys DO NOT RUN ADS IN THEIR FREE VERSIONS. Their market share is so huge, that they don't need too. They make money because users will buy their stuff because it is just that damn good. Nothing that LWC can make even comes close to their stuff. So all the people here (like that new Mexican guy whose name begins with an E or something) who only sell their stuff, are quite foolish because no one will spend 99cents on inferior software. Even if it's in a niche market, no one will pay 99cents for it. No one. So the only way to make money with LWC on the android market is to make your software free. People don't think twice about downloading free stuff, because even if the software is inferior to the big guys, users will think "what the hell, its different, it looks cool and its free" and they will download it. There is always room for free stuff. However, as soon as a user downloads your software they will immediately compare their experience to the bigger guys and judge you critically on it. I'm not talking about the graphics and animation and stuff, I'm talking about the user experience: does it harm their phone, does it run okay, is it spammy, etc. If you lwp conflicts with any of that, its gone. Without thought your users will dump it, and then they will leave you a horrible review, which other users will see, and then they will avoid you because there is waaay better software out there then yours. Then your left no where with nothing. So if you go down a route that spams your users with start-app, push ads, icons, etc. and you spam too much, or you spam with the virus positive start-app sdk, your done. Its over. Just quit because your users already have and every bad review they leave only serves to dig your grave further down. I make money on my apps with a light (very light) push notification schedule. As I said, users HATE spam, so in order to keep them happy you need to feed them ads at a very slow rate. My schedule is as follows: -Users will get one single push ad when they download and run my lwps for the first time. It has the same effect as start-app minus the horrible reviews. And there is no EULA pop-up bullshit. -Users will then receive on single ad once every four days. This schedule is very light, which allows the users (myself included) forget who is even sending the ad and the last time it came. When the ad pops up once every four days; the user sees it, and clears it away with out thought. However, the user makes a mental note of this, and any ad received shortly after will make them feel over-spammed and they will dump the software and leave a bad review. So the four day gap is nessisary for the users to forget about the ad. They continue to use the software carefree, and once another ad comes in 4 days, they will have forgotten about the previous one, clear it, and the cycle repeats. Here are my current stats: I have over 120,000 daily users across all my applications, not downloads, users. I sustain about 5,000 downloads a day across all my applications, some more popular than others, but it all averages out. My light schedule gets me about 24,000 impressions a day and about 1000-1200 clicks. LeadBolt usually gives me an ECPM that averages around $1.87, so I make about $45.00 a day, every day (about $1,395.00 a month). That number is also going up, with this month's earnings being doubly higher than the previous one's as more users download/use my software. The only reason why my plan works is because I retain my users. If I wanted to I could max out my ad schedule and make a shit load of money for the first couple of days, but then all my users would flee, and I'd be left with nothing. With this schedule I ensure that all my users are happy, I am happy, and the stat graphs continue to move into the positive. Now I can focus on other things, like fixing my company's website, which no-one goes to (but that's another story). Also, I'm not done building live wallpapers. I obviously plan to keep building more live wallpapers, and I know that they will never be as popular as the big guys, but as long they are free, well designed, and my users are happy, I'll still make money in the long run. Its the "long tail business model". That's also why I use LeadBolt, because they are classy, pay well, are unobtrusive, and share my user centered values (unlike airpush, etc.). So to summarize what I outlined above: -Make stuff that people want -Do not spam your users with shit, or with virus positive stuff like start-app (I'd remove start-app IMMEDIATELY if I had it) -Keep a light schedule -Keep the well being of your users in mind and ensure that everyone/anyone who downloads your software has a positive experience -Only use Leadbolt push ads as your source of monetization, or any other company that is as good as Leadbolt -Bad reviews will destroy you Here are the consequences of over-spamming and ruining your user experience: You will obviously get horrible reviews and lose your users/daily downloads. That goes without saying. But the main consequence is far, far worse. Google play is self regulating, meaning that good rated and highly downloaded software moves up, and bad rated less downloaded software moves down. Virgin apps start out in the middle. There are hundreds of live wallpapers in just about every category that you can think of, so you have a lot of competition, which is almost always better than you. But, as I said, the market self regulates. This means that when you search for a live wallpaper, lets say you want a live wallpaper featuring a city so you type in "City live wallpaper". Google then returns a list of apps that fit this criteria. What do you see at the top of the list? Its a live wallpaper (by Kittehface) that has a ton of downloads a ton of awesome reviews. Now travel down the list. The farther you go down the installs and the ratings decrease. This is because good apps move up, and bad apps move down. Meaning that if you keep getting negative reviews, and your instal rates and users keep falling, you too will move down the list. You will get to the point (very fast) where your competitors will pass you, more users will flee, and even if you fix everything, your still screwed because now your so far down the list that no-one can see you. Then your done. The live wallpaper is dead or as Maximums puts it "plateaued", and the only direction it will move in is down. That's the power of bad reviews. Even worse, you now have all these bad reviews so any new user who sees your live wallpaper will see it as a virus infected spam machine, and avoid you. Keep it up with mulitple apps your developer name will even come under fire. Users will see you as the developer who makes shit that's full of spam and avoid everything you make, even the new, fresh stuff. Then its truely over. You probably know of some apps/dev's like this yourself. And those devs all use the over-spamming "make a quick buck" strategy. Its toxic. So that's my manifesto. Hope this helps anyone who takes the time to read it. I basically just vomited everything I know about the market and its behaviors onto this forum.
Thanks Stollo! That was a quite extensive and informative response. I'll be headed over to try out LeadBolt soon.
Well, that's one way to do it. Clearly it's working for you. However, it's not the only way Your schedule is indeed very light. 1 ad every 4 days is very user friendly. I run StartApp and push ads in my apps. I personally find that StartApp is less intrusive than push ads, but my push ads are delivered daily. Either way, I try to ride the line between making the most out of my apps and not making the users irritated. User reviews definitely affect your standing and download rate, but I have not had any bad reviews about StartApp yet. However, it's never clear what these virus reports are identifying as a threat. It's very possible that it's StartApp, but it's also possible that it's another SDK. Nevertheless, it's not enough to deter me from using both monetization models to make dollars. A huge factor that comes into play is the location of your userbase. US users result in better earnings and CPM rates, so consider that as well.
Just going to throw in for people who visit this thread... You may have some luck with StartApp, but I would recommend not throwing it on your main wallpaper until you see the results. It took only 2 days to go from 900 average downloads to only 59 total downloads. In that 48 hour period, I lost over 4,000 active users, and received my first ever bad reviews (three 1 star reviews in that time). I have removed StartApp from my LWP as it's jut not worth it, but I'm not sure if my numbers will recover. I'll update this post when I have updated numbers. Update/Edit: 3/6/13 - Looks like my wallpaper has recovered. The last few days have seen downloads over 1200 per day. Overall, I lost .2 of my rating (4.56 to 4.36), and my active users are still about 1,000 less than they were before, but they are recovering day after day.
Sorry to hear that. I'd have to say that your advice goes for any ad that you decide to put in your free apps. Monetizing via ads means: added permissions, and extra icon or service being installed, or a banner that the user is not used to seeing. You're attaching strings to what didn't have any in the first place. Expect a reaction. Or pack ads from the start, so that there are no surprises for users later. Hope your wallpaper recovers. I recommend you to make more
I think that removing start-app was a wise maneuver. When you monetize with LeadBolt the only permission they require is network access, which is nothing because mostly every app requires network access and users don't really care about that. There is no browsing history permission or other intrusive BS, I bet that's why AVG flagged them, because start-app digs though a users personal information (which is outrageous). Make sure though, that when you monetize with LeadBolt, to only add the permissions nessisary for network communication and the boot stuff. LeadBolt gives you the option to ad location permissions for location based ads, and I would strongly advise that you avoid those. Users hate that perhaps more than anything and it'll make you look a super spammer because there is no reason why a live wallpaper needs to know where someone is. Just stick to a light push schedule, and everything will be okay. Hopefully your numbers will regain their traction but, those bad reviews are going to be there forever. Your just going to have to hope that other people leave good reviews to balance it out (that usually happens quickly if your software is good, give it a couple weeks). Then your bad reviews will get buried and all will be well again.
@Vas - Thanks, I hope so too. Already started working on more. @Stollo - I'm going to work LeadBolt into the new ones and see how it does. Think I'm going to stay away from my main one for now. While the bad reviews suck, I have 79 reviews with a 4.4 average (down from 4.7 before StartApp), so it's not tooooo bad. Unfortunately, it only took the 2 days to slam my wallpaper from first in search to mid 30's. I'm sure it will eventually recover, but it's definitely discouraging as hell.
Thank you stollo770 and am glad you like my apps btw regarding startapp ads i often see reviews of virus threat detected in avg like that from users.but and when ever i see review all i do is i install my app on phone and test it with avg scanner for past few days i didn't find any virus threat on apps using startapp and i really doubt those people who writes reviews are those any competing developers with some other name writes bad reviews? but main concern on using startapp is their price i get 1800+ to 3000 downloads per day for apps that use startapp but the revenue generated is as low as $15 for 2000+ downloads. does any one who use startapp have same problem ? ie abnormal figure as per startapp 1000 downloads from us gives $50 and from rest of countries $10 isn't it?so suppose i get 2000 downloads per day from rest of countries shouldn't price be $20 ? which i never get.does any one experience similar problem with startapp apart from virus thereat too? and leadbolt is pretty good too.i don't like to annoy users with lot of ads.what i really required is users satisfaction.
ok but i understand taht for now the best ads is leadbolt?? Correct??...sorry for my english but I am italian...XD
Hey guys, As you know, StartApp offers a solution that keeps your app "clean" from ads and tries as much as possible not to disturb your users. This off course requires from us to add the search icon. As I have mentioned previously in this forum, our SDK in not a virus and most anti viruses have removed their threat regarding it. As Vas mentioned on his post, you can keep working with other ad networks while working with StartApp and use push ads for example, to increase your revenue. Regarding bad reviews received via using StartApp, our solution is much less intrusive and irritating than others and you can test it. The ideal app for users will be without any icon or ad in it, but then off course it won't be free The revenue you receive depends from where your users come and whether they had StartApp's SDK on their phone prior downloading you app. We pay as follow: 1) Full integration – StartApp shall pay Developer $0.055 in the case of a new U.S. End User, and $0.01, in the case of a new non-U.S. End User. 2) Partial integration – StartApp shall pay Developer $0.04, in the case of a new U.S. End User, and $0.008, in the case of a new non-U.S. End User. 3) A returning US user (on Full or Partial integration) StartApp will pay $0.01 per user. 4)A returning non US user (on Full or Partial integration) -StartApp will pay $0.005 per user. If you have any other questions feel free to email me at kfir@startapp.com. Thank you, kfir
Hey kfir, I can attest that StartApp is indeed not very intrusive, having downloaded and installed it on my own phone. The removal process was very simple, and the search page looked almost exactly like google's, so a lot of people might not even notice their search engine changed. The complaints I saw, and what I believe to be the downfall is the number of permissions requested. Startapp requires 17 permissions to be added to our wallpapers, where as other ad companies require far less (usually less than 5). Because of the amount of permissions requested, users are far less likely to install the application. I still plan on using StartApp in a different wallpaper, but my experience with what it has done to my userbase made me greatly regret using it to begin with. I would love to see the number of permissions drop to a more reasonable number. All in all speaking for myself, StartApp is great in principal, but in practice didn't have the results I was hoping for.
Stollo77 - Thanks for taking the time and energy to help others and explain what you did, learned a lot, appreciated. My wife and I just started creating wallpapers last week, are having fun, but want to be sensible in our approach too as it would be nice to make a little back for our efforts. I'm reconsidering LeadBolt (only wondered if I had the time to learn/implement). The effort seems to be worth it based on your description/strategy and I agree that a free app/with a light push makes sense. Cheers, Eric n Di
Honuproductionsllc, Your very welcome. I'm glad that my input/suggestions were helpful for you guys. If you guys want any more questions answered or more explanations about leadbolt or mobile advertising in general, start a new thread and Ill be sure to reply to it. I have tried almost every android advertising company that exists, so I can give you pretty good insight into whats good and whats not. Enjoy making your live wallpapers, -stollo770
Hello, i have this issue with StartApp that is the stats are not accurate compared to my stats on Google Dev. Console, there is more then 50% less downloads on StartApp than on Google Dev. Console... every day! My apps went live with implemented StartApp SDK, so there is no difference there. I still have no answer from StartApp about this so i was wondering if anyone has had this issue? Or maybe is something that i m missing? Thanks
