Paid vs Free Games?
Game Factory
Member Posts: 34
Just want to see what the community thinks is better and what you guys prefer when making games. Keep in mind I mean small indie devs like us that wont get alot of traffic on our games. Obviously companies like Ketchapp can get by solely on ad revenue. With that being said, what do you prefer to do when you make a game? Make it free or paid? Also, what do you find more profitable?
Comments
I do all free and I hear it's the way to go. But yes I don't get as much traffic as I would need to make any sort of real money.... However, I do no kind of paid advertisement.
Paid is tough... no one even looks at paid games on the stores unless they're featured. The @kirafu who made Roll Turtle has a thread about his struggles with a paid game. But a lot of people posted solutions like make it free, then make like the last half of levels only be able to be played if they buy it through in app purchase.
You can technically submit your app to Ketchapp for them to distribute it for you since they are a distributor not a creation company (solely). But they have pretty high standards probably. That's why it always says some other name under Ketchapp when you open their games...
Good luck. I made a total of like 6 bucks total out of my 2 free games over a 6 month period. But I'm newer and don't do advertising yet. I was going to change things to make it free then in app purchase for more game modes or something.
@NNterprises So you make money solely on IAP? I'm new as well and haven't released my first game yet so I might not be a good source for advice, but I would definitely put ads in games if they're free. I don't imagine you could make any kind of real money with only IAP. Especially us small indie devs.
@NNterprises Or maybe you mean you don't pay to have your apps advertised not that you don't have ads in your games. Maybe I read that wrong
No one has to pay to have my apps, all my apps are free. I have ads in them which made the 6$ or whatever I said up above. But yes if you have some good traffic you make a lot of money off of just ads only.
I also put in my games that when you buy anything using in app purchase, it will remove ads. So they buy .99 cents for some points/coins and then the ads are gone too. I've made like 2.49 from this method.
Then other people do free game with ads, but then when they complete half the game, in order to move on they must "upgrade to premium" using an in app purchase to unlock the game.
There's a lot of ways to do it, but either way you will need to get traffic somehow
I think it's easier with free games, I made between 700-800 bucks from chartboost and like 50-100 from iAds & admob. My paid only got me 17 bucks and the downloads mostly came from friends.