After long time not writing blogs, I decided to start writing again and bring up the discussion of making mobile games vs making money from mobile games. So the topic that I would like to bring up today is that “Making Mobile Games is now much easier, but do you think making money from Mobile Games is also easier?”
Making mobile games is so much easier now, without a doubt. There exist companies like Dovemobi, Chupamobile, Sellmyapp, Gamegorillaz, and many more that can help you to make mobile games published at Google Play or iTunes Apps Store. What they do is that they sell source code and offer reskin service to their customers and publish the games to the store.
As source code marketplace and reskin provider like Dovemobi, Chupamobile, Sellmyapp, and Gamegorillaz have run for years, people are more aware that making games is not as hard as before. You don’t need to have many people in your team to make games, and you do not need to build the game from the scratch. Client can just pay in the range of $2000 to $5000 USD and already get great source code and the reskin graphics of the bought source code, published into both Google Play and iTunes App Store.
At the same time, as people become more aware, Games that have been published on the google play and iTunes Store become saturated and thus giving us hard time to get good downloads! For example, Match 3 Games or Puzzle Bobble Game, that was popular back then! There are about 500 similar games like Match 3 Candy Crush, and there are about 500 similar games like Puzzle Bobble, with just different variations.
If you start the business 3 years ago, and doing reskin and publish them to the store, you would have had big downloads and big revenues daily. At that time, Few people understand how to publish to the stores and few people know that reskin is the faster way to get your games running to the store! I remembered that I could make $300 daily perday.
I published few MP3 Apps, and I also published games that use Spiderman similar graphics. I was making good revenues. However, suddenly at some point, the games and apps were suspended, due to copyright issues and everything like that. I should have done the right thing, making new exciting but simple games like flappy bird, and make sure the graphics that we choose and title that we choose did not violate any copyrights issue.
The bottom line is, we might have passed the golden era of Mobile Games and Apps. The golden era was 3 - 2 years ago. It was so easy to make money in this field. Fortunately, unlike cryptocurrency, Mobile Games industry are one of the sustainable fields that you can rely on for the next 5 to 10 years. Although it becomes harder, to get downloads and revenue, it would be still sustainable in the long run. That I am confident because Google Play will make sure that the mistake that Blackberry did in the past will not occur again.
The question is now, “As Indie Developer” with limited human and money resources, how to make sure that your apps will have chance to get great downloads in Google Play and iTunes Store and long survive in this industry? Here are some hints that I can share to you today:
Open more than 1 Google Play account. Google Play is very sensitive. If you make few mistakes and your game is suspended multiple times, then your account is completely suspended. Somehow, if you open another google play account, they will know that it is from you. I can teach you how to open more than 1 Google Play account safely later when I write a book. As for now, it is one of our secret strategy that we do not open for public. BUT, again, try to have more than 1 Google Play account!
You can try to publish the same game, 4 times max, with the same graphics and everything inside, BUT make sure that your screenshots, icon, title and description, are all different. To be safer, make sure you do pro screenshots that looks completely different!
After few days or months, you will know which game that has started making good traffics, pick the best and unpublish the game that is not generating traffics or downloads. It is important to avoid Spam policy problem that leads to apps suspension.
You need to know when to stop publishing the game into that account, and start looking at another new account to publish new games. It is important as every account has ratings. Once your account has 1 suspended app, it is already lower the rating of that account. Usually 4 to 5 suspended apps, it will lead to suspension account. And unfortunately, sometimes it was just a random picked by Google. So you have to be ready for that. We called it as a risk in business! =)
With the ability to open more than 1 google play account, and ability to publish the same game that is proven work and generating passive income on daily basis, I am pretty sure that as Indie developer, you will be able to sustain in this business. Not many people know how to do this. Making game from the scratch based on your idea is very risky task in this business. You can earn nothing, but when it booms, your money will be skyrocketed.
My name is Hammy Rahardja, and I am CEO of Dovemobi Games Studio. I would love and happy to talk and share my knowledge with you who read my blogs and hopefully we are able to do great things together in Google Play and iTunes Store! =)
Check our games in Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Dovemobi+Games
Website Marketplace Source Code and Reskin Service:
www.dovemobi.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/dovemobi/
Whatsapp: +628113688831
Feel Free to discuss if you are interested in making new games or buy great games source code from us!