Introduction
Tis the season for retrospection, and NimbleBit will not go quietly into 2010. In our first “Numbers” article we tried to explain that in our experience, success on the App Store wasn’t strictly rags or riches. Seven months later I can still safely argue that there exists a comfortable and sustainable grey area between million dollar jackpots and ramen noodle dinners. As before we’re releasing the numbers for our games in the hopes that their analysis will be helpful to other indie developers. This numbers article will focus more on what worked in 2009, what mistakes we can learn from, and how we intend to keep the ball rolling in 2010. A quick primer on the makeup of NimbleBit (mobile): iPhone development has been a one man show for the most part, with most games being developed myself (Ian). Dave took a few breaks from developing Zero Gear for PC with Brian to collaborate with me on two of our games.
The NimbleBit Strategy
We’ve launched a dozen iPhone apps in our time on the App Store including some failed “lite” versions no longer available. We’ve learned from each one, and at this point I think our strategy on the App Store is pretty clear cut. Our broadest goal isn’t to cross our fingers for a top ten app, but to create NimbleFans. The NimbleFans are people who own multiple NimbleBit games, generally believe them to be worth more than $0.99, and most importantly, enjoy our games enough to show and tell others about them. The goal is to build a brand known for simple, fun, and polished games which are profitable as a group. With our integrated NimbleStore, every Scoops sale is a potential future Sky Burger, Textropolis, or Moon Drop sale. Every Freebie Friday download is a NimbleFan waiting to be born. With the right amount of quality games, cross-promotion, and exposure, a sustainable life away from the bustling top iTunes charts seems possible.
With the right amount of quality games, cross-promotion, and exposure, a sustainable life away from the bustling top iTunes charts seems possible.
The strategy for developing the actual games has also become clearer. We tend to stick to the following guidelines when developing a new game:
- Sharp & Simple: The game should look great and the goal and controls should be instantly obvious.
- Small Teams, Short Dev Times: Limiting a game to 1 or 2 developers and a month or less of dev time reduces risk while increasing relative profitability at the same time.
- Mass Appeal: The game should have a reasonably wide audience. Who doesn’t like ice cream or burgers?
The NimbleStore
Our NimbleStore is the glue binding the pieces of our strategy together. Since its humble beginning in April 2009, the NimbleStore has seen:
- 1,685,841 Pageviews
- 1,206,766 Unique Visitors
- 13,170 Game Sales
- $2,372 in LinkShare revenue
We’re always trying to improve the usability of the NimbleStore and find new ways to drive traffic to it, both inside and outside our games. Most recently we’ve been using it to grow our new “NimbleList” mailing list, a newcomer to our marketing strategy. Lets take a closer look now at how our individual games performed in 2009. Included for each game are development resources and revenue (to date) per development man hour. This return per man hour is a function of a game’s revenue to date, and should only go up over time with the game’s total revenue barring any large updates requiring development hours.
Scoops
2008 may have been the year of “Hanoi” for NimbleBit, but 2009 was unquestionably the year of “Scoops”. I can’t thank my wife Gina enough for suggesting this game idea when I was trying to figure out what to make for my first “real” iPhone game. Scoops is certainly the main breadwinner, and while NimbleBit would still be profitable without it, I think we would only be hovering just above solvency. Over the last year I’ve had a lot of time to ponder the reasons why Scoops might have enjoyed such success. While some might be quick to assert that we just got lucky with Scoops, I think there is more to it. Scoops was jump-started to life when it was featured in the “What’s New” section of the App Store immediately following a 2 day free giveaway to revive slumping initial sales. While it only peaked at around the top #35 paid app, Scoops enjoyed stays in the top 100 games for months at a time. It has managed to stay in the top 3 Kids games for nearly its entire lifetime without any paid advertising. Whether its the playful tilt controls or the colorful graphics, there is something about Scoops that resonates with nearly everyone. Scoops spreads incredibly well by word of mouth. There are thousands of reviews on iTunes explaining how a friend showed them Scoops or they always pass it around to all their friends. At face value, I guess stacking ice cream or burgers up into the sky sounds like more fun to more people than spelling words, or landing lunar pods.
Textropolis
Being a word game, Textropolis is somewhat of a niche game. Even without its mass appeal, Textropolis has been well received and has become somewhat of a cult classic. Not many word games offer persistent stress free gameplay that you can easily pick up and play for any length of time. Enough people have enjoyed Textropolis and asked for more that I just recently released Fishtropolis a matter of days ago.
Sky Burger
The sequel to Scoops in Spirit, Sky Burger is our 2nd most popular game but falls far from the profitability of Scoops due to its longer development time and having more than one developer. Sky Burger is certainly a more complex game than Scoops which is why it took more manpower to develop. In the end we ended up with many requests for a simple “Scoops” mode in Sky Burger, so perhaps we violated our own “Keep it simple” rule.
Bluebird
Bluebird was an experiment in rapid development times. From design to submission Bluebird took 4 days to make. Given enough time Bluebird ends up being profitable, but at the expense of overall quality and finish. Although it was a fun exercise, I think games of this caliber detract from the overall image of the NimbleBit brand.
Moon Drop
Moon Drop fell way short of our expectations. With sharp graphics and cute little astronauts we thought we really had something special. All started well after launch, getting featured by Apple and climbing well into the top 100 paid apps. After a week or so however, sales plummeted back to earth, below most of our other games. In retrospect I think Moon Drop’s controls weren’t intuitive enough and the gameplay itself was too difficult. These issues combined with the narrower appeal of space might have been Moon Drop’s downfall.
Looking Forward
I may be biased, but I think NimbleBit has a bright future ahead it! We will continue hone our App Store strategy and create new NimbleFans by releasing new iPhone games as our total number of app downloads hits 2 million. Fitting the all but announced Apple Tablet into our development plans will be especially exciting, and the release of our PC game Zero Gear on Jan 12 could end up changing the bigger picture for NimbleBit in some way. All in all, I think every iPhone developer has an exciting year ahead of them!
Thank you for so candidly sharing your numbers and business strategies. We at Fairlady Media have had similar experiences and lessons learned. We’re looking forward to more great game development in 2010!
[...] its certainly possible to make great money with apps that never get into the Top 25, most developers want very badly to be on that list. Being in the Top 25 during the last week in [...]
Great article!
Really glad you wrote something like this to help inspire struggling devs.
However, from most of our perspectives making great games and creating a fan base has 0 to do with success in the store… being featured does!
If I remember correctly Scoops was not only put in the What’s New lists but was also giving one of the large CTA spots in the itunes store as well as on the phone store. Whereas Sky Burger and Textropolis never made the overall featured list and were put in the Games only featured lists. You’re profits for each seem to directly reflect that.
Granted Scoops definitely resonates to the audience better than the other two, but just glancing at your graphs I think they perfectly illustrate how to make money in the app store as an unpublished indy dev - getting featured.
Scoops is a textbook example : large spike right after being featured, another spike right after that leads to being in top 50 lists of the overall Top 100, and then finally it levels off as you move backwards in the featured and top 100 lists.
Course this is where you see how well people really like your app. If it’s crap it’ll slide right off the top 100 and be ignored forever, however if it’s good (Scoops) it’ll hang out in the top 100 on it’s own merit. Once it does it often gets featured again by Apple to really bring in the dollars
(which is what I assume happened with the giant spike at the end of that graph).
I think, as a whole, the graphs also illustrate how important it is to be featured in the overall list vs just the games category lists. People just glancing at these graphs should really note the units of measure along the left. Even though the spikes look bigger in the others they really don’t hold a candle to the amount of money Scoops made on a daily basis.
Every indy dev would love to have that graph! Very “even” with a decent amount of profit every day… It really clearly illustrates what you could expect when being featured leads to the overall top 100 list…
On the other end you can see exactly what happens when you’re put on a secondary featured list (say under games or games > family) in the graphs for Textropolis and Sky Burger. Here’s those app’s profit model:
launch > crap… need to put this on sale > yay! featured! > $$$ > top 100 in some minor category but importantly NOT top 50 of the the overall list > slow decline into oblivion > oh wait! featured again! yay! > more roller coaster riding…
What’s important to note is that apps rarely make it to the top 100 without being a) featured (which is all an indy dev can hope for…) or b) from a larger publisher that can create a ton of hype for the game before it comes out…or (most frustrating of all) c) are really horribly dumb apps that really have no business existing yet for some reason the iMob downloads them cause the iMob equates to a giant steaming pile of stupid.
PLUS all these examples really illustrate the OLD itunes store where there was 90,000+ less games, and the old store design. The new design has made it even MORE impossible to find non-featured apps and it’s even LESS friendly to the indy devs. You’ll notice the giant spikes at the end of the graphs… I’d bet those are because those apps were featured - In the NEW store! Look how big those spikes are! It’s just crazy how much the re-design effects app sales!
Anyway, I obviously should get off my soapbox now. I’m really glad you released your numbers. And I could be completely wrong on the specifics of some of these points (I am just making educated guesses after all) so please feel free to correct me.
However, I think the overall point I’m trying to make is that you’re success (as well as the success for every none published indy dev making games right now) is all based on the level of in which Apple cares you exist.
Getting featured certainly makes a huge difference, but I have to correct a few things. Scoops was featured for one week in the normal “What’s New” list. It never received one of the large banner spots in the store. There will always be peaks and plateaus, but our whole goal is to keep the long tails propped up through cross promotion and word of mouth. That huge spike you see at the end of the year (which propelled it back into the top 100 games) is due to the large number of new handsets received over the holidays and was 100% generated by word of mouth, NOT getting featured by Apple.
I stand corrected:
5 weeks in What’s New. (Because at the time it was featured they were doing 10 new features every tuesday so it took 5 weeks to get off of the first page of the iphone app store… which is what really matters after all…)
And congrats on the holiday sales! Much larger spike than I’ve seen with other apps! I’d definitely attribute that to the already huge user base of Scoops and the cross promotion to your other apps through your ingame storefront.
The storefront is definitely a great feature to have in your games that’s for sure.
And to be clear - I’m not trying to belittle your success. You’ve created great games that I personally love and have recommended to family and friends.
I’m just saying that your article neglected to really drive home that without being featured you’d have 500 bucks and a bad attitude ( like me
)
In the beginning you make it sound like focusing on a NimbleFans business model lead to your success. Which isn’t true. Being featured lead to your success, which in turn lead to a huge fanbase, which in turn leads to you having the ability to stop focusing on “making Apple like us” to “making NimbleFans out of all our existing users”.
You’ve crossed over. You’re now in the spot all the big name publishers are. You need Apple to feature you to really make the $, but you have a large enough user base that if you can sell a new game to a % of your existing users and you’ll be set enough to make a living.
It’s not a bad thing at all. It’s an incredibly good thing. Just thought it should be pointed out that this rarely happens in today’s App Store climate.
You had the perfect recipe for success: Featured + a Great game that people love.
Congrats!
I know you’re not trying to be negative but the Featured or Fail mentality isn’t healthy.
Scoops was featured over a year ago, and hasn’t gotten any more advertising from Apple since. This means the majority of Scoops revenue has come when it wasn’t being featured by Apple. We’ve also done promotions like National Ice Cream day and Freebie Fridays to expand our user base.
I’d also like to point out that Moon Drop, which was featured by Apple was one of our worst performing games of the year. The recipe for success is much more than just getting featured.
Textropolis which has never been featured in “What’s New” or “What’s Hot” like Scoops was has made $26k this year (3x the revenue of featured Moon Drop), an almost livable wage off a single un-featured game.
Claiming that making great games and using alternative marketing strategies will still leave you penniless at the end of the day if you’re not lucky enough to be blessed by Apple is the wrong way to go about iPhone development in my opinion.
Edit: After reading the comments again, I understand that you think all success for all games after Scoops was a result of Scoops getting featured. I can’t prove otherwise, but I still think you can grow a large enough user base to be profitable without getting featured by Apple.
Hey all
Great article and discussion!! 
I’m the lead dev for Fairlady Media and we’ve made decent money with Spazzle (used to be Whack ‘em All) without ever being featured. The numbers for Spazzle are very similar to Textropolis. The revenue we see from Spazzle is over 90% from advertising as more than 95% of our downloads for that game are the free version.
I’d definitely concur with Ian that great money is out there for devs who don’t get lucky enough to be featured
Thanks again for sharing the numbers Ian, it’s very helpful to see.
We have managed to get by without being featured. But anyone looking for an easy reason will probably point to the fact that we used a publisher… even though we had a terrible launch, and relied heavily on our own indie marketing and word of mouth to get to where we are. And we used a publisher again for our second game, and that still bombed.
At the end of the day (in all but the strangest of cases) I think it comes down to the game. Scoops stuck, MoonDrop didn’t. Sneezies has worked for us, Eyegore hasn’t. I don’t think that means MoonDrop or Eyegore are bad games, but they don’t resonate with the audience and spread the way we expect them to. Some people are better at predicting what will fly and what won’t, and you’ll find those people regularly among the lucky ones who do well in the App Store.
Featuring is hugely important… but you can succeed without it. Maybe not to the same extent, and probably not as quickly, but it’s possible to get by. Either way, it’s not going to happen for everyone, however ‘good’ your game is. There are too many developers making iPhone games based on the published high end sales numbers, the shop window is tiny, consumers and reviewers only have so much attention to spread around, and numbers go down fast outside of the charts.
Marketing is tough. No arguments there. And it sucks when not enough people are buying your latest baby.
But hey, nobody (credible, I hope) ever said this was going to be easy. We have an awesome device to work with, a revolutionary distribution channel, 50million+ potential customers, and we’re making games for a living, it’s only fair that there be some challenges to overcome along the way… here’s to another exciting year on the App frontier!
Getting featured is definitely the best way for an unknown indie to stand out from the crowd and to build the momentum necessary for success, but I don’t think it’s the only way.
It’s also really hard to point at examples, because most apps that get successful on their own also end up being featured by Apple shortly after. So it’s really hard to know how they would have done without any featuring.
We’ve definitely seen apps break into the top 100 at launch without getting featured by Apple. A few examples that come to mind include: Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor, Canabalt, Pocket God, iShoot, Fling, and I’m sure there are more. Some of these games were catapulted into the spotlight with viral lite versions like iShoot and Canabalt (on the web flash version). So it’s definitely possible, just much harder, and is going to take more creativity and luck than getting featured by Apple.
I love all of NimbleBit’s apps. I think that Moon Drop is my favorite. I was also extremely surprised by the lack of popularity. It’s addicting!!!
[...] We’ve drooled over the numbers chart toppers sold, we’ve seen sales reports of very successful games, and we’ve also seen what happens when apps languish at the [...]
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Thanks a ton for publishing your numbers, strategies and analysis.
We at fonebag are just getting ready to launch our first app - hopefully this week as the in-app purchase process has been slooow.
I’d love to know more about which marketing strategies, particularly social media tactics, you think paid off.
Thanks,
Ken
Thanks for the numbers!
Having your own shop is without doubt your best marketing advantage. When did you start adding the shop to your games and was there a noticeable increase in revenue when you launched it? Or a certain amount of shifting from one game to the other (probably depending on one of the shop’s banner getting more attention from users)?
And what is your take on social platforms? Did you integrate any of these yet? Do you plan to? Do you think it makes sense?
Personally i’m very curious how well our game “Black Hole” will be doing. It’s coming out soon, will be published by Chillingo and will most likely be a Crystal launch title. I hope that means a certain amount of success is likely. Well, if it makes $10,000 it’ll recoup the expenses, if it makes twice that it’ll give the 4 of us some pocket money for the time we spent on it. If it were to make much more than that …. then hurray!
As for which marketing opportunities paid off the most, I think the few Freebie Fridays that we’ve had have really expanded our fan base. We don’t lose money on them and we get NimbleBit games with their NimbleStores onto thousands of new devices.
The NimbleStore has been in our games for at least 6 months now, and we know we’ve sold 13,000 games directly through the store. Through analytics we know that Scoops is clicked on in the NimbleStore roughly 2x-3x times the other games no matter where it is positioned on the page. This leads me to think that a good number of NimbleStore shoppers come from our other, less popular titles rather than Scoops.
Have you done any online advertising and can you give any rough numbers on how much you invested in that? Do you think it’s worth it?
@dwallin I have paid for almost no advertising. I have yet to hear of a developer tell anyone that their paid advertising had a positive ROI. I have only bought a few banners on some forums I frequent but they are just cheap little experiments.
Your website looks really good. Being a blog writer myself, I really appreciate the time you took in writing this article.
[...] is a really really excellent post on App Store returns for an indie iPhone game developer, NimbleBit to be [...]
[...] its certainly possible to make great money with apps that never get into the Top 25, most developers want very badly to be on that list. Being in the Top 25 during the last week in [...]
EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for! Thanks so much!