My Year as an Apple Dev with Stencyl

So I got an e-mail today telling me my Apple dev licence expires in 30 days. Its been a great year, a dream come true really, worked with some great people and learned a lot of good stuff. I thought id give you a brief breakdown how how things have gone revenue and downloads wise. The revenue is before I have paid shares to the good people I have worked with over the year, I'm not going to go into any detail about percentages etc.

3 games, Wheelie Legend, Golf is Hard, Wrassling

440K downloads in total on iOS

iADS $793                        (only Wheelie Legend)

iAP $1,520                       (Golf and Wheelie $1 to remove adverts, Wrassling $1.99)

Admob $19,032            (All 3 games have Admob interstitials)

ChartBoost $6,011    (Only Wrassling)

All thanks to Stencyl and the awesome people I've met through it, looking forward to another good year.

Thanks for writing this! That sure is a ton of cash, nice job!

That is crazy money man. Good job, and I wish u the best in the next year.

That is very inspiring. I am definitely going in a different route for my development, but hope to supplement my contract work with my own games.

Thank you very much for posting this. I like the idea of transparency so every can have something to shoot for.

Congratulations. Hard work pays off.

Congratz for the success mate, and thanks for sharing and motivating us!

Thanks for sharing this, helps put into perspective what a year of hard work can do.

Making a living on stencyl my dream

3 games, Wheelie Legend, Golf is Hard, Wrassling

440K downloads in total on iOS

iADS $793                        (only Wheelie Legend)

iAP $1,520                       (Golf and Wheelie $1 to remove adverts, Wrassling $1.99)

Admob $19,032            (All 3 games have Admob interstitials)

ChartBoost $6,011    (Only Wrassling)

Care to explain these number a little bit more? Speciffically,

How much was spent on Advertising per game?
      -What sites were used to advertise

How many downloads per game?
    - Phone / Tablet

How long each game was out?
   - Release date - June 15th?

If not, thanks again for the original post anyhow, still leaves great motivation for all the indies on here!

I can go into a bit more detail tomorrow, the first one is easy though, $0 was spent on any form of advertising, I don't necessarily think advertising is bad but I've not found a need for it as of yet.

Okay, looking forward to hearing about it.  But another question, with 0$ spent on advertising, did you use free forms of advertising?
    -game review sites,
    -flash releases
    -teaser videos
    -game journals
    -etc?
or just not advertise at all beside word of mouth?

only for Wrassling, I sent out Teslfight builds to YouTube channels. Lonniedos played it and Appspy did a hands on before release. I also did a touch arcade forum post which resulted in a few other sites writing articles. The Wrassling pre launch press stuff went pretty well.

only for Wrassling, I sent out Teslfight builds to YouTube channels. Lonniedos played it and Appspy did a hands on before release. I also did a touch arcade forum post which resulted in a few other sites writing articles. The Wrassling pre launch press stuff went pretty well.

That is really good advice. I will keep it mind when releasing my games.

Along the same lines of Seaver's questions, how long did it take to develop each of the 3 games? Some people seem to be under the impression that you can make games in a week or two and receive boatloads of revenue.

Making a living on stencyl my dream

I wouldn't be too hasty there. Indeed, its a pretty significant sum of money, but $25,000 for a year isn't necessarily as fluffy as it sounds (plus, as mentioned, we aren't accounting for rev share cuts;) compare this to Mike at Ludum Dare who was asking for what was probably a close to bare minimum $3,000 a month to cover living expenses, which is $36,000 a year. I'm sure he's very pleased with the results, but I'd guess its by no means a complete living. Colburt can correct me if I'm wrong though.

Just wanted to make sure we're being real about things.

Oh i know im just saying he did 3 games for one year thats pretty good