As the title states, there is a way to increase your ECPM's and it is actually quite easy. Be prepared to read a lot: Back Story: I have a lot of downloads and active users on my live wallpapers, and subsequently a lot of views/impressions with my ads on Leadbolt. However for the focus of this thread, I will stick with my views/impressions and ECPM's on Leadbolt and leave Google Play out of it (because Google Play is irrelevant for the first part of this). On Leadbolt I currently receive about 25,500 daily impressions and I have a daily ECPM of about $1.85. However, as my views/impressions were increasing, my ECPM was decreasing at a very alarming rate. Before I decided to do anything about it, my daily ECPM dropped from $1.85 to about $1.40, which seriously affected my revenue. I did not want to leave Leadbolt, because I love them (refer to my other posts on Leadbolt) so I decided to email my Leadbolt support assistant first and express my concerns. He immediately emailed me back and then explained to me how Leadbolt ads, in fact how ALL ads work. The Problem: When a company decides to run ads in applications they first sign into an ad agency (be it Leadbolt, air-push, start-ap, send-droid, what ever) and bid in real time on how they want to display their ads, in what software categories, and how much they plan to budget for their ad campaign. Then the ad agency then sends out the ads to the applications and when users interact with them they generate a view/impression, which generates ECPM, which is then taken from the budget of the ad campaign and paid to you and the agency. However, not all views and impressions are created equal; some have high ECPM ratings and some have very low ECPM ratings. It all depends on the user but more importantly, the REGION where the ad is being displayed. Ad agencies have absolutely no control over who views your ad and where, they just know where the ad was viewed and how relevant that user is to the product being advertised. So if a company is advertising a product for the US market, but instead that ad gets sent to a guy in Indonesia, the ECPM will be very low, if not non-existent, because that user is not relevant at all to the product being advertised. So, as you gain more users in Google Play, more users from outside countries will be exposed to your ads and they can drag down your ECPM's depending on how relevant they are to the products being advertised in your software. Its not rocket science to figure out that most of what is being advertised is geared towards the USA and other developed economies, so if some guy from a developing nation gets your ad, its completely worthless to everyone. The Solution: While you cannot use your ad agency to block the distribution of ads to certain regions (impossible to program right now according to Leadbolt), you can BLOCK THE DOWNLOADS IN GOOGLE PLAY. I had my Leadbolt guy fax me over the ECPM break downs for all the countries that my ads are served in and I picked out the lowest earning countries and blocked their installs from Google Play. The lowest countries on my list that gave me consistently low ECPM's were: -Indonesia: $0.12 -Malaysia: $0.20 -Every where in Africa: $0.05 av -Everywhere in the Mid-East: $0.02 av -Ukraine: $0.30 -Slovakia: $0.24 -Poland: $0.18 -Vietnam: $0.38 These countries, while giving me next to nothing, were in fact receiving thousands of ads per-day which was contributing to my decline in ECPM's. Its not the users fault that they are irrelevant to the products being advertized and they make up a relativity small number of my daily views/impressions. However, because their ECPM's are so low they were able to negatively affect the rest of my daily income, which was a problem. So to correct this problem I went into Google Play and in the section where it says "available in every country EXCEPT:" I checked all the boxes with the low ECPM countries in them. The Result: I did this about five days ago and the results have been huge. My ECPM's have shot back up to $1.85+ and I am back on track to making a lot of money while continuing to grow. Blocking these countries did little to impact my daily instal rates or even my daily views/impressions, because the users affected were so small. The only thing that happened was I prevented more users from those bad areas from downloading my software and thus, prevented ads geared towards the USA or other developed nations from finding their way over to them. Over time the users in those bad areas will uninstall my software as they get new phones and move on to other things, and my ECPM's will go up even further. Its a win, win. Conclusion: Don't bounce around to other ad networks because of your low ECPM ratings. First, have them email you a spread sheet of the ECPM's of all your countries and block the lowest ones. Leadbolt is still the best ad network for everything, and if you left them because of low ECMP's I suggest you come back and try this method out. It works. I won't type another essay again about why Leadbolt is bar-none the best ad network in existence, instead if you want to read that I will refer you to the posts I made about them in the Start-App thread. Hope this helps some people out.
I actually do this with some of my wallpapers I make, not really paying attention to the ecpms. For instance I don't distribute my USA wallpaper to the whole world simply because some would download it and rate it negatively just because it America. I do notice that my ecpms are higher for this one than the ones I have set to 137 countries + the rest of the world! I do believe all (most) ad networks are driven by American traffic. Just look at the offers for all of them. It seems they put US installs, clicks, etc above the rest. Startapp does this paying you a full .04 cents more for a US install over a German or France install lol.
Only notifications. I use a very light notification schedule. Once when the user opens the live wallpaper for the first time and once every three days recurring. I view icon ads as to intrusive and damaging to my users experience. I try to think of it this way: when I get an icon ad is my reaction: "Oh boy! An icon ad!" or is it; "What the hell is this spam. Why did this get installed onto my home screen now I have to delete it and what else did this shitty app dump onto my phone. I'm uninstalling this immediately and leaving a shitty review." I assume the rest of the world thinks like the second opinion, as do I. Also, live wallpapers with icon ads get raped in their review sections and then that whole negative cycle I described in the start-app thread starts. Notifications use minimal permissions and my schedule allows my users to forget that they even receive them.
Hi Stollo,I read your thread carefully I think you are a professional lol,...before 2 days I started publishing my first LWs,now I have 3 LWs and I have implemented LeadBolt on them...Please as a new guy in this buissnes like Im how do I start,how to advertise my LWs,where,or what should I do, and to have a good start. I want to know everything from your experience,a few advices from you will be very helpful for a beginer like me.
I looked at this question for three days before I could come up with a good answer, but I think I got one. I remembered what I did when I was just starting out and I think I have a pretty good direction to put you in. I will cover a couple categories: Prerequisites, graphics, subject, distribution, monetization and user experience. Prerequisites: Before you can design and put out a live wallpaper there are a couple things that you MUST have/know. 1. Adobe Photoshop CS5 or greater: This is bar-none the most important thing that you MUST have. It is even more important then LWC itself. I've seen a lot of users saying how they use other image editing programs; they are fools, those programs are inferior, and you can see that difference in the quality of their live wallpapers and subsequently; their instal rates. You must have Adobe Photoshop before continuing. I'm not going to list every single feature/advantage of it (you can Google that), but you absolutely must have it if you want to produce good work. If you don't have Photoshop, drop what ever your doing and go get it, or you can kiss any type of success that you might have with LWC goodbye. 2. You must have a basic knowledge of graphic design. The only reason why people download anything wallpaper related is for one reason and one reason only: good graphics. Why else would people download simple, ad embedded, performance decreasing software that has absolutely no bearing on how they live or use their device? Its all about the graphics, people want to personalize their phones, make them look cool, and to show them off to others. Everyone thinks that if you pluck a cool looking image off Google and animate crap in front of it that it will look cool; it wont, and no one will download it. There a number of things that you must know in order to make good graphics, read up on the subject, follow online classes, and understand it. You won't be as good as a regular graphic designer, but you will still know enough to produce good work for Android. Graphic design looks easy, but it isn't, and there a lot of techniques that you need to put into your work for it to look good. I am fortunate enough to have a Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design and I am employed as a senior designer by a marketing firm in NYC, so I have enough knowledge to make stuff that people want. Graphics: As I previously stated in the above, your graphics must be stunning. Now people always associate that with awesome abstract scenes, scenes depicting cool deep space, or some high tech abstract combination. While those are cool, it's not what I mean, and there are millions of live wallpapers on the market already on those subjects. By good graphics I mean they have to be successful in conveying a message, and they need to look as good as they can for the topic. You can have a live wallpaper on any topic you want, and people will download it as long as the graphics are successful. Let me compare two examples: This one by some random developer and This one by Kittehface Software. The first live wallpaper is a piece of garbage, its poorly designed, has no visual hierarchy, looks like a cheap GIF (because it is), and it conveys a very basic, worn out message. Now the second one by Kittehface is much better. It is designed well with clear balance, visual hierarchy, visual unity, it conveys a very strong message, and just generally looks good. Now aside from his animations (which blow anything LWC can do away) YOU can make graphics like that, where they attract users. Look at the still images of the wallpaper, they are stunning even with out an animation. How hard would it be to throw one or two more (well designed) animated elements over it and have a really successful live wallpaper? Not very. There are actually a couple live wallpapers that have been designed in LWC that go on to reach millions of users (check previous posts by admins about those), the reason is because their graphics are damn good. Without good Graphics you will go no where. Subject: The subject of your live wallpapers can be anything, the only reason why I am including this section is to point out that you do not need to make live wallpapers on popular subjects. If you just pander and focus on what you think is popular (like everyone else) you will go no where, because popular topics are constantly changing and are already so saturated and filled with live wallpapers that will always be better then yours. Do not focus on a specific topic so much and just focus on what you like to make. Do like sitting on the beach and watching little planes drag ads over the ocean? Make that. Do you like blowing those little white dandelions everywhere in the spring? Make that. Do you like just hanging out at a park and watching little bees and birds fly around? Make that. It doesn't matter what the hell you make as long as you make it with good graphics and convey the subject well. People will find and download it. For example, I have a live wallpaper that is my take on the popular "Nexus Theme" of live wallpapers. I don't call it Nexus, and it doesn't appear anywhere on any searches for Nexus or any Nexus related topics, it is invisible by all standards. However, it still brings in over 250+ installs a day (sustained). The reason is because it has strong graphics, and conveys its subject well and in a unique way, so people find it and download it. Don't run around trying to follow the crowd, or you'll just get buried. Distribution: This section will be brief and will only cover one important rule: ONLY distribute your live wallpapers on Google Play. Google Play is the default, go-to distribution agent on every single android device that ever exists or ever will exist. Giving your work to a third party is stupid, reckless, and ineffective. Look at what happened to Eraste with his Synapsy scam, he wrongly trusted them and got burned. Now they have his work which is unprotected by DCMA, and they can do what ever they want with it and he is powerless to stop them. When I see users saying they are distributing their live wallpapers on anywhere but Google Play I think two things: 1. Their live wallpapers suck and they can't make it on Google Play. (99.99% of the time I'm right about that) 2. They are really, really stupid. The only other places that I would even think to send my software to is the Amazon or Barnes and Noble markets. However, those markets are designed for fancy E-Readers that LIVE WALLPAPERS ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH. A stock Kindle or Nook is incapable of running a live wallpaper, because its an E-reader. Only rooted E-readers re-flashed with a standard Android OS (like Cyanogenmod) can run live wallpapers. And those devices all have default access to Google Play anyways. So stay on Play or your going to pay. <Put that on a T-Shirt. Monetization: I know I've said it before, and I will keep saying it until I am blue in face: only monetize with Leabolt. Leadbolt is classy, they have great ECPM's, they are kind to users, they give you full control over the ads in your software, and their customer service is second to none. I see a lot of buzz about start-app, but, how did that work out for those users? They got virus alerts, horrible reviews, and their install rates got destroyed. Airpush is even worse, they force download malware onto users devices, they are shifty to do business with, and the quality of their ads is questionable. Avoid them at all costs, Airpush is like the devil of mobile advertising. I make money on my apps with a light (very light) Leadbolt push notification schedule. I am also mindful to not over spam my user. 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. Also, as Vas has said in a previous post, your ECPM's may also be higher on this schedule as well. However, you MUST NOT OVER SPAM your users. This will kill you. Do not combine, ad types (leadbolt + startapp, etc. + etc.), and do not have aggressive ad schedules. Your users will flee in a second, leave you bad reviews and you'll be cooked. As I said, your making software that has no bearing on a users life/device what so ever, meaning your expendable, so the tolerances that users will have for you will be very small. Any thing that goes over those tolerances and negatively impacts a user, will result in an immediate uninstall and a bad review. I like to follow the three don'ts when I monetize my live wallpapers: -Don't over spam the users (no combining ad types, aggressive schedules, etc.) -Don't ask for a location, there is absolutely no reason why a live wallpaper needs to know where someone is -Don't collect any user information This also keeps my permissions down to a minim while still providing a very effective way for me to monetize. Here are the consequences of over-spamming: 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. It doesn't matter what category you wallpapers are in, if they go down the tubes, they will disappear. User experience: Lastly I will cover user experience. This should be your number one priority when releasing your live wallpaper. This is very dependent on how you design/monetize your app, and to avoid repeating multiple points, I will just cut to the chase: keep your users as your first priority. Do not over spam them, take their information, decrease their experience while using your software or their device, and do not look at them like a commodity. Answer them when they email you with questions, and respond to their concerns through reviews and other mediums. You need to make your users happy so they recommend your software to others and so you can build your name up as a "good developer". If you give your users the best possible experience, with good graphics, and a good/non disruptive monetization model, you will turn out hit after hit and be very successful on Google Play. I have over 130,000 daily users across all my applications, not downloads, users. I sustain about 6,000 downloads a day across all my applications, some more popular than others, but it all averages out. My light Leadbolt schedule gets me about 26,000 impressions a day and about 1000-1200 clicks. LeadBolt usually gives me an ECPM that averages around $1.85, so I make about $48.00 a day, every day (about $1,500.00 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 have good graphics, I monetize well, and I retain my users by ensuring the best possible user experience. You can't cheat the system and you need to be dynamic and have good products to be successful on Google Play. I am confidant that if you follow the above, you will be.
I agree with Stollo on almost every point except the fact that he is very biased on using Photoshop. There are other programs that can be used to create graphics as well. I do know that Photoshop has a lot of features. However most people do not use or do not require them for creating quality graphics. It depends upon the user which program he is comfortable with and also his skills. A good artist can even create a masterpiece using MS Paint
Photoshop is bar-none the best program. There is no other graphic editor on the market that even comes close to what photoshop does. If you use something else, that's fine, but photoshop is the best and you'll be limiting yourself if you don't use it.
HI Stollo,thanks for this read,I havet been in the forum since days....after I read your essays I really learned a lot,some things Im doing before I read your words but some no,I will take this like a big lesson for me because it is,like a beginer I have to learn much more in this buissnes. I will keep this read like a big help I will use it like my main strategy. Thanks again my friend . I owe you.
some great information. Just one thing. I mitigate low ECPM with a simple in app button directing people to purchase the ad free app. I can tell this works due to the large number of international purchases i get from google merchant. I guess its a bit of a balancing act. Do i throw away some ecmp for a 99 cent sale or block that country..... I went with toss some ecpm and get 500+ sales a month.
I'm glad for you that people are actually willing to purchase your live wallpapers. My experience has been following the notion that live wallpapers that cost money are not purchased or even looked at by users. Live wallpapers just don't posses the importance, or status in user's minds to justify a purchase (even a 99cent one). That makes sense when you look at everything objectively and determine that all your making is moving phone backgrounds, and there are way better ones on the market for the same money or for free. If you found a way around all that to generate sales for yourself then my hat is off to you sir.
Well i should have put that this is mainly for my regular apps. I am altering the setup menu with a link to an ad free version with live wall papers. But i also put into ever description that i have notification ads in the app and if you don't like them then get the ad free version for 99 cents <link>.
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