I'm just curious on how much developers here earn on their mobile ads. I have a a few Apps live but none of them earn much; well not much downloads anyway. Does anyone here earn enough for a living? Let say $5K/month or more...

I'm not sure myself what the earnings are, however I did do some research a few years ago. What I found out is that you need a heck of a lot of downloads with loads of page views. Something like 5,000/month downloads at least, otherwise you'll only be getting under $10 per week. To me, it seems too unsustainable. You get around 10% of the downloads if you decide to charge customers for the app than if it were free with ads. However, there is no obvious answer to whether you should decide to charge for apps or have ads. If there was an obvious answer, everybody would be doing it.

Hi @Redbullet, I echo everything @Thomas Boyd said but I would like to add: Depends on which ad company you go with and I also believe it depends on your location in the world. For example, a person in India can have many downloads and a person in USA can release a typical same App and receive very little downloads or imprints whatever you want to call it because of the competition. LA

If you are interested in the business side of creating apps, you may want to listen to this video/podcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6KoT8Ui21M Carter Thomas is a well known figure in the world of iOS apps, because within two years he created dozens of apps and then sold them all for $200,000, a year and a half ago. Most of his revenue was strictly from ads and he was able to sell the apps because they had a large number of downloads, making them a good vehicle for further transmission of ads...

Hi all I figure out the secrete to make descent amount of money is your apps have to be used daily or at list few days a week that will get you more impression,& it translate to money, if the user use your apps ones a month that app is not making descent money at all, of course more downloads will increase your revenues but it is good to know the demands and meet the demands other-ways your arrow will miss the mark.

@Dusko good video

To answer your question directly, yes I do make a living off of iOS app development and pretty much all of my revenue is made through advertising. Thomas has it right though - you need to have a lot of downloads before you see ad revenue rolling in My best month this year was $13,679 (before taxes) and that was with 400,000+ downloads - at the height of it I was making $250+ every day. Things are a little different these days though..the iOS 7 transition brought development to a halt for a while and revenue has dropped significantly as a result. This past month I've been making $30-$40 a day and that's coming from around 5,000-7,000 downloads a day. So, I've got a lot of catching up to do Those download numbers might sound unattainable to some people, but if you get a free app out there that you know people are gonna be looking for, then you'll see the downloads just start rolling in I suggest using both Applovin and RevMob fullscreen ads, then experiment with pausing each one to see if the other performs better. I also always include the RevMob "link" ad somewhere in my apps - it allows you to create a button/link somewhere in your app that takes users directly to the app store

Thanks for the input guys, got really meaty answers from you. I guess it really would take a lot of work or luck even to make this as a main source of income. For the following MobAd platform, can you comment if this is actually true and whats your experience on them. AirPush: Nasty, never use this as your mobile App will be classified as spam. RevMob: Some anti-spam flag this as a nasty ad-ware StartApp: No stats, not paying much Admob: Still the best, Not paying as much MobFox: Not paying, dont use Millenial Media: Good, pays enough but not too popular Cheers!

@Absentia, I can see how you are able to get those many downloads especially via the 1D fanbases, if I may ask how did you get copyright clearances for over 15,000 images and usage of their logo? I manage quite a few celebrity's fanbases numbering in the millions, and am building their apps now. With your type of ad revenue model, curious to know if there were any issues when submitting your fan apps to app store or google play. Thanks Ed

No, no issues at all for the One Direction apps..I never got copyright clearances either. I realize the law is the law when it comes to copyrights, but I think for a lot of companies they couldn't care less about third party apps because they are really doing more good than harm for them and their product Rockstar Games is a good example of this. If you search "GTA V" in the app store, my app comes up as the first result, even before the official Rockstar GTA V app. Rockstar is totally cool with third party websites, apps, etc...they actually specifically say that they are on their support page Of course there are a lot of companies that aren't cool with it..I recently was forced to take down a Call of Duty app due to a complaint from activision, but I think that was only because they didn't want confusion with their official CoD app . I have tried to get in touch with a number of companies and formally request written permission to use their stuff, but I never hear back. Usually if I have an idea for any kind of fan club app, I will scout the app store for already existing apps of the same nature. If there are apps on the same subject matter that have sat in the store for two years unopposed, then I assume mine will be unopposed as well The only wall I ever really run into is the Apple review process. They are completely inconsistent and it's impossible to really know for sure what apps they will and won't let through. You could have one of your celebrity apps rejected and then see a nearly identical app from somebody else approved on the same day. All you can really do is send it out and hope for a laid back reviewer

COD is big my cousin in law is the Chief Project Director for COD at Activision, gets royalties on each game sold, sick man. ugh. In his 30's and to think I taught him 3D animation 20 years ago. I should have stuck with gaming. Any case, the App review process is my biggest stalling point right now, and thanks for sharing. My current plan since I'm an expert at cultivating fanbases, is to build my fanbase app like your 1D, give spoilers, contests, etc. Launch that first then when my celebrity client's polished IMDB/inApp product purchase App is ready we already have their fans utilizing my fan App. Fans are really die hard if you make them part of the process, so while I'm cultivating my superfans that already archived all my celebs content on a global scale, it saves me the time from doing it myself. I am making them assistant developers on the Polished App. It's a total ego boost and it brings them closer to their favorite celebrity. It doesn't hurt that they can make the App go viral to the other fans. I reached out to Ran about utilizing Scringo as well. Thanks Red for starting this thread. Answered a lot for me.