How to make your mobile game earn – Game monetization explained

Once you've published your mobile game on the app store, all you can think about are these three things: 

1. I want more people to download my app 
2. I want them to spend a lot of time in my game
3. I want them to bring as much revenue to my game as possible

Without decent monetization, the chance that all this will come true by itself is extremely low. Without a well-thought-out strategy, it will be difficult for new users to learn about your product, even if the game itself is made perfectly well. 

If you’re a mobile game developer or publisher, it’s crucial to know how to monetize your mobile game properly. In this article, we’ll dive into this topic and explain how exactly user acquisition helps your mobile game earn.

What options are out there for monetizing a mobile game 

• One-time purchase of all game content 
• Subscription monetization
• Voluntary donations
• In-app purchases (IAP) 
• Ads inside the game — in-app ads (IAA)

The best option for most mobile games is a hybrid monetization model that combines IAP and IAA. Therefore, in this article, we will focus on these two types. We will also discuss in detail the proper IAP/IAA ratio depending on the category of the game: hyper-casual, casual, mid-core, and hardcore.

In order for monetization to work correctly, you need to find a balance between both types for your game. For hyper-casual games, there is a leaning toward ad monetization: the IAP/IAA ratio is usually around 5%-95% in favor of in-app ads. This is probably due to the fact that hyper-casual games usually have simpler gameplay and a shorter game session compared to other genres, so the player is not so strongly involved in the game and has less motivation to buy game content.

Developers of hardcore and mid-core mobile games get the bulk of their income from in-app purchases. IAA rarely exceeds 5% in hardcore games and 15% in mid-core games.

In casual games, they mostly use a hybrid monetization model — a combination of IAP and IAA monetization types. The ratio between them can be completely different and might change in the course of the development of the project. Normally, it’s 50/50, but this ratio can fluctuate by 20% in one direction as much as in the other. 

These are just approximate reference points. To determine the ideal balance of monetization types that will maximize the profit from your game, you need to regularly conduct A/B tests. Be sure to test different ad placements and ad frequency. The right balance of monetization types and a clear division of resources that the player receives through advertising and in-apps will lead your project to success.

How exactly your game is monetized: the process in detail

• Ad monetization

1. A user plays your game and certain events or user actions trigger ads in a specific ad placement during the game.
2. That exact ad placement sends a request to an ad network to display ads.
3. The network selects one of the ads offered by advertisers and forwards it to the ad placement. It also delivers a part of the money received from the advertiser to the game developer.
4. The ad is shown to the user.

• In-app monetization

This type of monetization implies in-app purchases. You can basically sell anything in the game from in-game currency to characters.

How to prepare your mobile game for monetization

Before attracting paid users to your mobile game, it is worth making sure that your game is ready for this. If you start investing in marketing and the game is totally unprepared for new volumes of traffic, you can simply lose money. What’s worse, you may even build a bad reputation among users.

For instance, if your users often encountered errors, crashes, bugs, or problems with ad viewing, they would eventually start to put low ratings in the app store and leave angry comments on your game there. Consequently, this would negatively affect both search results and the subsequent acquisition of new users.

Therefore, we highly recommend you first take steps to ensure that you can actually scale up your app ‘painlessly’:

• Define your target audience. Perhaps, your game is only suitable for users from certain countries or of particular ages.
• Prepare at least 25% of the game content so that the user does not feel they have completed the entire game in a 10-minute session.
• Make sure your game is technically strong: it doesn’t freeze or crash. Otherwise, users will sooner or later leave the game. Keep errors and failures to a minimum.
• Provide your players with an easy way to leave their feedback so that they can tell you about problems they faced in your game or give you recommendations for improving it from their amateur perspective.
• Ensure the game has a simple tutorial and a user-friendly interface.
• Pay special attention to your page on the app store: set an appealing icon, representative screenshots, and a high-quality game trailer demonstrating the actual gameplay.
• Perform a soft launch of your game. Launch it for a limited audience within a small number of GEOs and traffic sources. This is how you get preliminary marketing and product metrics. Among the marketing metrics, the most useful at this stage will be the CPM (cost per thousand ad impressions) and the CR (conversion rate) for installing the application. As for the product metrics, the RR (retention rate) and the average length of the gaming session will be the essential ones at the initial stage of your game growth.

By taking all the above-mentioned steps, you significantly shorten your way to successful game monetization.

How an external UA team would help you get monetized

In case your game is not the first for the dev studio and the team has already gained some experience in working with mobile games, you can monetize the game yourself up to a limited amount. However, if you want to scale your project multiple times, at some point you would have to ask an external UA team for help.

If you are a developer engaging with your own mobile game for the first time, then it will be extremely difficult for you to monetize it on your own. To monetize your game properly and efficiently, you need to have at least a basic understanding of paid user acquisition.

Despite the fact that there are many traffic sources that allow you to significantly automate processes, they still require consistent monitoring. Only by regularly monitoring and setting up campaigns will you achieve the desired profit and avoid potential force majeure.

Quite often, it’s the UA team that helps you find out that some kind of problem has appeared in your game. For example, if an ad creative showing real game gameplay gives a low long-term retention rate, this may signal problems with the game content.

Another typical situation is when you find a super-performing ad creative, a so-called ‘key creative’, and the volume of paid traffic grows dozens of times thanks to that creative. You get great primary metrics and keep running your campaigns. However, due to the fact that indie studios often do not have internal UA specialists, they are not able to independently solve problems that arise with the high volumes of traffic. The volumes that you managed to acquire for your game, simply won’t be fully monetized. In the end, you will lose money. It’s unlikely you’d be keen on that.

So, if you want millions of active users and tens of millions of dollars in revenue, all you need to do is contact a mobile publisher or a competent mobile marketing agency. Good luck with your game!

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