How to Make Money by Mobile Games?

Published 12/16/2016, 6:28:03 AM | Updated 2/17/2026, 11:50:05 AM

2 minutes

Having a great idea for a mobile game is not enough for you to start making money out of it. You have hired the best game development team to execute your idea, but if you don’t know what to do after it has been created, chances are that your creation can go completely unnoticed, forcing you to cut your losses.

Here are a few considerations to make when looking at options on how to make money out of your mobile games-

1.) Free-to-Play versus Premium Games :-

When choosing between Free-to-Play versus Premium Games, you want to know the pros and cons of opting for either. Normally, most gaming companies would launch their products on app stores as premium priced products. However, with a growing number of engaging competitions those crops up, premium isn’t the obvious choice to make.

If you choose to launch a premium game, you will be able to take 70% of the sales while the app store takes about 30%. However, you may not be able to get as many downloads as a free counterpart will. When releasing a premium game, you have to be 100% sure that it is bug-free since you get only one good chance at making your mobile game a success. Initial bad reviews will result in unsatisfactory sales figures.

2.) Making Money on Free-to-Play Games :-

You will be able to enjoy significantly more flexibility in your free-to-play games since you almost always get another shot at improving your app to change audience opinions around. That said, your game still needs to be as bug-free as possible before its launch.

In addition to this, free-to-play games can also offer a host of money making opportunities –

In-App Purchases

Consider including some specialized power-ups, avatars, items or in-app currency that need to be bought in your game. Make sure that they are significantly more beneficial than the ones that are freely available in your game. Make sure that these purchases add significant value in the way the game evolves for those who invest in it. Create new experiences that compel users to spend more.

Advertising in your Apps

There are a host of ad networks that are willing to pay you to place ads inside your game. You can be paid in different ways – either when someone views the ad, clicks on it or when a user installs the application that was advertised. Make sure you are clear about how to integrate your ad into the game right from the initial development stage.

=> An question put on top question/answer website, Quora–

Q. How much money does the average mobile game make?

Many Answers provided by top gamers

The best answer is –

There are a lot of factors that will play into this. For a typical game with not many downloads you can be looking at $0-$1 per day. For games that get better download rates say in the 1000-2000 download a day rate it’s much better. On average you are looking at around $5 eCPM (estimated cost per thousand impressions) with the best ad services. So to make real money on ads alone you need a lot of downloads.

=> As an example: I have a game that currently gets roughly 1500-2000 downloads a day. That game generates $30-$50 per day. The fluctuation will happen on the weekends when more people have free time and are checking out new games, So the money then is always higher.