As a user, when you go to the App Store looking for a new app to use or mobile game to play, there are two main categories: Paid or Free. (In Mobile Development terms: Premium and Freemium.) And as a game developer, deciding which type of app to create needs to be thought about very early in the planning process.

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'How you're going to generate revenue is something you want to think about from the get go, because you're going to want to build that into your game mechanics,' says Bear Trickey, the Mobile Business and Marketing Course Director in Full Sail's Mobile Development program. Bear co-owns his own game studio, Winning Blimp, and their latest puzzle game, Mosaique, just won the Director's Choice award at the Casual Connect gaming conference in San Francisco.

We asked Bear to explain the basic ways mobile game apps can generate revenue. Check them out below.

Premium Games.

The most traditional model, premium games are apps that are sold at a specific price point. The developer takes 70% of the sales and the Apple store takes the other 30%. Most premium apps don't get as many downloads as freemium apps, but Bear says many companies will promote their app by making it free for a day. 'You'll get 50,000 more downloads that day,' Bear says, 'Then maybe your app will raise up in the ranking charts. Then more people will see you and will start buying your app for a dollar.'

Bear – whose own Mosaique app is premium – says you only get one shot when releasing a premium app: 'A big initial release is important. You have to make sure your game is really, really good. It's best to do closed beta testing with your own internal testers and invest in a marketing campaign.'

Freemium Games: In-App Purchases.

When you give away your game for free, there has to be a way within the game to make money. This is where in-app purchases enter the picture.

'Basically, this is digital content inside the game that's worth a certain amount of money,' says Bear. One of the most common ways is character customization, or being able to pay for more advanced stages in a particular game. For example, in Farmville you can buy a hat for your avatar, and in Jetpack Joyride, you can buy additional packs of coins on top of the coins you already earn for free.

Developers who release freemium apps pay close attention to the ARPU, or Average Revenue per User. It's important to keep this number high. 'To run a really good free-to-play game, you have to put a lot of work into analytics,' says Bear. 'You have to tweak the mechanics of the game to make sure people are engaged.'

Freemium Games: Ad Displays

If a mobile game is free and doesn't offer in-app purchases, it's probably making its money via advertisements.

'There are all sorts of ad networks that will pay you to put ads in your game,' says Bear. Mobile game advertising is very similar to web advertising, where the developer is paid different rates depending on if the user sees the ad, clicks on the add, or actually installs the app featured in the ad. (In Mobile Development terms that's Cost-per-Impression, Cost-per-Click, and Cost-per-Install.) Ads are very easy to add into games – many advertisers provide software libraries to display them.

'There are a lot of traditional developers who are against advertising in general,' says Bear. 'But I would say a majority of the apps on the market now are free to download and then they earn their revenue through ads.'

What makes this so popular is the various ways a developer can insert an ad into the game. Some will place a small banner at the bottom, some use interstitial ads, which means placing them between stages of a game, and some create a splash screen, where an ad appears only when you first boot up the game. According to Bear, developers are moving more in the direction of, 'How do we make the ads more engaging and fun?' People are trying to make ads more interactive, including a new virtual scratch-off ad, where users have to 'scratch' at the screen to reveal an ad. There's also a company called Everplay that records gameplay from other apps and then uses it in video advertisements within various games.

Mobile Games That Give Money

One of the top questions app developers ask about Google AdMob is how much revenue can you earn from AdMob? The answer depends on several factors.

The first factor to consider is the revenue model you have planned for your app. Is it to earn money from users who will click on ads? Or do you plan to rely on in-app purchases? What about a hybrid model? Next, how popular do you anticipate your app to be? In other words, how heavily will you promote it? Will you promote it both organically and through advertising?

The next thing to consider is user engagement level in your app. If you plan to rely solely on ad clicks for your revenue model, then it’ll be crucial for your users to engage with the app frequently to generate enough impressions to drive ad clicks.

On a high level, all of the above factors will impact how much revenue you can earn from your apps using the AdMob platform.

With AdMob rewarded ads, we not only maximized revenue by monetizing non-spending users, but also improved app engagement and retention.

, Vice President, CyberLink

To give you a more specific idea about monetizing using AdMob, below are some real-world examples we have learned from app developers who’re already using AdMob .

Mobile Games That You Can Make Money

• App development company Balloon Island have created several popular games (all free) that have generated millions of downloads. As of 2016, the company was making $2,000 daily from AdMob while still providing a great user experience for game players to keep them engaged on a regular basis.
• App creator Rich Woods thought it would be fun to create a simple, free slot machine game app in his spare time. He took the idea into action and built Cherry Chaser Slot Machine. The app has generated over 300,000 downloads with no upfront investment. Using AdMob, Rich started earning $100 a day, which was one month after launching it. He now has several slot machine apps in the app store.
• App company HeroCraft Ltd, makers of the hugely popular game Farm Frenzy (currently with over 10 million downloads), has increased app revenue by over 200% using AdMob. Originally, they released Farm Frenzy as a free app with in-app purchases only and were making $20,000 USD in the first four months. Later on they added AdMob to the free app and started making $58,900 USD in the four months that followed. They have since added many more games to their library of apps and also use AdMob to cross-promote different apps.
• App creator Szymon Kimaszewski's first app, Blood Pressure, has over 26,000 reviews and over 1 million installs. As of 2013, he was earning $700 to $850 USD per month from this app through AdMob. He now has six apps on the Google Play store. All of his apps are available to download for free. Szymon is taking a hybrid approach with AdMob monetization using both ads and in-app purchases.

Make Money Playing Games Free

From the above examples, we can see that app popularity and user engagement level play a huge role in your potential earnings using AdMob. We encourage you to learn more about monetizing with mobile ads or visit the AdMob blog for the latest product updates and developer success stories.