78c? Ads! Model? Market!?
Yesterday I logged into AdMob to check the status of the account in preparation for the release of iLostMyMarbles Free. To my amazement, we've made $0.78 so far in ads just from testing and showing off! This seems really piddly until you consider that iLostMyMarbles only exists on three devices, and that our ad supported model has already netted us more than a sale would.
Speaking of ad supported, I'm trying to decide whether to put in interactive roadblock messages in addition to the ads, but fear this would cause a backlash as our model is full games with ads for free and without ads for cheap. Shareware is also known as nagware, and I don't want to do that because I also think that we stand to make more money from the free users than the paid users in the long run. I've seen some anecdotal evidence that delay-nags work well, but I'm not sure it's suited to us.
Does anyone know where some market research on shareware conversion rates by demographic can be had? How about by tactic? Combining that with iPhone sales demographics will give a good idea of who I should be marketing to and how. If only I had oodles of cash to hire a market research company...for now I'll be lazy and leave out the roadblocks.
