Rob when it says locked into the special intro rate of 5% for all tiers. Is it per account or per app? Will all my future app be locked into the rate or just the ones I integrate by March 1st.
Lets do a little calculation.
Maybe I am wrong but here it is:
With 1,000,000 impressions per day if the ads have eCPM of $1, the developer earns $1000 per day.
You take 5%, that is $50 per day or $1500 per month, or $18,000 per year.
If I would be one of those developers, I would find someone to make me the plugin for much cheaper price, I guess.
I am not so worried about your new model, just curious why do you think those high earning developers would use your model and not develop the plugin themselves (or hire someone else).
I was kind of excited for your ratio model when Roj brought it up but after seeing it, it’s still insane in my opinion. Right now on admob 10,000 interstitial impressions on iOS earn me about 518$. So lets say I only do 10,000 impressions a day and that’s it. Corona will get 16% of that which is 82$ a day. If we multiply that by 365 days that’s over 30,000$.
Now let’s assume I do 100,000 impressions a day so I would normally make 5,178$ Corona will take 16% of the first 10,000 which is 82$ like above. For the next 20,000 impressions corona will now take 12.5% which is 129.50. After that the rate drops to 10% for the rest of the 70,000 impressions I have remaining which equals 362.60.
So if I were to do 100,000 impressions a day corona would get $574.10 per day or $209,546.50. That’s not a typo folks that is 209,000 per year. Is there a way I can just wire you guys 20k and you can never rev share my ads?
I don’t disagree with you ubj3d but I want to mention that Roj didn’t come up with this model. There are other companies that charge a percentage of your impressions. For example AdTapsy charges 10% of your impression using the same mechanism. They inject their id to one out of 10 impressions.
agramonte, any app that integrates before march 1st gets the 5% rate. future apps would work against the ratio.
dmglakewood, we’re happy if you’re happy with admob (especially if you’re getting $51 CPMs!) - this plugin is free to use without ratio tiers so go for it! that being said, your results aren’t the industry average when it comes to CPMs so the results you extrapolated would not be typical.
ubj3d.android, your calculation is correct. you will make $346,750.
This to me is disturbing because please don’t take this the wrong way but corona sdk doesn’t provide any value to me. I can make the same apps in a handful of other languages that are either truly free, charge a 1 time fee or charge a 1 time yearly fee that is much less then the thousands if not hundreds of thousands I would have to give you guys. I like corona, don’t get me wrong but I like corona for like 1k a year above that I have no problem liking some other framework. In your eyes you’re seeing it as “without us you wouldn’t make anything, so we charge a fee for our service” when that’s just simply not the case.
Thank you for your good wishes, but I am afraid I will not come close to that number.
But my question was, why would someone pay $18,000/year if he can e.g. pay a developer to make him the plugin for e.g. $1000 once?
Ok, so let me see if I understand it correctly, please let me know if I made some mistake:
- For the first 10k impressions you get 16.5%
- From 10k to 40k (10k+additional 30k) you get 12.5%
- From 40k to 1m you get 10%
- After 1m Perk takes 5%
So, let’s say I’m nowhere near the 1 million impressions per day (maybe in the future, who knows! :D),
instead for this specific app I make around 150k impressions per day.
In this case, 150k a day, your share goes like this:
- first range: 10.000 at 16.5%
- second range: 30.000 at 12.5%
- third range: 150.000 - 40.000 (of the first two ranges) = 110.000 at 10%
Let’s calculate it, at a bad eCPM of 0.5 dollar
- 10.000 imp x 0.5 eCPM x 0.167 (16.5% perk share) = 0.835$
- 30.000 imp x 0.5 eCPM x 0.125 (12.5% perk share) = 1.875$
- 110.000 imp x 0.5 eCPM x 0.1 (10% perk share) 5.5$
0.835 + 1.875 + 5.5 = 8.21$ per day X 365 days = 2,996 $ per year
this is going to be the real cost of Corona SDK per year. If your eCPM is around 1$, well double that at almost 6.000$/year
Please let me know if I didn’t understand the model correctly and made some mistake in calculating the share.
Now you could say, yeah, but we’re successful if you’re successful, and while you’re paying 3.000 dollars for Corona you made much more money, and that’s true (it’s about 24.000$), however I don’t see how this point makes sense.
At around 3000$ per year, Corona Enterprise Unlimited is cheaper (2,388$ per year) or I could just get Corona Cards iOS and Android ( 1000$ per year ) and pay someone to make an ad plugin without the revenue share.
So please, I hope I made a mistake on my calculations and that’s not the real figure… otherwise it doesn’t make sense using Corona even for small developers.
The freemium model works well in apps because casual player doesn’t generally know what is really going to end up paying in the end, but I don’t see how this model could work in a business environment where we analyse and think well of the real and hidden costs of what we use.
If you have an enterprise license, you’re free to create a plugin for yourself that works the way you’d like for FAN.
I think this is exactly the point. most small one-person developers can’t afford the enterprise license and to pay someone to make a plugin for them. Hence this is where Roj’s model comes into play. As a small developer you can use these “premium” services and share impressions with zero out of pocket.
However I think a model that would work well for everyone is to have a Corona Free model (with impression sharing), and a Corona Paid model without imp sharing (at the $2388/yr). Or apply the same model to the each plugin individually. For instance, have the FAN plugin available for free with shared impressions, or something like $500/yr without. I think this would (mostly) satisfy both types of developers.
But AdTapsy is an ad mediation tool, not a SDK. I would be all in favour of Perk using the revenue share model on their Corona Ads.
That’s probably what I’ll end up doing. Or maybe using Corona for Android and Corona Cards iOS since the majority of my revenue is on that platform.
I’m not an expert, and you guys surely know better, but it looks to me that you’re basically pushing everyone besides hobbyists and smaller developers to get Enterprise or Cards (even if they don’t actually need it) only to not be subjected to the revenue share.
And many of those devs would have no issue at all in paying for the basic version of Corona, as it is now, only without the revenue share, at almost the same price of Enterprise.
I mean, if in one year you end up paying in share more than a Enterprise or Cards license it’s an obvious choice.
(btw, I’m just wondering if you’re thinking to raise the costs (or discontinue) Enterprise and Cards to discourage that.)
Wouldn’t it make more sense to offer a:
-
Corona Free with the revenue share model through Corona Ads. Other ad platforms (admob, FAN, etc) only available as mediation in Corona Ads.
-
Corona Pro, priced a little lower than Enterprise, with the choice to use Corona Ads or other ad platform without share.
OR
- No paid Corona Pro, instead the ability to purchase admob/fan/etc plugin licenses to not be subjected to impression sharing.
@JonPM: Actually, the Enterprise License starts at 79/month, so less than 1.000$ per year. My example of 2388$ is for the Enterprise Unlimited that is absolutely overkill in my case. So consider the threshold at around 1.000 usd/year.
I see. Regardless, I think Corona needs to offer more options here. It’s obvious the plugin market is where they will generate revenue, while keeping Corona free. But again there should be an option to “lease” the FAN plugin for say $29/mo without imp sharing, or free with. Corona shouldn’t impose themselves as a business partner in each of it’s developers companies.
I just want to add that revenue sharing for plugins that connect to 3rd party services makes no sense. Corona didn’t build and maintain Facebook’s ad network or infrastructure, so why is it entitled to any percentage of our revenue from it?
Any other developer could have made this plugin and put it up on the plugin marketplace for free, or for a flat monthly rate. If you want to earn money to maintain the plugin then just sell it for a monthly fee. Literally everyone in this thread would rather pay a flat monthly rate, and I’m sure the majority of other users would too.
If you want Corona to grow with it’s users then do something similar to what you had before – it could be free for users earning < 100k/year, and anyone who makes over that should buy a pro license. Maybe users over 500k/year would need the enterprise license. Charge flat rates for your plugins, and open up the marketplace to allow other developers to sell and take a percentage of that. Finally, I don’t know the details behind Corona Ads’ monetization, but I assume you will be making plenty of money on the backend if it is successful. I want Corona to succeed so that I can keep using it, but forcing users to potentially give up thousands of $$$ just because you provided an API to Facebook’s ad network is ludicrous. I hope you don’t do the same with Vungle or any other 3rd party ad network.
Lastly, as someone who wants to make a deal with a publisher to market and distribute my game, this whole revenue sharing model seems like it would make my game less attractive to the publisher. And it would mean that I earn even less after Google/Apple, the publisher, and now Corona takes a cut of my sales.
My 2 cents (as a long time user (and multiple pro subscription payer)).
3 paths…
- If you use the free Corona and Free Plugin expect rate share on ads (Personally in would like to see a maximum cap on total revenue).
- If you are making more than $10,000 a year just get on enterprise and develop your own ad connector (and maybe sell it).
- If you don’t like the rules move on to another platform and leave the benefits of Corona behind.
At the end of the day of Corona if does not make cash they may fold. I don’t want to see that.
Enterprise isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It adds a layer or multiple layers of complexity to corona that no longer makes it simple to code certain things. I would love to pay the enterprise rate but still have the ability to show ads quickly or load in plugins without having to do it all in native. Not to mention that with enterprise you then have to have wrappers for every OS. You can’t just click build for iOS or build for Android and be done with it. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that payments, in fact it’s quite the opposite. People are willing to pay and that model kept corona alive and thriving for many years. Why not offer the free model with rev sharing and a paid model for those who would rather just shell out the cash to no give up a percentage of their company?
No one likes paying more, no one likes apples app guideline rules and we are all here to make a buck or two. I came to corona because XCode was a right pain in the butt. I hope Corona remain viable and I feel for the engineers who are working every day dealing with the legacy wrappers in corona that talk to Xcode/iOS and Java/Android, OSX/Win/etc.
Maybe a middle tier would be a good idea, I use to pay pro and now few like a leecher on free, but I don’t want to use ads (and if I did I would not want to give away too much for nothing.
Edit: fixed typos.
P.S I don’t have any apps on the stores at present (building a new big one though)
P.S simon.fearby is my day job acc and and FearTec is my private acc.
Exactly on point dmglakewood.
The issue is not the cost of Enterprise/Card license but the added complexity in using Enterprise.
I have no problem in paying for Enterprise, it’s just that Corona standard is enough for me…
With the current revenue share model I’ll need to get Enterprise or Card, with the only purpose to use a native ads plugin, otherwise I would end up paying much more than a Enterprise license. Simple math.
This model is unbalanced and definitely punishing against developers relaying on ads (I mean, developers selling only Paid apps clearly will not be subjected to any revenue share, so… they’ll be basically using Corona for free)
I’m all for a Freemium Corona with impression share on an Entry product (even if it would have been more logical applied on something like Corona Ads, instead of third party ad platforms)… but we need more “Pro” solutions besides Card & Enterprise. There’s no way you can apply this freemium impression share model on (even small-mid) professionals.
We need something between Free and Enterprise.
Anyway, there’s not much else I can say… Right now I’ll probably end up buying a Corona Card license, at least to publish new apps this year. After that, I’m not sure.
+1 for what PXL Artificer and others have mentioned. A premium Corona product without the complexities of enterprise and which isn’t subjected to the rev share would be the most suitable solution.
Also should add that Corona announced they are working on a new version of Corona Cloud – this time lead by Chris aka develephant. That would be another potential revenue stream and I’m sure many people would gladly pay for it, assuming there is some sort of tiered pricing based on usage.