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I am in Latvia (which the Android market doesn't support as a country for selling apps from), and I am thinking about the best way of monetizing my app. So far I've come up with these options:

  1. Pretend I am from a supported country. Get a bank account there, etc.
  2. Use PayPal for in-app purchases. The player gets, say, the first 10 levels for free, but is then asked to pay 0.99$ for the rest of the game. Downside: Players might not feel comfortable entering PayPal details into an app. Android market might not like it either.
  3. Making the app free and earning money through advertising. Let's do some calculation here: Say I get 1M free downloads, each user during his playtime would see 10 banners, so 10m / 1000 * 0.3 is about 33k$ if we use AdMob with their 0.3$ per 1000 impressions. On the other hand, if we use PayPal and in-app purchases, we need a >3% conversion rate to beat this..

What should I do?

Edit: From what I just read all over the net, it looks like advertisers will change their eCPM price a lot without telling you. Using in-app PayPal purchases at least allow you to monitor the cash flow.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Paypal is the way to go in your case. There are ways to let them pay without having to enter their details into YOUR application - redirect them to a website or something where you have integrated with Paypal via their public API. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jonathan Dickinson
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 10:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ I doubt this would be the right place to ask something like that. It's way more business planning/marketing than game programming. Anyway, advertising requires more prediction and it's not bound to work as you wished. Let's say you give the base version for free, and sell a code (paid via PayPal) to registered users on your website: you could control the flow of users on the website (useful for advertising needs) and you could provide some optional services on your website to keep them coming. If you can manage that much, the whole thing could take care of that additional 3%. \$\endgroup\$
    – Darkwings
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 12:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ I should have wrote Game Development. Anyway that question is more about margins of profit and transactions mark-ups than anything else and hardly qualifies as a non-open question. The site won't get any better with insults, by the way. \$\endgroup\$
    – Darkwings
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 15:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think it will be okay, if you are using in-game purchase and paypal. \$\endgroup\$
    – user26947
    Commented Mar 2, 2013 at 20:45

3 Answers 3

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  1. You shouldn't do that if Google notices that you are spoofing a country (and they will) then your accounts will be banned and you can't create another one.

  2. This might lead to an app deletion by the Google team as the only legal way to do in-app purchases is Wallet / official Google api.

  3. You only get paid for clicks not for impressions. I have about 1 Cent per app, with a clicktru rate of nearly 5% which is pretty high and about 40k downloads.

Source: Google Play TOS

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Could you provide the source for "if Google notices that you are spoofing a country (and they will) then your accounts will be banned" ? \$\endgroup\$
    – Simas
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 9:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html 2nd paragraph: "you must accept this Agreement and provide complete and accurate information in the Developer Console. You may not distribute Products on the Store if you do not accept this Agreement." \$\endgroup\$
    – paulgavrikov
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 17:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ What do you mean by "1 cent per app". Do you mean per click? (if so I have been getting much more than that; 5-20 per click (usually toward the lower end of that) \$\endgroup\$
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 21:22
  • \$\begingroup\$ No it was not per click, but per download. Clickrate was about 4% . So about 25cents. Keep in mind though, that I have been in Top 30 w/ 5M downloads. \$\endgroup\$
    – paulgavrikov
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 21:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @bluewhile Ah, 1 cent per download sounds closer to the mark \$\endgroup\$
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 21:37
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That's a very unfortunate situation you're into.

The only legal way I know to do what you want, is to find a publisher to manage the publishing for you. In Japan there's DeNA and GREE, but I'm sure there are lots of companies who would be willing to make business with you if you google something like "Android game publisher".

Most likely, they would be taking one part of your profits, but you may be able to leverage their advertising campaigns and user base and maybe some other goodies.

Whether or not that works for you is completely up to you.

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Try ScoreLoop. That's what I'm going to use. Supports paypal stuff.

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    \$\begingroup\$ How it support for him case? \$\endgroup\$
    – Zhen
    Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 11:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ Could you explain why? \$\endgroup\$
    – Anko
    Commented Apr 25, 2013 at 13:08

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