---
title: 'How Much Money Does My Free Mobile Game Make?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=3s5UUUFKq20'
video_id: '3s5UUUFKq20'
date: 2026-07-21
duration_sec: 506
channel: 'Sam Hogan'
---

# How Much Money Does My Free Mobile Game Make?

> Source: [How Much Money Does My Free Mobile Game Make?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=3s5UUUFKq20)

## Summary

The video analyzes the revenue and performance of the free mobile game 'Stick With It' after its initial release and subsequent update. The developer shares detailed statistics on downloads, ad revenue, and in-app purchases, explaining how rewarded video ads and game improvements impacted earnings.

### Key Points

- **Initial Revenue and Downloads** [01:10] — In the first three weeks, the game had about 150,000 downloads across iOS and Android and made around $926. Revenue peaked at $100 on June 7th and declined to $12 by June 26th.
- **Game Update and Improvements** [01:51] — The developer released an update fixing bugs, adding a normal mode with swipe-joystick controls, a map screen, and new character skins. The update aimed to make the game more accessible and engaging.
- **Post-Update Revenue Impact** [06:01] — After the update, daily revenue jumped to about $90. Total revenue reached $2,400, with most from ads ($2,250) and about $150 from in-app purchases (before Apple/Google 30% cut).
- **Monetization Metrics** [07:09] — The ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user) was around 0.2-0.3 cents before the update and rose to about 1 cent after. The eCPM (revenue per 1,000 ad impressions) averaged $2.68, with over 800,000 total impressions.

### Conclusion

The update significantly improved the game's revenue and player engagement, demonstrating the effectiveness of rewarded video ads and iterative game design improvements.

## Transcript

a look at the revenue some statistics and how i saved the game from becoming a complete failure
without seeing any advertisements wait what then how does it make money there are ads in the game but they're rewarded video ads with rewarded videos a player has the option to watch one
an extra life or in-game currency incentivized ads like experience when compared to other monetization options
this game stick with it is a rage platformer thing where you jump around and stick to stuff it's really difficult and you can easily lose a ton of progress at any point what i did was add this undo move button
that surprisingly lets you undo your last move but you have to watch a 30 second video ad to share exactly how much my game has made so far
it's been out for almost two months let's first take a look at the revenue in the initial three weeks in that time the game somehow got about 150 000 downloads across ios and android and it made around 926
dollars after the initial release along with the video i posted about the game it peaked at a hundred dollars on june 7th and then continued to decline eventually
hitting 12 on june 26th so yeah you'd think this would just kind of keep going towards zero but on june 27th something amazing happened
update so uh let's see what i did this is the which is what i use to make my games usually for updates developers will fix any bugs that have been found but luckily i'm an amazing programmer
and my games never have any bugs [Music]
this and this
everything is working sorta good enough okay with the game not completely broken anymore let's tackle the next issue the game is fun no i'm serious even with the changes i made in the last video
it's still way too difficult and not very many people have actually finished so along with the impossible and hard modes i decided to add a normal mode the plan is that you'll be able to aim exactly where the players
instead of having to time a moving arrow i tried out a few different control momentum based dragging thing and eventually settled on
dragging thing and eventually settled on a swipe joystick combination so it's not too much fun i added a few more spikes and obstacles i added a few more spikes and obstacles to the new normal mode
and that was because of my bad game design so i added a map screen that shows the checkpoints you've reached and lets you switch between game modes
right the number one suggestion for the game was to add more skins game was to add more skins so let's make some
characters like square guy lemon and a blue circle let me just steal this character select
screen real quick and there we go now players have something more instead of just sort of trying to get to the end of the map
so basically you'll just be able to pay one or two dollars to unlock all the skins in the game [Music]
stick with it is actually the ninth mobile game i've published over the last 6 years a lot of my other games did not get many downloads get many downloads and made basically no money at all
and made basically no money at all [Music]
by the way i'm not really trying to promote these games they're actually pretty bad so please don't play them so please don't play them especially color combined you know what
all of the initial traffic for stick with it came from the videos i posted on the game's development so this time it was a little different and the game stood more of a chance at competing with the million other games on the app store
now let's take a look at how the stick with it update affected the game's so here are those first three weeks we saw before saw before and here are the next three weeks
so yeah improving the game with bug fixes a more accessible game mode player engagement which ended up having an impact on the game's revenue on june 27th the android update was put out
and about a week later after getting rejected three times rejected three times the ios update was released on july 6th and here it's hitting about 90 per day in total the game's made about 2 400
most of that is from ads and about 150 from in-app purchases this number is actually before apple and google take their 30 cut so yeah thank you so much to everyone for playing the game
undoing a few moves and uh unlocking skins this is way more than i expected for this game yeah how about some more stats the arp dow is the average revenue per
so it's basically a measure of how effectively your game is monetized the median arp dow is around two cents and as you can see mine was around two
or three tenths of a cent and then after the update went out it jumped up to about a cent so yeah this shows that my monetization strategy wasn't so terrible
just uh the game itself was well i mean it still is but less terrible i guess the ecpm is the amount of revenue the developer receives per 1000 ad impressions so on average for every 1000 ads that
are played i will get 2.68 cents and there have been over 800 000 total impressions i'm now realizing how boring these stats are
are so uh