Our mobile games startup started in Dec 2013 is profitable. Our monthly revenues are 3-4X our monthly expenses (which includes market salary for Co-Founders.) In fact in the last 2-3 months, we have been able to save up almost 18 months worth of runway for our team of 8.
Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rates.
We have games on iOS, Google play and Amazon app stores. Mostly trivia games, but some arcade games too.
As an example, this is our most popular game across the 3 stores, with 1 million+ downloads https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.froods.dwt...
Most of our users are in US, UK and Europe. We monetize via In App Purchases (IAPs) and Ads. On average we monetize close to industry standards, 2% of people pay for hints, powerups and other IAPs, while ads give a decent $2 eCPM ($2 for 1000 impressions)
Thanks for sharing ! I'm getting started on Android app development, and those are very encouraging numbers (and thanks for sharing your app link to have an idea of what you're building).
I think I'll try my hand at some games targeted for the local audience first (I live in Uruguay, South America, I have some ideas which can be tested for the larger Argentinean and Brazilian markets) and see how it goes :) .
My goal is to make U$ 400/month in recurring revenue by year's end.
We have had similar success on all 3 platforms, as it is easier to stand out on Amazon, Google play drives a lot of downloads, and Apple monetizes very well. For us, it is almost 34-33-33 in terms of revenue breakup.
The first lesson I had in this industry was to always prepare for a lean patch. In a hit driven business, you can never be sure when the next hit will come, so always good to have as large a runway as possible.
Having said that, this has been my largest worry in this startup, and has caused many a sleepless nights.
Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rates.