Shake. Load. Kaboom. $600+/day.
Most iPhone apps lose money, but some freebies — like Shotgun — rake in the cash
Source: Mobclix
As an app, Shotgun Free doesn't do much. Give it a shake and it makes the sound of a shell being chambered. Tilt it up sharply and the gun fires with a bang as loud as an Apple (AAPL) iPhone can make — which isn't terribly loud.
But the app is popular. It's been downloaded nearly 4 million times since it was launched in early March. An average of 60,000 to 70,000 people have been using it daily ever since.
More to the point, the small ads that run across the bottom of screen are displayed 200,000 to 300,000 times a day, which is how Shotgun Free ended up as case study No. 1 in a white paper issued this week by MobClix, the Palo Alto start-up that acts as a middleman between Shotgun's developer — Inedible Software — and the advertisers who pay them $3 per 1,000 ad impressions. That works out to $600 to $900 a day.
There are eight case studies in the MobClix report, and a lesson for mobile developers in each of them.
