Popular ‘Flappy Bird’ game earning $50k per day in ad revenue

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While discussing the latest mobile gaming craze that is Flappy Bird on our recent Let’s Talk iOS podcast, I wondered out loud how much money the developer was making from his newfound success. The game, which is free with ads, has enjoyed a spontaneous reign at the top of the App Store.

Apparently he’s doing rather well for himself. In a recent interview with The Verge, developer Dong Nguyen says that Flappy Bird is earning an average of $50,000 per day from ads. It’s been download over 50M times, and has been sitting atop iOS and Android app stores for nearly a month…

And as many of you may know, Flappy Bird isn’t Nguyen’s only game on a hot streak right now. He has two others, Super Ball Juggling and Shuriken Block, that have also maintained spots in the App Store’s top 10 free list over the past month. But there’s no word in what they’re earning.

The Verge’s Ellis Hamburger has more:

Super Ball Juggling has also been hovering in the App Store’s top ten, as has Shuriken Block. Neither game as perfectly balances difficulty and fun as Flappy Bird, but it’s become clear that Nguyen has a knack for bite-sized arcade titles. The games’ mechanics are inspired by Nintendo titles Nguyen played as a child, and even by some of the characters therein. Flappy Bird’s titular bird was inspired by Cheep Cheep in Super Mario Bros, as are its iconic green pipes. Adding advertisements to the mix was his modern spin on the titles.”

What’s really interesting to me is that there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for why these games essentially became overnight successes. In fact, Flappy Bird first launched all the way back in may of last year and was seemingly tucked away in a dark corner of the App Store until recently.

But however it happened, it happened, and you can’t help but feel impressed. With a simple tap-to-play title, Nguyen is well on his way to becoming a millionaire (if he isn’t already). A rough equation of $50,000 multiplied by 31 days, minus Apple’s 30% cut of course, gives us around $1 million.

If you haven’t tried Flappy Bird yet, you can download it here for free.