My name is Andrey. I make educational mobile apps about geography, history, chemistry, and many other topics.
All my iOS applications:
All my Android applications:
If you have any questions, suggestions or want to point out an error in my apps, please contact me at asmolgam@gmail.com.
Welcome to Asmolgam!
Filed under Developer Blog
New app: Flags Quiz – World Continents
After a long pause, we are excited to present a new app called Flags Quiz – World Continents.
This app continues our geography quiz series.
The English description of the game is the following:
This is the best opportunity to learn all important flags of the countries and territories of the Earth.
They are divided into 6 groups:
1) Europe (62 flags)
2) Asia (53 flags)
3) North and Central America (38 flags)
4) South America (13 flags)
5) Africa (56 flags)
6) Australia and Oceania (24 flags)
Each continent provides several distinct learning modes:
1) Spelling quiz (easy and hard)
2) Multiple-choice quiz
3) Time Game (give as many answers as you can in 1 minute)
4) Flashcards
This app is translated into 16 languages.
Learn all flags from Afghanistan and British Virgin Islands to Wales and Zimbabwe!
*****
As you can see, the gameplay was substantially improved comparing to our previous apps. Now you can earn stars for completing each quiz mode for every continent. Australia and Oceania is especially challenging. Flashcards provide a learning and training opportunity.
Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Developer Blog
Cities of the World
My first app of 2015—Cities of the World—continues my successful series of Geography Apps and is translated into 15 languages. It has been released for both platforms:
The English description of the game is the following:
Guess and spell the names of the 100 most famous cities of the world using the pictures of their landmarks (New York, London, Beijing and so on).
– You won’t get stuck if you don’t know the answer because the app allows you to guess each word letter by letter and will immediate show if the next letter is incorrect!
– The cities are arranged in the order of increasing difficulty and are divided into two levels. If you think that the first questions are too easy, just proceed forward until you encounter really hard ones.
– Two quiz modes: 1) for those who like spell city names and 2) for those who prefer to choose from 4 answers.
– Very entertaining learning experience for all geography and traveling fans!
This app is translated into 15 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Turkish languages.
*****
Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Developer Blog
My Best Apps of 2014
In the end of the year, I would like to share some of my data and assign “Best Apps” in Geography and Chemistry categories.
I will remember 2014 as the Year of Quizzes. Since Hydrocarbons appeared on iOS on January 31, I have released more than 40 distinct quizzes. In September, most of them were published on the Google Play Store as well. And these quizzes were much more successful than my first apps released last year. So far I have 578k downloads for iOS and 215k downloads for Android. Total earnings are well higher $20k.
Geography
The most profitable iOS app: 50 US States – $4k
The most downloaded iOS app: European Countries – 55k
The most profitable Google Play app: Swiss Cantons – $650
The most downloaded Google Play app: Capitals of the World – 38k
Chemistry
The most profitable and most downloaded iOS app: Inorganic Acids – $800 and 31k downloads
The most profitable Google Play app: Chemical Substances – $66
The most downloaded Google Play app: Functional Groups – 14k
So it’s clear that Geography is more popular than Chemistry and it’s likely that I’ll continue moving in this direction. A funny fact for me is that the most promising app of recent months Flags of the World hasn’t won in any of 4 categories. Let’s see how it will change in 2015!
Filed under Developer Blog
Provinces of Turkey
I was asked to prepare an app about Provinces of Turkey. I agreed because it was an excellent opportunity to get a translation into Turkish that can be potentially used in my other apps and the Turkish app market is going to grow.
The English description of the game is the following:
Learn all 81 provinces of Turkey: from Istanbul and Ankara to Erzurum and Van.
There are 4 different quiz modes about:
* names of all Turkish provinces
* their location on the map of Turkey
* two-digit province numbers (license plate codes)
Become an expert in geography of Turkey!
This app is translated into Turkish language.
*****
Now I am mostly doing updates for my previous apps. When Apple releases a new iOS, the review process is usually slow. This app has waited for review for 11 days. Meanwhile, the Google Play version was published:
Acknowledgements:
I am grateful to Mert for his idea of this app and for his translation into Turkish. It is a quite difficult language, and I wouldn’t be able to translate the app myself using Google Translate.
Icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Amino Acids v. 1.3
Review of the app on the Pulse of Apps: http://pulseofapps.com/smotrovaya/147 (in Russian)
Following the improved Android version, I updated the iOS version of Amino Acids. Major changes are:
– All flashcards are available for free
– The new “Challenge” mode (multiple-choice questions about all 43 compounds)
– Swedish localization
– The updated app icon
The app is free until the end of this week, so hurry to download it and enjoy the new game mode.
Ads Stats
I haven’t started experimenting with different ad networks yet and use standard solutions in my apps: AdMob (banners and interstitials for iOS and banners for Android) + iAd (only banners for iOS). Since Android versions of apps appeared very recently, I have a reliable stats only for iOS.
Ads are mediated through AdMob with the “Optimize AdMob Network” option checked. It results in a much higher number of impressions and higher eCPM for AdMob than for iAd, but I found that this scheme generates the greatest income. It’s important to remember that AdMob works everywhere, while iAd is available only in 16 countries.
Below, I show the Ads Stats for a typical week in August-September. There are always daily fluctuations in income with Saturday usually being the best day.
The numbers are self-explanatory for those in mob dev business. My 46 apps bring about $150 and 140k impressions a day. Fill rates are very high and the cost per click is about 15 cents. Of course, these number may vary between apps and countries. Here is the stats for the most profitable app Flags of the World (AdMob banner, AdMob interstitials, iAd banner):
Banners are shown constantly interchanging AdMob/iAd while interstitials are shown after every 15 questions. I’d like to point out that there is an in-app-purchase to remove ads for $0.99 and thus all these stats may be slightly disturbed comparing to actual app usage.
Filed under Developer Blog
Financial Report – September 2014
All important apps have been rewritten for Android and now I have 46 apps on the Apple App Store (iOS) and 38 apps on the Google Play Store (Android).
Here is my income from Jan 2014 (about $15.5k so far):
In January, I was earning on average $3.5 a day. Since August 20, my daily income haven’t fell below $150 / day. Total income in August is $4,198. This amount is comparable with my salary that I had 2 years ago as a chemistry postdoc at Berkeley.
75% of money are from showing ads and only 25% from sales and in-app-purchases (next week, all my apps can be downloaded for free).
The most profitable are Geography apps, such as:
50 US States (iOS, Android) $2,532 (16.5% of total income).
European Countries (iOS, Android) $2,098 (13.6%).
Flags of the World (iOS, Android) $1,448 (9.5%).
Localization into 9 languages was a very clever decision. United States accounts for 28.4% of total income, Germany 10.9%, Russia 8.8%, France 6.7%, and so on.
The Google Play store is very different from the Apple App store in download trends, search optimization and algorithms. By now, the income from Android apps is just $15.29 but it is constantly growing and I’m just in the beginning of understanding this platform.
Many thanks to everyone who supports me. I will be glad to answer your questions and hear your suggestions how to improve my apps.
Filed under Android, Developer Blog, Finance, Geography
Chemical Substances
While I am busy with Android, my 47th iOS app Chemical Substances has been approved (after 10 days waiting for review). This is the collection of quizzes on 200 most basic chemical substances: both organic and inorganic. With the beginning of an academic year, I see the growing interest to my chemistry apps.
The English description of the game is the following:
Learn 200 chemical substances that are studied in introductory and advanced chemistry classes:
* systematic and trivial names
* structures and formulas
* organic, inorganic, and organometallic compounds
* two different quiz modes
* 100 easy and 100 difficult chemicals
*****
And it appears simultaneously on the Google Play:
Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.
Thanks!
Filed under Chemistry
Important Geography Apps on Android: Flags of the World, 50 US States, and European Countries
Three geographic apps that are performing very well on iOS (my top three apps of August in terms of income) are now available on the Google Play Store. And they are absolutely FREE, without in-app-purchases and questions / modes closed behind paywalls.
50 US States (Android) got a new mode Time Game. And all questions are free now.
And finally, European Countries (Android) with a new neater icon.
Filed under Uncategorized
Capitals of the World
Flags of the World
Hydrocarbon Chemical Formula
50 States
Асмолгамрус
All My Games
Andrey Solovyev's Molecular Games 