Should You Make a Wordle Clone? (And How One Wordle App is Making $50K a Month)

Coming up. Should you create a Wordle clone? Stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young founder of AppMasters.com The place you go when you want action packed content related to helping you grow your downloads and your revenues. And today I want to answer a question that I've been actually getting a lot lately. Should I create a water cologne portal? The hits sensation created by Josh Wardle with an a, and he's a Brooklyn bass born in the UK, but Brooklyn based software developer.

And he created this sensation that now subsequently as of this recording, he ended up selling to the New York times. Reportedly over a million dollars. So kudos to you, Josh congrats brother. But because of your sensation, your hit sensation, there's been a lot of things happening in the app store. So here's Josh's version. It's only on the web. You can only play it on the web. I have a tab that I never closed. On safari that is specifically for Wardle, but here's, here's the actual sensation right here.

But if we look into the app stores on app, Annie, and look at the top charts, you can see Wordle, which was created by Steven five years ago. Josh creeks. In January, I believe, but really recently, January 20, 22, but Steven created it back five years ago and his app is number two overall. So because of the success of Josh, his Wordle, Stevens, Wordle,, whom he just consequently named it Wordle, he was able to ride that wave.

Okay. Let's take a quick look at the overall games and just want to see what is happening here. So Wordle right here, where does, which is again like Josh's game Wardle and then here. So about three, I believe 1, 2, 3 of the top 15 games. 33% are in are about Wordle, right? Josh's sensation. Okay. Now let's go into word games. Just to show you how crazy this is going. And now we got ward award a well top three. All right.

Word games are all mortal base. And then word letter again, Wordle base and 11 right here. I think it is too. It's really taken off. All right. So should you create a clump? Here's what I've discovered. I don't know how to answer that question, but I'm going to show you exactly what I discovered. So I'm doing all the market research for you. Okay. I want you to look at the top eight apps games that show up for Wordle,, because a lot of app developers, there's a few now starting to advertise, but a bunch of them are just riding that wave Wordle,.

Okay. So let's take a look at the first app Wordle,. Again, this was. In 2016, five years ago. Now the premise of the game, actually sorta like this, you get five letters or four letters you start off with and you have to try to make a word out of it. It can be any word. Doesn't have to be exact word, but here it could be like meats, right? And then you move on to the next word and you just try to get as many words you can within time limit.

So really addicting game. But that's how Steven originally launched the game as he's recently as a couple of days ago. The Wordle, that Josh is version. So the six guesses, five letter word type of thing. Right? So he recently added this new version that Josh made popular, but Steven got lucky because he named the name, the game Wardle and sort of rode that train. He ranks number one for Wordle,. So I actually, when I first heard of Wordle, I went to the app store.

Like most people did. I searched for Wordle and that's the game I started playing. I was like, this is pretty addicting. Right. But I didn't know Josh's version yet. So Josh kudos, you started everything. It looks like Steven started to advertise and he got 3 million downloads in December and $20,000 in revenue. So he's gotten a few in-app purchases, remove ads on lock, skips on unlock words and things like that. So Steven already had all this in app purchases and because of the success of Wardle, he was able to take off his spin his original portal as well.

All right. Here's the number two app where it is. 800,000 downloads, according to sensor tower and was launched in January of 2022. Right? So these numbers are weird because this is the same 2021, but it was launched in 2022. So I'm gonna assume that central tower just hasn't updated this part yet, but things are taken off. So I trust these numbers as you can see, it's number two for Wardle. And then when we looked at the top word games, it's number two right here as well.

Number three, four Wardle, 300,000 again, launch in January. No, in-app purchases. Just like we're just knowing that purchases down here. Nothing so crazy. They're all ad base. They're rolling on ad. Here's the number for 300,000. So really cool. Let's see if they got any ads or anything or in app purchases, nothing in launch beginning of January. So we're really starting to take off here. Number five 60,000. So the downloads are going down a little bit.

Again, launched in 2022. So should you create, it may be, but a lot of these competitors of yours that just launch in January one year, late to the party and two they're just relying on ad. So maybe think about a different spin to how you can start monetizing. If you just want to do ads. Now, I like the ads model because if you've played the game, like I play every day, well you'll know that it's highly written. There's a high return.

So I like when you borrow elements in game plays that have high retention already, and then maybe you put your own spin to it. Right. And then what word here? Just launch in January as well. They are, they do have some remove ads, so kudos. I would re I would increase the price. So if I'm going to have remove, remove ads, I'd rather make it $2 to $3 moving forward. Okay. But things are really starting to take off a hundred thousand.

Now here's the kicker. All right. We've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6 of the apps ranking for Wardle doing pretty well, but the monetization isn't there except for the first one. First one different version. He launched it up. It has recently updated to the world that we all know, but he did have in app purchases and you can see all the reviews really starting to take off. In January when Wardell started to take off too. Okay.

So he already had in-app purchases. So he already, already baked in doing great. Now take out this app that is currently ranking number eight, number seven for Wordle,. Okay. It is 10,000 downloads, $50,000 in revenue. Holy cow, but launch in 2018. And here's the. It's a paid app, 1 99, kudos to you, David. Really, really cool. And I paid you David, about the game. It's nothing like Josh's Wardle game at all. And so I dug in deeper.

I wanted to get a sense of this Wordle and what happened to it. So I pulled it up on sensor tower and here's the ranks. So I did all time. You can do all time right here. So launch the 2018. Josh is, or Steven's Wardle last launched in 2016. So he launched three years later. So Steven, you came up with Bordeaux, but he also, if you look at it right here, the changes in September 4th, 2018 or 20 20 18, he launched as with just war.

And then changes app name to Wartell dash free word games. So trying to get some ASO juice out of that. Right. But look, it's starting to take off here then. I'm going to do last 90 days what's been happening. So really started to take off right here, the beginning of January, right? Probably when Wordle, started taking off Josh's portal. So people were searching for it within the app stores, as you can see, and here David made a really interesting switch.

So he changed his name. To Wardle and then period, and then changed it from free to pay. Which was rarely really interesting cause I played the game and it actually has in-app purchases still. So he was ready for the actual freemium model, but then made the switch to being paid, which was very, very interesting. And he's, you know, according to, since start making pretty darn good money out of it. And you ranked number six.

For that particular keyword. So really, really interesting strategy here. We have seen, if you were to make a paid app to yourself, we have seen apple search ads, the advanced version work really well for paid apps. One of our clients, I think it's a $4 app, but we're actually getting a two to one ROAS on paid ads too. Cause he was like, how do I scale this? And I was like, let's try beta ads, apple search ads. It's working out really well.

So very interesting that the number one ranking app for the term. Didn't start off as Josh's versions of girdle making pretty good money, right? As a freemium model, then now ha has added Josh's version. And the number seven app who really does not, again, is not the same gameplay as Josh's version switched over to a paid app when he started things taken off and he's making even more money than the first app. So very, very interesting model.

I like the different speeds. On this game that I've seen. And the middle two to six are just like the Wordle game that Josh created, but reliant on ads for its. So there's a market research for you. You decide how you want to approach the approach. It, from what I have heard from developers, it's a pretty easy, simple concept game to develop. But I think the interesting part is the mechanics. So kudos to you, Josh, for creating the game mechanics of this thing.

Very, very highly addicting game. And I love that. One a day. And when I was thinking about Josh, couple of days, like this is perfect for the New York times. And obviously, I mean, captain obvious, they ended up buying Josh's name. So graduations, Josh and graduations to Stephen and David who came up with the word. And now is writing that, let me know what you thought of the video. And if you want to see more of these type of videos, I get this question a lot.

Should I create apps of trending apps? I usually say no, but this I thought was an interesting example. Uh, maybe that's what I would say. All right. All right, guys, if you liked this video, hit that like button and then leave a comment below of what you thought of this video. And if you are going to create a Wordle type of game, or if you see some trending games, if you have any questions on whether you should go approach it and what the spin is, all right, until next time, I'll see you on the next video.