I Turned Off My AdMob Floors and Revenue Collapsed — The Mediation Rules That Actually Worked Solo
A record of tuning AdMob mediation eCPM floors to real-world rates on an indie wallpaper app, and handling the end of Unity Ads waterfall support. Why you must not turn INT floors off, the 80% match-rate boundary, and a twice-monthly review routine.
Tuning Interstitial Ad Fatigue Across Six Rork iOS Wallpaper Apps with Crashlytics and Remote Config
An implementation note from running six Rork-built iOS wallpaper apps in parallel and rebalancing interstitial fatigue with a three-layer frequency cap powered by Crashlytics non-fatal signals and Remote Config thresholds. Swift code, Cloudflare Workers config, and measured eCPM / D1 retention numbers from a four-week phased rollout.
The Day I Walked Away From $730/Month — Pulling AppLovin From 5 Apps After 11 Years of Crash Data
On 2026-05-26 I paused AppLovin and AppLovinMax Bidding + Waterfall across my entire iOS/Android catalogue (50M+ cumulative downloads) for INT, RWD, and RWI. This is the full record of the three lines of evidence I used to justify walking away from $730/month and the four-week evaluation framework I set up afterwards.
Making Silent Failures Visible Across 6 Rork Apps: An Early-Warning Design Note for Non-Crash Degradation
Notes from running 6 wallpaper apps in parallel and the layer I built in 3 weeks to make Crashlytics-invisible failures observable. Beacons, timeouts, and a small Cloudflare Worker for cross-app aggregation.
Two Weeks Tightening Up iPad Support for a Rork-Generated Wallpaper App
Notes from spending two weeks tightening up iPad support for a wallpaper app I scaffolded with Rork. Coming from an iPhone-centric indie practice since 2014, I cover where Rork's defaults stopped, how the AdMob adaptive banner misbehaved on iPad, and what changed in retention afterwards.
Aggregating App Store Connect, RevenueCat, and AdMob into One Morning Digest with Cloudflare Workers — A Six-App Indie Architecture
A practical architecture for indie developers running multiple Rork apps: aggregate App Store Connect API, RevenueCat REST, and AdMob Reporting API in a Cloudflare Workers Cron job and ship a single daily Slack digest each morning.
How I Layered Rewarded, Interstitial, and App Open Ads to Lift ARPDAU 1.4× on My Wallpaper App
Optimizing AdMob's three formats individually hit a ceiling — they were eating each other's impressions. After redesigning Rewarded, Interstitial, and App Open as a coordinated 3-layer system with strict role separation and an exclusion gate, ARPDAU climbed 1.4× over nine weeks. The full playbook, code, and weekly numbers.
Adding AppLovin MAX to a Rork-Generated iOS Project — A Field Note on Init Order, ATT Consent, and eCPM A/B Testing
A field note from an indie developer on layering AppLovin MAX on top of a Rork-generated iOS app: SDK initialization order, ATT and MAX consent flag sync, and a minimal A/B setup to compare eCPM against AdMob-only.
From a Rork-Built App to Monthly Break-Even at 100 Yen Subscription: Indie Numbers from May 2026
A small Rork-built utility app reached month-over-month break-even on a 100 yen subscription combined with AdMob. May 2026 numbers, decisions, and what I deliberately left out.
Minimal Customer Support Architecture for Solo Rork Devs — Running Inquiries for Multiple Apps Alone
The minimum-viable customer support stack I run as a solo developer maintaining a dozen apps with 50M cumulative downloads — in-app form with auto-attached diagnostics, Gmail filtering, reply templates, and the escalation rules that keep me under thirty minutes a day.
Designing AdMob App Open Ad Frequency Without Hurting Retention — Operational Notes from Wallpaper Apps
Implementation notes from rebuilding the AdMob App Open Ad frequency design in a recent wallpaper app update. Minimum intervals, cold-start exceptions, and post-modal suppression are controlled dynamically through Remote Config, with Claude in Chrome handling the daily dashboard review.
Two Months Without Opening AdMob Every Day — A Four-Tier Slack Setup for My Rork Apps
I have been shipping iOS and Android apps since 2014, and opening AdMob first thing in the morning had become a daily ritual. Earlier this spring I let it go and rebuilt the workflow around a four-tier Slack notification setup. Two months in, here is what I learned, including the misfires that took me three weeks to iron out.