India

Publishing from India follows the same worldwide process: create a Google Play developer account, pay the one-time $25 fee (charged in USD to an international-enabled card), complete identity verification with an Indian address and phone number, then upload your signed AAB and store listing. To receive earnings you also add a payments profile with an Indian bank account and PAN. Many Indian indie developers skip the new-account 12-tester / 14-day wait by publishing through a seasoned, verified account first.

To receive money from paid apps or in-app purchases you need a Google payments profile linked to an Indian bank account, and Google collects your PAN for tax reporting. Free apps with no in-app purchases need no payments profile at all — only the one-time $25 registration. Earnings are paid out monthly once your balance crosses the payout threshold, converted to INR at Google’s exchange rate.

A D-U-N-S number is required only for organisation (company) accounts, not for personal/individual developer accounts. Indian companies can request a free D-U-N-S number from Dun & Bradstreet, which can take up to 30 days. If you are an individual developer, you skip D-U-N-S entirely and verify with your personal identity instead.

Indian traffic typically earns $0.30–$1.50 eCPM on banners and $1–$4 on interstitials, with rewarded video reaching $2–$6. That is roughly a quarter to a tenth of United States rates, because eCPM tracks what local advertisers will pay to reach that audience. Two practical consequences: an India-first app needs far more daily active users to hit the same revenue as a US-first one, and format mix matters more — leaning on rewarded video instead of banners can double effective earnings on the same user base. Payments from Google are made in local currency once the account passes the $100 payment threshold.

AdMob pays monthly once your balance passes the $100 payment threshold, with payments normally issued between the 21st and 26th of the following month. The cycle is worth understanding because it delays first income far more than most people expect. Earnings accrue through a calendar month, are finalised in the first days of the next month after invalid-traffic deductions, and are only released if the balance has crossed $100 and the account has completed identity verification, address (PIN) verification, and tax form submission. An app earning $30 a month therefore sees nothing until month four. Payment is made in local currency by bank transfer for most countries, including India. If a payment is held, it is almost always one of those three verification steps sitting incomplete rather than a problem with the earnings themselves.

Roughly 1,500 to 3,500 daily active users for a US-heavy audience, and 15,000 to 50,000 for an India-heavy one. The arithmetic is simple: monthly ad revenue is approximately daily active users × ARPDAU × 30, where ARPDAU is average revenue per daily active user. Typical ARPDAU for a modestly monetised app runs about $0.01–$0.02 on Indian traffic and $0.10–$0.30 on United States traffic, with well-tuned games reaching higher. So $1,000 a month needs about 1,700 daily users at $0.02 ARPDAU, or 33,000 at $0.001. Two conclusions fall out of that: geography changes the answer by an order of magnitude, and raising ARPDAU through format mix and placement is usually cheaper than buying ten times the users.

Published rates run roughly ₹3–7 lakh a year, depending on account age, app count and install volume — older or organisation-type Play accounts earn faster because they reach install scale sooner. For an established or organisation account (registered before November 2023, or an org-type account), the rate is roughly ₹5,000–7,000 per app per year, because these accounts clear review and scale faster. For a newer personal account, payouts are staged: a fixed ₹8,000–10,000 a month in months 1–2 while apps ramp up, stepping through revenue-share bands of roughly ₹12,000–19,000 in months 3–5, ₹20,000–40,000 in months 6–8, and ₹50,000–80,000 in months 9–12 as installs and ad revenue mature. An account can carry up to 10 apps, and every stage after ramp-up is performance-driven — it moves with actual ad revenue, not a fixed promise.

Payouts are made between the 1st and 5th of each month, by UPI or bank transfer, with an earnings statement. The first payout depends on the phase: during ramp-up the partner receives a fixed monthly amount from the moment the first app goes live, and once the apps earn real ad revenue the payout moves to a revenue-share basis. The payment mechanics stay the same in both phases, so a partner can plan around a predictable monthly window rather than waiting for an ad network's own payment threshold. See fixed payout vs revenue share for how the two phases fit together.

Newer personal accounts move through four stages from a fixed ₹8,000–10,000 a month up to ₹50,000–80,000 a month in the mature stage, while established or organisation accounts are paid ₹5,000–7,000 per app per year. For a newer personal account the stages are: months 1–2 ramp-up (fixed), ₹8,000–10,000 a month; months 3–5 early revenue share, ₹12,000–19,000; months 6–8 growing revenue share, ₹20,000–40,000; months 9–12 mature revenue share, ₹50,000–80,000. Established accounts — registered before November 2023, or organisation-type — are paid per app because they reach install scale faster. Across the book the annual range is roughly ₹3–7 lakh depending on account age, app count and install volume, and only the ramp-up stage is fixed.