Every Cash Raven payout is one multiplication: your average DAU for the month, times your per-country rate. This post is what the left-hand side means.
The definition
Average DAU is the mean of your daily active users across a calendar month. First of the month to the last day of the month, in UTC.
A day counts a user twice over, and both halves matter:
- 60 minutes. A device counts for a day once it has been sharing for 60 minutes in that UTC day. Time offline does not count toward it, and a device that comes and goes adds its time up across the day. A device that connects briefly and leaves is not a daily active user.
- Once per network connection. Active days are counted per network connection, not per device — several devices on one home or office connection are a single active user, because one connection is what the network actually delivers.
Then the month is the average of those daily figures. A device online every day counts every day; one online for half the month counts on the half it was there.
The arithmetic
Say you ship an update on the 15th that doubles your install base, and then it settles. These are daily active users — devices already past the 60 minutes and already counted once per connection:
- Days 1–15: 2,000 daily active users
- Days 16–30: 1,000 daily active users
(2,000 × 15 + 1,000 × 15) / 30 = 1,500 average DAU
1,500 × $0.40 = $600 for that month
Not 2,000 (your peak). Not 1,000 (your last reading). The average of what was actually active, which is the same thing the network actually received.
Your own analytics will read higher than this, and now you know the two reasons why: the 60-minute bar, and the per-connection count. Both are visible as they accrue on your dashboard.
Why not peak, and why not final
Peak would pay you for a spike you held for an hour. Final would pay you nothing for three weeks of traffic if your fleet dipped on the 30th. Both are easy to game and neither matches what was delivered. Time-weighting is the only version of this number that is both fair and boring, and payout metrics should be boring.
Where to watch it
Your dashboard shows the month's average DAU as it accrues, alongside projected and paid-to-date figures, broken down per app and per country. The per-country split matters because your rate is per-country: 1,000 average DAU in one market and 1,000 in another are usually not the same money.
What "up to $0.40" means
$0.40 is the top rate. Rates vary by country, and your full rate card is in your dashboard from the moment you sign up — we do not publish per-country rates publicly, because a rate card without your geo mix next to it is a number that misleads more often than it informs.
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Create your free accountFrequently asked
How is average DAU calculated?
It is the mean of your daily active users across a calendar month. A device counts for a day once it has been sharing for 60 minutes in that UTC day, and active days are counted once per network connection — so several devices on one home or office connection are a single active user. If 2,000 daily active users are recorded for days 1–15 and 1,000 for days 16–30, average DAU is (2,000×15 + 1,000×15) / 30 = 1,500.
Does Cash Raven pay on peak devices or average devices?
Average. Peak would pay for a spike held for an hour and is easy to game; the monthly average matches what the network actually received.
Why is my average DAU lower than the device count in my own analytics?
Two reasons, both deliberate. A device has to share for 60 minutes in a UTC day before it counts for that day, so brief sessions do not qualify. And days are counted once per network connection, so several devices behind one home or office connection are one active user. Your dashboard shows today's count alongside the month's average so you can watch both accrue.