Anyone used FAAD (Free App A Day) to promote their game?

[Luke Kellett]

I'm thinking of using the FAAD (http://faad.com/) service to promote my game Superflick.

The cost is quite high, but has the potential to be quite beneficial. However not having used the service before and not knowing anyone else that has I am curious to know what the results are actually like according to a third (unbiased) party.

So has anyone here actually used the service? Is it worth the $7k price tag they are quoting?!

[headcaseGames]

SEVEN THOUSAND it's up to now?

oy vey

[jhspaybar]

I honestly have no freaking clue how they work. There've been devs here who got featured for free, for a portion of sales in the next 30 days after the promotion, and then you saying $7k (and me also having been quoted a large flat rate). There definitely have been apps that paid off using it, but in my interactions with them their sales people are crap. I told them what I was hoping to accomplish, how I'd be willing to negotiate a deal, and all I ever get back are emails with "oh, I can take $200 more off" or something to that effect.

[DodgerBlue016]

It's a balance of cost to value, the way I see it. The question is: will you gain $7k dollars from people getting your app AND buying IAPs and stuff. If the answer is yes, it's definitely worth it. If you're not sure, don't get yourself caught up in anything. If you aren't sure if the value from there end will give you profit it's likely not worth it...

[30BelowStudios]

Last quote I read was half that price. I wonder if it's because your game is free with IAP?

[pchukwura]

Personally, I wouldn't do it. I didn't know it costs so much!

Like one other developer on this forum did and posted about it a few weeks ago... I (durring the week of Thanksgiving) made Goop (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goop/id426940636?mt=8) free, from $0.99.

There was no promotion besides a tweet about two days into the sale, and I would estimate I received about 200k-300k downloads. When you do change your price, many other price-change monitoring services will take note of that and feature/promote your app automatically. After the free sale ended, sales were indeed steadily higher than what they used to be before the sale.

Unfortunately, Goop has no in-app purchases, but I did it more as a learning experience for our next game.

Try putting your app free yourself first, you got nothing to lose. If it fails, perhaps give FAAD a try. Also, I'm not sure if being free for single a day is good enough...the first day Goop went free was great, but the subsequent days were exponentially higher.

Hope this helps

[Luke Kellett]

Last quote I read was half that price. I wonder if it's because your game is free with IAP?

I think that might have something to do with it, as they did say that they only take a limited number of free apps with IAP.

Either way, the price is far too steep so I will see if they can be a little more reasonable :-)

pchukwura my game Superflick is free with IAP so, I can't really go down the same path as you unfortunately. Though I do have another app thats paid which I plan to move over to IAP so perhaps that one is a better candidate for FAAD.

Thanks for you thoughts guys, I'll let you know how I go...

[node32]

was ok, but nothing special. gave us 40K users total

[Luke Kellett]

was ok, but nothing special. gave us 40K users total

Was your app free with IAP, just free or paid?

[Ovogame]

$7k is a LOT of money. It is hard to get that back after you switch back to paid. If you don't have IAP it might be extremely hard to get your money back.

I managed 400k downloads (http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=113355) for free. I might had 1 million with FAAD but money wise it wouldn't have been worth it (they wanted $3k)

JC

[ericlu2006]

I was quoted 10k from one FAAD provider for guaranteed top 25 in US AppStore. I am back off from it.

[schplurg]

I was quoted 10k from one FAAD provider for guaranteed top 25 in US AppStore. I am back off from it.

Uh huh, then they quote somebody else the same thing an hour later. How many apps can fit in the top 25? ;)

Anyways, I tried them about a year and a half ago. They wanted half of the difference in sales for a month. It didn't work. Sales went up very slightly after going back to paid. Daredevil Dave had started to decline in sales by then - obviously or I wouldn't have tried it. I have no IAP. Dave had been as high as 8 or 6 in the app store, so maybe it had simply run it's course.

For a thousand bucks...maybe, depending on your game. My opinion, you could spend $7-10k better elsewhere.

[Luke Kellett]

I was quoted 10k from one FAAD provider for guaranteed top 25 in US AppStore. I am back off from it.

Wow, I thought 7k was a lot but 10k? schplurg is right, that sort of money can be spent elsewhere with much better results.

Oh, and just an update on my progress. I've managed to get FAAD down to a more reasonable price of $4k. Which still isn't pocket change but from my research into the results of other campaigns it can work. I am combining it with a few other efforts, so fingers crossed :-)

My campaign will start at the end of the month, so I'll have more details then and post em back here if you guys are interested?

[Hercule]

My campaign will start at the end of the month, so I'll have more details then and post em back here if you guys are interested?

Yes we are interested :)

[Astraware]

Wow, I thought 7k was a lot but 10k? schplurg is right, that sort of money can be spent elsewhere with much better results.

Oh, and just an update on my progress. I've managed to get FAAD down to a more reasonable price of $4k. Which still isn't pocket change but from my research into the results of other campaigns it can work. I am combining it with a few other efforts, so fingers crossed :-)

My campaign will start at the end of the month, so I'll have more details then and post em back here if you guys are interested?

Definitely interested as we're looking at doing the same for a freemium game in the future.

[Emeric]

Very much interested.
Anyone heard about any rev-share contract for FAAD promotions?
I just did one in France and it was a rev-share deal. Reached #3 in France, but couldn't beat goddam Fruit Ninja!

[FlyingRoosters]

Yes Luke indeed we are interested.

Emeric could you could tell us more about your experience?

[ericlu2006]

Wow, I thought 7k was a lot but 10k? schplurg is right, that sort of money can be spent elsewhere with much better results.

Oh, and just an update on my progress. I've managed to get FAAD down to a more reasonable price of $4k. Which still isn't pocket change but from my research into the results of other campaigns it can work. I am combining it with a few other efforts, so fingers crossed :-)

My campaign will start at the end of the month, so I'll have more details then and post em back here if you guys are interested?

Sent you a PM.

[Trillion]

It depends on your app. Is the app free with IAP the rate right now runs at $6500. The problem with free games is that FAADS businessmodel is based of off paid apps, switching their apps to free for a limited amount of time. Already free apps affects them negatively from a branding standpoint. The value proposal created by switching a regularly paid app to free is how they are able to expand and retain their audience. Since free apps affect them negatively they limit the number of free apps they feature weekly on FAAD to a minimum and the prices are higher. Either way, I think the money s only worth it if you have a good weekday for the push. Otherwise you can lose a lot of downloads. I would recommend using FAAD rather as a supplement than by itself...

[layzerboy]

For myself, they wanted 5K for BetterLetter but with the 5K, its a lot of moolah for me to spend on one sitting so i gave it up sadly.

[TheGreatWhiteApe]

Once you set you app for free you get picked up but stacks of free sites anyway that will do the promotion for you. One of our games picked up over 2 million downloads for free which has since translated into 100k paid, without paying for FAAD. You are better off launching your game as paid and then switching it to free after a couple of weeks if you want to get the same exposure without paying the 7k.

[ChaoticBox]

Once you set you app for free you get picked up but stacks of free sites anyway that will do the promotion for you. One of our games picked up over 2 million downloads for free which has since translated into 100k paid, without paying for FAAD.

Glad it worked for you, but this is not at all typical. Most apps are lucky to get a few thousand free downloads before trickling down to less than a hundred a day.

[Luke Kellett]

Just a heads up guys, my FAAD campaign started today. It's still early days but I'll post back soon once 24 hours has passed and give you some solid info :-)

[Ovogame]

How long is your promotion going to last?
24h or more?

JC

[Luke Kellett]

The campaign lasts for 30 days. Though the featured icons last for 48hrs (24hrs for each section).

From my own research the first 4-5 days are the most effective though. Will have evidence sooooooon :-)

[Ovogame]

Sorry, I mean how long is it going to be free?

[mommagamehouse]

Best of luck !!

[Luke Kellett]

Ovogame I will keep Superflick free for at least the length of the campaign.
mommagamehouseThanks!

So the campaign has been running for a little bit over 24 hours now. In that time I've had 5k new installs (11k since Monday) and 11k clicks on the FAAD campaign link. The downloads are less than I expected, but the IAP profits are more. So all in all it's been a surprising 24 hours!

I'm looking forward to the weekend rush now :-)

[FlyingRoosters]

Nice! Hope you will "debrief" us on your FAAD promotion at the end of the week.

Cheers!

[Emeric]

Thanks Luke, that's great information! Please keep us up to date.
I was wondering: how do you know how many clicks come from the faad website?

Wish you hundred thousands of downloads.

Also, I'm trying to list all faad site per territory. Anyone can help?:
US: www.freeappaday.com
France: www.appgratuites.com
Spain: www.appgratis.com

[MrBlue]

Thanks Luke, that's great information! Please keep us up to date.
I was wondering: how do you know how many clicks come from the faad website?


Tip of the day. You can add a + to the end of any bit.ly link you find and get stats.

FAAD uses bit.ly for as long as I can remember. So you can actually go back and analyze the effectiveness of their campaigns for every single app.

SuperFlick's link from FAAD. https://bitly.com/x98pmV+

[Hercule]

Tip of the day. You can add a + to the end of any bit.ly link you find and get stats.

FAAD uses bit.ly for as long as I can remember. So you can actually go back and analyze the effectiveness of their campaigns for every single app.

SuperFlick's link from FAAD. https://bitly.com/x98pmV+

fantastic tips !!
thanks for sharing

[Luke Kellett]

Tip of the day. You can add a + to the end of any bit.ly link you find and get stats.

FAAD uses bit.ly for as long as I can remember. So you can actually go back and analyze the effectiveness of their campaigns for every single app.

SuperFlick's link from FAAD. https://bitly.com/x98pmV+

Yep great tip, this is one of the ways I researched FAAD before contacting them. Combine that with AppAnnie (http://appannie.com), AppFigures (http://www.appfigures.com) and some good ol hard work and you can get a good idea of how well things run.

FlyingRoosters will do!
Emeric thanks dude! Me too :-)

Oh, another good research tool is Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/), gives a good idea of how a site ranks world wide :-)

[Gamenauts]

Thanks Luke, that's great information! Please keep us up to date.
I was wondering: how do you know how many clicks come from the faad website?

Wish you hundred thousands of downloads.

Also, I'm trying to list all faad site per territory. Anyone can help?:
US: www.freeappaday.com
France: www.appgratuites.com
Spain: www.appgratis.com

Hi Emeric,

Thanks for the list for those international faad sites. Have you stumbled upon any sites for Canada and Australia?

Thanks!

[Emeric]

Nope, I didn't start a full research but I was expecting some people here had clues for faad-like websites in their countries.

I know the guys who do appgratuites in france. They launched the spanish version and are in beta currently for the UK version. But I'm surprised faad (US) didn't try to expend to other countries. I'd be curious to know the chinese/Korean ones, if the exist (if they don't, that's a fu*king golden opportunity for whoever's quick enough).

Seriously, these guys make more than 1M€ a year just with a simple website and simple app. I'm not a business man and I'd rather make games, but I find it crazy that every territory is not already covered by a "faad" kind of app.

[voodooetc]

Ovogame I will keep Superflick free for at least the length of the campaign.
mommagamehouseThanks!

So the campaign has been running for a little bit over 24 hours now. In that time I've had 5k new installs (11k since Monday) and 11k clicks on the FAAD campaign link. The downloads are less than I expected, but the IAP profits are more. So all in all it's been a surprising 24 hours!

I'm looking forward to the weekend rush now :-)


My best whishes Luke.

So right now.

I see something around 15000 clicks.
what about installs?

could you tell us many installs do you have with that 15000 clicks?

and your personal opinion is it worthy to spend 6000 - 6500 USD on the campaign?
How your income? is going good right now?

[Luke Kellett]

Ok so heres the details after the first week:

FAAD Clicks: 14,173
New Installs: 25k

The first two days of the campaign had Superflick featured in the top menu, and this reflects in the number of clicks in the first two days ~6k each. Since then clicks have trailed off very rapidly as Superflick is featured on another page which I doubt people really see.

Superflick made it into the top 20 for Sports games and top 100 for Arcade games on both iPhone and iPad in this time. Which is why the downloads are higher than the actual number of clicks.

In terms of revenue, this has been quite good as usage is nice and high at the moment. About 20% of users play twice a day and session length is about 2.6 minutes. Superflick has also had a number of positive reviews and ratings.

I expect downloads to drop over the coming weeks and then settle (hopefully much higher than before).

In terms of the 6.5k-7k spend on FAAD. Firstly I would try to get them down on price, as that is quite high. Secondly to make it effective you need to have your IAP's in order as well as other marketing strategies to ensure MAXIMUM exposure over the campaign. And not making your app free 6 days before the campaign starts (like I did when I scheduled things before locking in dates argh!!). So if you spend the money, make sure you do other things to make it worth it! Milk it for every penny...

[Ovogame]

Luke, I am very surprised by these numbers, they are terrible!!! You should ask them to get some of the money back, they obviously failed to do their part of the deal. Seriously, it is ridiculous they charge so much for such a crappy exposure.

JC

[Gamenauts]

Hi Emeric,

Cool thanks, and yeah we'd love for someone to do the equivalent of FAAD for specific countries. We're getting good revenues from other non-US countries (more than expected). Everything is becoming more global nowadays.

[Luke Kellett]

Luke, I am very surprised by these numbers, they are terrible!!! You should ask them to get some of the money back, they obviously failed to do their part of the deal. Seriously, it is ridiculous they charge so much for such a crappy exposure.

JC

I think a couple of factors contributed to this, one the Superflick icon is a bit bland and two FAAD seem to be slipping. Probably due to increased competition, which sucks for the dev because it's no longer a great one stop shop.

If others know of better options I'd love to hear about them!

[voodooetc]

Ok so heres the details after the first week:

FAAD Clicks: 14,173
New Installs: 25k

The first two days of the campaign had Superflick featured in the top menu, and this reflects in the number of clicks in the first two days ~6k each. Since then clicks have trailed off very rapidly as Superflick is featured on another page which I doubt people really see.

Superflick made it into the top 20 for Sports games and top 100 for Arcade games on both iPhone and iPad in this time. Which is why the downloads are higher than the actual number of clicks.

In terms of revenue, this has been quite good as usage is nice and high at the moment. About 20% of users play twice a day and session length is about 2.6 minutes. Superflick has also had a number of positive reviews and ratings.

I expect downloads to drop over the coming weeks and then settle (hopefully much higher than before).

In terms of the 6.5k-7k spend on FAAD. Firstly I would try to get them down on price, as that is quite high. Secondly to make it effective you need to have your IAP's in order as well as other marketing strategies to ensure MAXIMUM exposure over the campaign. And not making your app free 6 days before the campaign starts (like I did when I scheduled things before locking in dates argh!!). So if you spend the money, make sure you do other things to make it worth it! Milk it for every penny...
Luke I see you don't have any more clicks from 3 days ago so how is about your downloads are you doing some thousands per day right now?

[willzeng]

Once you set you app for free you get picked up but stacks of free sites anyway that will do the promotion for you. One of our games picked up over 2 million downloads for free which has since translated into 100k paid, without paying for FAAD. You are better off launching your game as paid and then switching it to free after a couple of weeks if you want to get the same exposure without paying the 7k.

Unfortunately I launch my app as free. Now it has been a month and I changed it to paid. Can I get the same exposure if I change it to free again some weeks later?

[Luke Kellett]

voodooetc Right now I am seeing about 1k downloads a day.

willzeng I'm no expert on the app store but to get the full effect I think you would need to wait 3-4 weeks minimum. I've been told by FAAD that you should wait 3 months, but I am not sure what they based this on.

I personally did a little over 3 weeks with Superflick as paid. Which resulted in about 2k downloads over 3 days. Not terribly effective. Without other campaigns I don't think it's worth it, you really need to combine things.

[willzeng]

voodooetc Right now I am seeing about 1k downloads a day.

willzeng I'm no expert on the app store but to get the full effect I think you would need to wait 3-4 weeks minimum. I've been told by FAAD that you should wait 3 months, but I am not sure what they based this on.

I personally did a little over 3 weeks with Superflick as paid. Which resulted in about 2k downloads over 3 days. Not terribly effective. Without other campaigns I don't think it's worth it, you really need to combine things.

Thanks for your answer and advice. Later I'll study it over. Currently I'm thinking another thing and won't invest anymore (time, effort, money) in any future uncertainties. The very thing is, you spend several months on your app, put it in the most front market, believing it will bring back what worths your effort, or even better, yet surprisingly find that there is just NO reward, not even in the simplest form of some consolatory attentions. There are only attractive offers saying 'give me more money if u don't want your previous endeavors lost', which reminds you of something like the pattern of a trap. Plus you see quit a few not-so-good apps ranked highly in the top lists, which by now only suggests frauds everywhere, you begin to wonder: have I been tricked into something? Is this the not-so-bad ecosystem I once believed in? Time to stay aloof and cool down for a period.

[Luke Kellett]

willzeng Don't get down about it dude, it's not easy and if it was there would be no money to go round. Everyone would have an equal share of the pie.

The truth is, if you're not in the top 20% you really won't make any money. The app store is all about effective marketing, not about how good the game is. Sure good games are easier to market, but a great game with no marketing will never survive.

This just makes things hard for dev's like us that put months of effort into our latest work and then struggle to make a dime :-S It takes time, skill, money, contacts, knowledge and hard bloody work to get things off the ground!

[willzeng]

willzeng Don't get down about it dude, it's not easy and if it was there would be no money to go round. Everyone would have an equal share of the pie.

The truth is, if you're not in the top 20% you really won't make any money. The app store is all about effective marketing, not about how good the game is. Sure good games are easier to market, but a great game with no marketing will never survive.

This just makes things hard for dev's like us that put months of effort into our latest work and then struggle to make a dime :-S It takes time, skill, money, contacts, knowledge and hard bloody work to get things off the ground!

Thanks. Your thread here definitely helps and I'll learn from it. Wish you great success first.

However I just worry about the big picture...I wonder if situations today are caused by, yet in turn hungers more for, and finally would become worse due to things like FAAD?

[Luke Kellett]

Well think about it this way, things like FAAD would not be used by big publishers if they did not work when used correctly (i.e. combined with other initiatives) :-)

[Nelkon]

We used FAAD to promote our game. We try to give them our own tracking link. They rejected it. They don`t give us any statistics after or online stats. But we decided to run with them because we saw the Appannie stats for other apps promoted with FAAD.

So we were with our FTP game on their site, on their push and app, and Twitter, and FB news. And NOTHING! A couple of southands of clicks, no more.

Be sure, FAAD is a huge fake. DO NOT USE IT. They have no any life audience. Just look at Xyologic and you will see their montly audience.

What did they do when we start to claim? They give us a small banner on their site with 5000 daily users. It was like a joke. We totally lost our money.
De aware.

[MrBlue]

Pro Tip of the day: you can get stats for any bit.ly link by appending a + to the end.

Example:

I go to FAAD and I pick a random one on the calendar. I pick Call of Mini: Last Stand. I find the bit.ly link is http://bit.ly/HUquqs and i just add a + to the end so I get http://bit.ly/HUquqs+. Fiddling around with it, I see how many clicks in the last 30 days including the day of the promo. I switch to TOTAL and I see they've used FAAD before and it was much more successful the first time.

I can see stats for every single app on the site. This is must-do homework for anyone looking to throw a couple of grand that way. It doesn't show everything, but it's a good starting point. Make sure to cross reference against AppAnnie and other data mining sites.

[Jorge.]

Hi,

I just wanted to add my experience on this.

A few months ago, I launched my app Ice Math Ninja (http://www.pers.com/a/pr/pookie_tushka_imn_app.html)

I was noticed by a service called AppGratis (it is similar to Free App A The Day, but it seems to be more popular overseas (France, Spain, Austria, Brazil, etc)). They asked if they could feature my app, and I said yes. They did not charge me or anything (perhaps you could contact them and submit your app, the email of the main contact is simon@appgratis.com ).

On the day my app was promoted by AppGratis I got over 23,000 downloads, but when I made the app paid again, it went back down to normal levels.

In my experience having the app promoted by a free service, didn't help much. I've heard that people that look for free apps, usually don't like buying apps.

I've also heard that people that get apps for free usually leave bad reviews, because they don't really care about your app, they just download anything that is free (in my case, I didn't get negative reviews, but I didn't get any reviews at all from those 23,000).

Jorge

[Nelkon]

I just want to add the REAL stat about FAAD.
For example recently promoted game Car Toons! with Free App A Day just got only 10 000 clicks. You can see their stat: https://bitly.com/SRVtbt+

So if your landing page CTR is about 10%, you`ll get 1000 downloads.

You can see the statidtics for Fragger too: https://bitly.com/GQiucR+

We are watching FAAD about a couple of month but didn`t discover any campaign with more than 20-25K clicks. Most of all do not reach 10K clicks.

[FlowStudioGames]

We had poor downloads after two relatively big free promotions. We've got $880 in the next week after 205 000 downloads. Next time it was $670 after 316 000 downloads.

BUT we have a very good recommendation for MUCH BETTER monetization: use Chartboost, offer your game for other advertisers and you will earn thousands of dollars after promotions like we had. This is far better then to wait how much you will get after switching back to paid.