Hi Everyone, I'm curious as to how people are actually promoting their Apps / Games and how successful it has been. Are there any other big forums such as this one that people use? What review websites or blogs have actually reviewed your game? Have you paid for advertising and how successful was it? I appreciate that people may not want to give away their secrets or how certain things effected sales figures, but if anyone is willing to share it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.
Cheese Collect has been reviewed by AppSpy and LiveTouch.fr. I made it FREE for a day for AppVentCalendar and it got over 33 thousand downloads, placing it in #39 in Arcade games and #56 in All Games. Sales have increased substantially since then, but it's only been a few days and it's still hard to tell. I've never paid for advertising, but Apple featured it a while back, which pushed it into #157 in Puzzle Games.
When you put your game to Free for a time, then back to paid, does it take your free sales and rank you under the paid apps based on free downloads? Thanks for the response Looks like I missed out on some good promotion with the AppVentCalendar, maybe next year.
Nope, it doesn't. It did a while back though, but Apple fixed it. It helped sales though, especially being featured on the AppVentCalendar website, which I think lots of people visit each day. How do you promote your app?
Well, the main reason for setting up this thread was to gain an insight into peoples successful promotion techniques, since ours haven't worked at all at the moment. We've been reviewed by a couple of websites but saw no sales improvements (The reviews weren't great though). We've upgraded the game as was suggested by these review websites and we have a better version now which I feel could sell quite well with the correct promotion. We've also promoted it in a few forums, but only this one seems active. I've just signed up to a few promotional opportunities too, the New Years App Blowout and the 12DaysOfChristmasApps hoping that these will get the game noticed a little more.
Marketing for iPhone games is especially difficult and can be quite frustrating. It demands a considerable amount of patience and a great deal of keeping your eyes open for opportunities to self promote. There is no one sure fire strategy to getting your game noticed or driving sales. Also, if the reviews your game has received haven't been great I'd suggest making sure you address all major complaints in an update before starting a new marketing push. Overall, I think one of the best marketing strategies for indie devs is to get vocal, respected iPhone gamers who are frequent posters on the forums to try out your game and if they like it, help you to spread the word about it. From everyone I've talked to, paid advertising rarely works and is usually a money losing proposition. Just some thoughts for ya. Q
get a celebrity to tak about your app. when megan fox talked about sally's spa on tv, sales suddenly shot up almost instantly
You could always try a press release, prmac.com or a seriously huge one through prnewswire.com -then again you have to make sure your release is newsworthy!
Make a Lite version for your game. Also, have 'weekend sales' or 'one-day-only sales' to make people buy your game.
It depends on the game and how good/bad the demo is. Sometimes a demo can give away too much or too little. Both can hurt sales. I know when our Free version dropped out of the App Store (an accident), our sales took a NOSEDIVE. I didn't even realize the problem until about a day and a half later. Our Free version also provides us with a conversion ratio. Right now we have about a 5:1 conversion which isn't too bad (for every 5 Flickitty Free downloads we see 1 sale). If the numbers hold true (and they usually do), this means we would need to get 1000 Flickitty Free downloads to see 200 sales. That only applies to the USA, the other markets are nowhere near that ratio. Otherwise, Russia would have made us extremely wealthy.
I'm learning as I go, but my promotional efforts for my game at this point have mostly centered around building a presence on the web in the way of a blog, supporting site, twitter account, facebook page, etc, etc. I haven't been in the App Store for even a month yet, so it's hard to say what sort of direct benefit any of this is having, but my thinking was that first I'd have some solid content, then start looking trying to generate interest on the basis of that. I'm probably squandering my time in a variety of ways, but I've a few updates planned and I can see my game having a longer life cycle than most, so I'm hoping for a more gradual buildup of interest that what's usually expected for the App Store. Otherwise, I haven't submitted to review sites yet, but I'm not expecting much to come from that effort simply based on what others have to say about the impact of blog reviews. I've also solicited (unbiased) reviews in exchange for promo codes on TA, but it seems that most people will just take the code and disappear. This did end up putting me into contact with a few people who will probably prove to be excellent playtesters, but didn't work out so well for promotion or any sort of word of mouth, I'm afraid.
Yes, most people seem to snag a promo code without even mentioning that they did. I think I'll be doing the "PM me for a promo code" route from now on so I can keep track of who gets them
Yeah, definitely go the PM route. The lurkers waiting to snag promo codes as they're posted and never posting anything, seem to be increasing in number on TA. I've done our last 2 Promo code contests using the PM method, and it's worked well both times.
Just a personal thought FWIW from a casual gamer/reviewer - if I get a promo code via PM, I will reply to the dev with any comments, and post a review, and having the PM makes it easier to respond. For me, the PM codes are top priority (though I do have a job, too, so it does take more time than I want, sometimes). If I see an issue or have a comment, sometimes I wait to put the review out there to see what the dev responds. I do like to hear back from the devs if I had a comment. If I get a code via the thread, I'll put it on my "thread" list and write comments or at least review, but it does take second fiddle to the PM. I guess I just feel more of a personal connection if I got it through PM. The contests can be good, depending on what they are. Some people may not have the time to look up stuff/respond quickly (e.g. they might be busy doing another task, at work, feeding kids, etc) so you may lose out in getting a good reviewer if you go for a quick response. So, my opinion is that the PM method does allow you (and the reviewer) to keep track of the codes and provide feedback better than just posting codes in the forum. Secondtime
