Hi everyone, How does an app get featured in each list(specifically:what's hot and new and noteworthy) on the appsotre? Also, who chooses which apps are on "the best dirt racing game, archer game"? and why are those (dirt racing, archer games) featured and not.. say.. the best music instrument for example? Cheers
Apple decides who is featured. There isn't a clear-cut method of getting featured and Apple doesn't notify the developer. We were featured under 'What's Hot' and it is a complete mystery.
There's also some good info on a previous thread: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=14134 Basically, it starts with making a good app (and you can see what Apple currently likes to get a sense of what they are looking for), some luck and getting exposure.
Well yeah, but I think almost all developers think they have 'a good app' that is worthy of being Featured. And some apps that SHOULD be featured, aren't. If Apple actually provided us some info on why we were featured- hell ANY FEEDBACK AT ALL- it would be helpful.
I have no idea exactly how it works but here is my recent experience. A week or so ago, when Ground Effect had been out for five days it appeared on the "what's hot" list on the App store on the phone. This is under Featured/What's hot then you have to click the "hot new games" button above the top of the list so maybe not the same as being fully "featured". I didn't even know that button was there until Lazrhog tweeted about it. On checking the games on the list it seems they may all have been that week's highest new entries. This seemed unlikely as Ground Effect wasn't selling that many copies but looking at the charts, it was the highest new entry in Racing games even when it was at about 40. The list was changed to all new games this morning. Some of them are definitely big risers from the week before (I can't be sure as I obviously wasn't watching all of them) though at least one is older than Ground Effect so I may well be completely wrong about this. As Ground Effect dropped off this list, it, and several of the others from last week's on-phone "Hot new games" appeared on the iTunes What's Hot list though several others were added that weren't from there. As I said, I could be wrong but it seems the "What's Hot" lists at least might not be entirely down to arbitrary decisions from Apple.
Zombie Karts was placed in both Hot New Games and New and Noteworthy. It was in the former for about 1 week. It's still in the latter (about 2 weeks thus far). I wasn't notified, other than the big sales spike. As it stands, I'm super appreciative that Apple featured the game.
I think the only real formula for getting featured is making a great app/game. Remember this is Apple so how it presents on the iPhone and makes the iPhone/iTouch look is really important. I don't have any evidence but I'm pretty sure if you're game has mediocre graphics/visuals it's not going to get there easily no matter how great/useful your game/app is. Timing might play an important role in this too. By timing I mean what else has been released that week? Depending on the week you release your game you're game is going to be up against a pool of other games, meaning with any luck (for indies at least) you're going to want to be released on a slow week. If you do get into New & Noteworthy you'll be there for 3-4 weeks, Hot New Games is 1 week (this will most likely change over time) just my 2 cents - Byron
It's been said that being featured on TouchArcade seems to help. Indeed, what happened with my game supports that theory. --Eric
After posting a bit about my game on the forums, I got an email from the TA guys asking if I'd be interested in being featured. My first reaction was "Meh, that sounds really lame and stupid, why would I want to do that?" but eventually I changed my mind because I didn't have anything better to do.* --Eric *This is a total lie. What actually happened was that I responded "Of course!" I also may have said things like "Yee-haw!" and "Woo-hoo!", but in the interest of appearing more professional, I kept these out of my written response and limited them to vocalizations only.
What sort of percentage did your sales increase when you guys got featured? If you don't mind sharing, I'd like to know!
I once approached TA about feature Xeno Sola / Starcassonne. I'm not sure what happened, but after their initial offer to show it off, they held off. I don't know if they just didn't get the response they were interested in or what. As far as the sales jump for Zombie Karts, it went from 10-20 a day to 100-120+ a day. That 10X sales jump was pretty nice!
About 75% increase with New&Noteworthy in the Games section compared to the previous week, although still a little less than the first week (which had good sales probably because of the TouchArcade feature). Then 400-500% increase on top of that with Staff Favorites on the front page of the App Store a week later. --Eric
Pro Surfing (Wildcard) is currently featured in the New & Noteworthy games section on the app store. We were not notified of it by Apple. Basically I noticed an influx of support qns and ppl trying to sell their services arriving in the in-box, so on a hunch I went and had a look and sure enough there it was on the first tab of N&N on the app store. The game has been on sale for 40 days and we have noticed a 500%~ increase on our first day of sales while featured under N&N. Hopefully today will be even bigger as tuesdays are notoriously the worst day of sales for us each week. Not sure if it was just luck or not but we have invested in a fair bit of banner advertising and had several video / text reviews done in that time. My gut feeling is that someone at Apple who is responsible for finding new / worthy apps lurks sites like this to find their new features. The advertising has not really been that effectual as far as any noticable surges in sales but hopefully this spell on the apple feature-wagon will make up for those losses. I think it is important to sacrifice initial earnings to get the market visibility going. Sure you lose a thousand or so dollars worth of revenue before you have earned a cent but from our experience your only chance of making real money is to be picked up by the lists on the app store so enabling the chances of that should be the number 1 priority. The million dollar qn is, will it be enough to get the game up into other lists like the top 100 etc where it may gain it's own momentum. It's not going to be easy with a niche app like surfing but hopefully enough ppl are keen for a bit of a mobile frothing to help it along. Overall we're happy regardless. We are only a couple of mates who wanted to make a surfing game so we are stoked that apple is featuring it and that ppl are playing it and enjoying it.
Not that I know of. I don't recoqnize the word featured as frontpaged, that's all. Thanks for clearifying Eric!
My 2 cents answer is, maybe. We got featured by Apple (B.I.T.S Pinball), it gave us a sizable boost (going from 20ish sales a day to 150+ sales a day) but of course not nearly enough to even come within visual striking distance of the top 100. This is of course if it's correct that in order to reach the top 100 even in games you're going to have to sell 1000+ units a day.
