Have anyone used Appsfire with success?

That's terrible.

You should be able to get that amount on your own.

 

Answering in details

Hi WeGotPixels, this is Ouriel Ohayon, Appsfire cofounder. I do remember you getting in touch and i believe our team has rapidly provided you the context of how we operate.

I don't know if i should assume you know how the ad market for apps operate, but i will assume you don't so other readers of this thread also learn of why and how we work with app developers...

First our solutions is appreciated by many top developers. I will refer you to many testimonies published here (we did not put a gun on their head to write this, i promise)

But to be frank our solution does not work or is inappropriate to many apps too. For example some apps are so good they don 't need promotion at all. Some are so bad, they should not or never be promoted (this is why we created the app score which showcases the quality of an app into appsfire). Finally sometimes, it is true our solution does not work even if your app is great either because it s been already heavily promoted, or because it does not fit our audience

Appsfire has built a very engaged community of users interested in downloading apps (run a live search on twitter on appsfire and find out how...then compare to any app discovery service...). Our app is highly ranked (right now top 100 free apps in the US, top 5 utility iphone/ipad). And highly rated (over 10 000 5 star ratings). We re not another "discovery service". We try to build one of the best.

Therefore we do not "sell" ads based on CPI on based on the price of a clicks. You will find and endless number of networks providing you great ways to buys cheap downloads. And you should try them

What we provide is a way to accelerate your download curve in

1. 24h (not a week or a month)
2. non incentivized ways
3. in context (meaning people really interested in new apps)
4. uncluttered way (we only promote 1 app a day, not 3, not 10, not 200)
5. transparent way: we provide full reporting of when and how your app was exposed (unlike many other ad solutions) - which is a critical parameter

Our solution is priced as a premium network. We don 't sell installs. we sell quality installs.

If you are interested in Installs only please consult all the ad networks out there which can provide tens of thousands of installs for a very cheap price

This being said our prices are not that "insane". The average price of a new download for a free app are anywhere between 1.5$ and 2.5$. There are many articles confirming that

If you learn more about this market you will find out that our solution has a solid footprint in the industry.


What i would suggest is that you try as many channels as possible, including free and paid channels and see what works and what does not

Never forget to measure the quality of the source of your installations. Do not consider just the CPI, you will go blind.

When you do that, and when you feel ready talk to us again

Hope this helps

Ouriel Ohayon
Appsfire

 

I'd like to see these articles.

In our recent free promotions we were looking at between $0.047 per install and $0.062. I know of other devs who would say that even the price we paid was high.

 

Hi Christian, thanks for your answer

Actually the large majority of our customers are games (but less and less), and many testimonials in linkedin are from game developers (grey area, song pop,...)

Anyways our prices have always been and will probably always be high - because of the focus we put on quality in everything we do.

Unlike some providers we have a very consistent, uniform pricing policy and deliver very consistent results

Again, it may be good you try a few networks out there and then come to us, when you are more aware about what s going on in this market

Good luck with your new app, Hope it will succeed. Without us.

Ouriel Ohayon
Appsfire

 

Blakcharon - the critical questions are not how much you paid but
1. what volume did you get for this price in 24h ?
2. Was this incentivized or not?

It is very easy to buy cheap. It is very hard to buy good users in a significant volume.

here is a link to what i was referring to. http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2012/05/29/fiksu-ios-app-download-volume-down-8-year-on-year-but-user-acquisition-costs-rise/

 

Quotes you are mentioning are correct for an non-incentivised burst campaign, but I don't understand why are sold as CPC rather than CPI ?
If your customers can't track the users (or they can through your CPC campaign?) they can't judge their 'quality'.

 

StaggerLee cpc or CPI do not matter. Eventually all our customers get install reports transparently unlike most networks. We actually invented openudid who helped bringing more transparency and efficiency in tracking

We chosed cpc because this is what we thought was most appropriate to our premium positioning. But we could have priced CPI ...

 

i have hit 10K downloads for NewtonApples over 2 days by hitting forums and free app a day sites. prob spent like my time n effort?? + US$500 for the odd here n there advertising.

for my next game betterletter, i got OpenFeint to promote my app for free but that resulted in 1K downloads but no other marketing.

So maybe its better to go out on yer own n market

 

I really am shocked at that numbers being tossed around here. My experience is greatly different and my cost to acquire users is far smaller if it even matters at this point.

Using one of our current games as an example.
236K downloads to date.
Avg 1.5K downloads a day.
Ranked 150-160 in its primary games category.
2000+ Ratings.
Avg Rating is 4 stars.
Most users (90% of that 236K) play game at a minimum 10+ times.

Total cost spent on marking $19.95 USD. So you can do 6000K total downloads for yourself a lot cheaper.

So here is my analysis. Build a quality game that people want to play. Use good app store SEO on your keywords. Follow the rules for getting noticed and downloaded on the app store. Those are the apps that don't require much money to market. Even if you app sucks but you have that "must download me factor" on the app store you can see 6K downloads.


Consider the 6K users from 55K clicks for $11K example this thread is about and let us look at what I have been looking at for mass Advertising.

I just looked at advertising locations this weekend and found a iOS based site with @965K impression total monthly for their Ad slots or more importantly @90-100K impressions for the Ads in the rotation queue per ad slot on the site pages. Their cost was $2.00 USD per 1K impressions. That is $200 for 100K impression over a month. Also Facebook Advertising is in the $0.05-0.43 range per 1K impressions as well and FB ads can be targeted based on FB user profile information so setup properly those Ads are going to people that would be your customer base.

So if you expect 0.5% conversion rate (average case) for impressions to installs then 6000 installs would need 1.2m impressions.

You get those 1.2m impression on the one site I looked at for $2400 bucks (but this would take a year to get to 1.2m impressions total). But being that is highly specific iOS site I would expect that average to yield better than 0.5% conversion rate. What is to note here is that the 60-120 IAP's you should get from 6000 installs has a better chance of getting your money back in this advertising situation. If your app has a robust consumable IAP structure then there is good chance of breaking even in this scenario.


For Facebook Ads I would expect the 0.5% conversion rate to be the norm or even lower. Since you bid the cost you will pay for 1K impressions I will take $0.25 which is in the middle of today's recommended bid range. and that means $600 buys you 1.2m impressions for an ad on Facebook. Again those 60-120 IAP's from 6000 installs has a chance of covering this cost easier than the $11K cost.

To sum up my take on this.
prMac cost you now $22.95 for press release service.
$2400 would buy you 1.2m impressions on a big iOS based site.
$600 would buy you 1.2m impressions on Facebook.

Total cost of $3022.95 would get you 2.4m impressions and 2 press release cycles. Like wise the package that was pimped was 55K clicks for $11K which at the industry average CTR% of 2% is roughly 2.75M impressions. So for roughly 28% of the cost of the Appsfire package you could do your own marking and get at least the same number of impressions. If you decided to spend the $2400 on Ads with Admob (or similar service) vice the big iOS site you probably could get in excess of 3.5m impressions for the same money. Maybe more.

Getting people to your App Store page is just part of the battle. If your icon, screen shots and write up fail to make the sale then it just does not matter how much you spend on marketing or how many people see your advertising.

Take the time to look around and you will find the same places these marketing companies are putting your Ads will sell direct to you and your cost will be lower because you cut the middle man out.

Lastly I would point out that you can buy into iAds for Developers for $5000 which gets you 1m impressions roughly with a 2% CTR based on the price that was quoted per click when I looked at the program.

So there you have my take on the subject. I decided to post this as I have been blown away by the whole Advertising cost and cost to acquire users numbers being tossed about lately. If you have cash to blow and don't want to do the foot work it is going to cost you a pretty penny. If you are an indie on a shoe string budget and are willing to do a little foot work then you can do a reasonable campaign for low cost.

 

60K clicks in 24h? Are they saying that is 60K clicks on iOS devices? If so then you could again probably figure out what advertising lines they are using as there are still only about 6 really good ad services and publish your ad directly with each of them.

I am really curious and must ask if they indicated all ads would be on the target platform (ie: iOS devices)?

I mean really from my own ad revenue I see 2.4% CTR on the high side on weekends during holiday periods and lower most of the rest of the time. So 60K clicks is a like 3 million impression in 24 hours. And 6K installs from 60K clicks is 10% conversion rate. God I would kill for that kind of conversion rate on clicks. I would expect the actually conversion on clicks to be closer to 1 to 3% vice 10%.

Have not used them yet. Was looking into them for a future campaign. I don't consider them a barrier per-se. If the cost is low enough and I can get 2-4m impressions for 600-1000 dollars then there will be some conversion rate and those installs will make me money. Given the cost is low enough I am considering a test campaign on an app that has steady install rates and see if such a campaign can impact it or not.

Thanks.

I stated our current top performer has only had $19.95 spent on it marketing wise. I got it out to twitter and FB postings as well. But I think I achieved the "you got to download me" factor for the app store page. Also helps my keywords result in top 25 listing on 7 different groups of search terms that are related and common searches. So I am still leaning towards the app store is not broken it just is not easy to use. Taking the time gets results.

Also remember there are rules for marketing and setting up the budgets for it. Marketing must result in a gain on the bottom line. Break even and losses are marketing failures. A marketing company like Appsfire really will never have your bottom line in their consideration. Also they rate success and failure based on delivering the promised results. From their viewpoint 6000 installs on 60K clicks is success (their success). They told you that up front.

You are doing the right thing by asking is $11K for 6K possible installs of a free game are worth the cost. If the impact is negative on your bottom line then probably not. Unless you have money to burn there are probably better ways to get your app seen.

Advertising on Admob for example is a Cost Per Click model. I have read several discussions about how fast you can get 50-60K impressions on Admob. So if you just want 3m impressions and then measure the impact you can always run a test campaign with them. And that I think is the key, having money set aside to run small 50, 100 or even 200 dollar test campaigns and see if they have any impact.

There is book that covers advertising on FB that I saw in books-a-million but have not bought yet. In it they strongly recommend a $10-50 campaign precede all full campaigns so you can measure the effect and know how to tune your campaign or just abandon it.

Also this is good reading to get an idea about Admob. It is old but it discusses some important things to remember when running test campaigns and pure logic of how to build your marketing. The campaign was a failure in this article but the comments do a good job of point out why. A sort of "Don't do this" type FYI.

Good luck in however you move forward.