I see a lot of people that are asking questions about promotion, but we see nothing about analyzing data nor projections. There is an extremely simple method to determine how much potential your game has to earn a profit. Post your press release and screenshots here at TouchArcade. Yeah, I know, that sounds like common sense right? Yes it is, but then many developers simply leave it at that and think their job is done. You still need to gather information and process the data to determine what it means. And what data is that? Views. Look at how many views your thread gets: those are UNIQUE views. That is how much potential interest your game has. I don't have any hard figures to throw at you, but here are some considerations: Over 8,000- Promoted well, consider advertising 3000 - 8000- Doing okay, do not consider advertising 500 - 3000- rework promotion, definitely do not consider advertising. Under 500- ineffective promotion In general, you might see about a 10% sales rate, so if you get 3000 views you might see about 300 sales within that period. This is highly dependent on how quickly you attain those views. If you can get over 3,000 page views, but you only get 10 sales, there is something severely wrong. No, these numbers are not set in stone and results will vary by a wide margin. This is only based on the few numbers/sales that I actually know. These numbers will continue to inflate- if you released a game a year ago, page views of 2000 would have been adequate. Also, keep in mind that TouchArcade IS NOT the app store. The number of people that regularly visit TouchArcade represent a fraction of the app store, however this fraction is fairly consistent.
Interesting Statistics and thanks the thread is now around 200 views, still considered as ineffective Hope more people will see this thread
Truly interesting figures Flickitty. It is however, one huge problem with waiting to see the response before you book advertising: time. Last time I checked the earliest possible opening for the top-banner was in 3 months time. Keeping the public's interest for three months takes quite an effort.
This actually isn't much of a problem. If you are doing things correctly, you will have the banner lined up BEFORE the game launches. This means you need to do an assload of promotion before the game is even submitted. If your thread can get 8000 page views before it even launches, then you are really onto something and you have a general idea of where to go before your app even hits the app store. This is a proactive approach, rather than a reactive approach. The problems that a lot of developers are seeing (myself included) is the fact that you can't be reactive in this market, you need immediate actions and responses. As anyone knows the app store simply isn't responsive like that. Using information like I have outlined above allows you to be a bit more proactive, and can help guide you where to go before your app hits the store. Contrary to popular mythology, marketing and promotion SHOULD NOT be your last step nor an afterthought; it needs to be part of the process from day 1.
I'm not so sure this is true. Cartoon Wars and Colosseum are 2 examples of games that, on release (before they made it to the top -- maybe even always) had rather poor TA reception. That certainly didn't stop them from shooting to the top. I specifically remember Cartoon Wars' release thread getting only a few comments and drifting off the first page quickly, only to see the game pop up on the top 100 later. Thing is, TA is a more "gamer" type of crowd (in general), and many casual games (take that cupcake game for example) simply won't excite real gamers. Also genres like zombies and other things, while people say are overdone HERE, still have a good chance of doing well, if executed properly (case in point the fact that there are always 3-5 zombie games in the top 100 at any given time, even very lackluster ones like "Be free or Die"). Also not everyone even browses the upcoming games section. I mean, it generally has 1/3-1/4 of the viewers that the main games section has at any given time. Now I guess for a BASELINE, you can use this theory... but I don't know if it stretches beyond that. Edit: another great example is Stinger Table Hockey. That thread when in upcoming games got a measly THREE HUNDRED views :/ Now its sitting in the top 25. Then again this did get featured...
There will always be exceptions, and it depends on the other games that are released and talked about at the same time. A lot of the games that got released at the same time as mine were buried by discussions about Eliminate- there were no fewer than 10 different Eliminate threads at any given time. So while you can provide 4 or even 10 examples of exceptions, I could inundate you with HUNDREDS of examples that support my argument. Look at your examples and decide for yourself whether they cater to the rare few, or speak toward the masses. If someone wants to buy advertising for their game that has 300 page views, go for it. That is a risk that they alone need to take, I will not advise them to do so and I am not responsible for their actions. I do clearly state in the first post that this is a baseline, and that TouchArcade IS NOT the App Store. If you have a better indication of potential, lets hear it.
I agree 100%, no argument there, but: Now, your advice is definitely sound, but as we all know advertising is not exactly cheap. Most indies (myself included) can't really afford spending huge wads of cash before the launch hoping that it will turn into the page-view-frenzy you are talking about. If the page-hit-fest never occures that's basically money down the drain. This is why I believe having to order an ad-spot three months in advance is a problem for us indies. It's a money issue clean and simple. If we have a flop or two in a row we might not have any money left to advertise the next project. So while I agree what you are saying makes a lot of sense, it might not be a scenario that's something most small-time indies can really afford in the long run...
