What promotions have worked best?

[blot-blaqksheep]

Ok so Deadstorm has been out for about 6 months now. All paid advertising had us break even if best. The most success has been with a local following. We did this through posting our posters wherever gamers would hang out... Coffee shops, locally owned video game stores, computer stores, etc...

That's my suggestion. Start locally and build a strong following to make ends meet for the time being.

[Rainier]

I've found that Facebook giveaways don't work very well. They attract mostly page Likes from fake/duplicate IDs from those who are mostly there just for the giveaway, and then once it's done, there's no engagement. Not the kind of real engagement one looks for. Facebook had a very negative ROI.

Facebook and Twitter and social media posts haven't done much to attract attention either. I think it's probably more useful for when you've ALREADY got the user base, not for expanding your user base. The effort in this regard also had a very negative ROI.

Flurry was interesting. Their service allowed people to see our trailer over 25,000 times, and about 1% of those who saw it downloaded the free version of our app. The ROI on that little experiment was negative, but the exposure was helpful.

I had some flyers posted around college campuses, and that might have had a little effect, but nothing very sustainable.

What may end up being the most cost effective on a cost per download basis is services like Free App a Day. That's something I'm considering in the future, but I'm not sure which FAAD-like service would be the best one to go with.

Generally, the more traditional avenues of trying to get attention do not work very well. App discovery is indeed a very tough hill to climb.

[Stephen Richard]

Make sure whether your iTunes Store App Page is attractive in order to achieve more downloads. You can submit your app to the quality review sites and get huge amount of reviews. Also trailers, previews and sneak-peak videos makes customers excited.

[djskinner]

I agree. The focus needs to be on driving organic downloads. Beyond App Store Optimisation and getting plenty of App Store reviews is there anything else we can do?

[blot-blaqksheep]

At the very least make a splash page for your games and apps. We did it for DeadstormGame.com and SpendifyApp.com. They are nothing above-and-beyond but they are like virtual posters.

You'll easily get Page likes with Facebook Ads but that doesn't convert well into sales...

The biggest thing is to have a good game that people want to rave about.

[willzeng]

Originally Posted by blot-blaqksheep

Quick update...

I did those low budget 10,000 impressions for a couple gaming sites using BuySellAds.com and have been getting some success from a couple sites more than others... I'll make my money back from the advertising using the one site alone...
The others are probably a wash and I am not getting the clicks. Next month I will keep the one site and drop the others and maybe try one new one.

On the plus side, it looks like our game is being pirated at a rate of 3-4 pirated copies to 1 sale! So happy. ;(

This info is helpful given that you are not advertising for the site. Probably I'll check it later. Thanks for sharing.

[vldstf]

I am also an indie developer, and I could say that I am a newbie one. I only lunched one application called MagicMath. This is the first application launched on the market. The rest of the app I have done were for personal use only.
I declare myself a newbie because I never thought that is so hard to promote my app. But I can tell what I found effective so far:

• I have done a Youtube video of the app
• I share a lot on my facebook profile, and also created a facebook page
• Shared a lot of tweets - I actually joined IDRTG and it look like it was pretty helpful
• Joined related group on Facebook and share the app with them

Right now I am looking for different websites that can review my app. This is what I have done so far.

If you're interested in my app, you can check it here!!

[CharredDirt]

Although I still don't have an iOS game out, my original game Charred Dirt did get quite a fierce local following by doing a few anime conventions. We'd set up in the artist alley and sell signed artwork and sell copies of the game. If I was doing it again, I'd bring a mobile hotspot. If people download your game on the spot, they get a free signed print. I had lots of people remember me years later and had a diehard core community which was 90% made up by local fans. Gotta appreciate your local fan base.