How did you increase app downloads?

[Rainier]

Just curious if others would be willing to share their wisdom: what are some of the best things you've done to increase app downloads?

[chenpo]

Making the app free seems to give a good short-term boost.

The first day I made Shuriken Chicken free, it jumped from practically nothing to about 8000+ downloads in one day.

[Stephen Richard]

Go for some popular press release sites like prmac.com that makes some noise about your release and hence brings you more exposure about your Apps. Provide a free trial for them and ask them to do review of your app on their site.

Share the resource URL in your own website and other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler etc by that people will get to know about your app.

[thanhquan1512]

Share your game on mobile games forums, at least you can get >100 notice a day

[rikschennink]

What worked for me.

- Promoting via promocodes on touch arcade
- Writing to game review sites using campaign monitor

Till now my iPad update and free run of last december has netted me the most money:

See this post about going free I posted a week ago: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=173694

[Rainier]

Originally Posted by rikschennink

What worked for me.

- Promoting via promocodes on touch arcade
- Writing to game review sites using campaign monitor

Till now my iPad update and free run of last december has netted me the most money:

See this post about going free I posted a week ago: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=173694

Wow, that was a fantastic post! I'm not too far from the list of recommended steps provided by previous developers (thank you all for posting!); the one thing I haven't done yet is go free. It's a tempting prospect given the social nature of my game (since it requires two people to play). Some time in the future I'll have to give it some serious consideration given your results.

[GameHopping]

Originally Posted by thanhquan1512

Share your game on mobile games forums, at least you can get >100 notice a day

I have searched high and low for these to market my free game.
I posted MacRumors, Adventuregames, a few others and here, of course.
Is there a good resource that has a list of these?

And in an opinion type question, would a game get more DLs by starting .99 cents and THEN going free, as oppose to starting free from the start?
Kind of to psychologically make it more valuable?

[djskinner]

Starting at .99c and then going free is surely the better option. There is some more info on that strategy in this thread.

[pat3ck]

Have you tried contacting different app review sites? Maniacdev has a massive list of 174 app review sites:

http://maniacdev.com/2012/05/ios-app-review-sites/

Make sure you pitch your app nicely so it will get noticed (especially the top-tier ones).

[ThreeCubes]

Originally Posted by rikschennink

What worked for me.

- Promoting via promocodes on touch arcade
- Writing to game review sites using campaign monitor

Till now my iPad update and free run of last december has netted me the most money:

See this post about going free I posted a week ago: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=173694

so i know that people with promocodes carnt leave a review but does the fact that they have download it still go to increasing your ranking and search stats?

Thanks