I agree with Evil.
When I eventually drop my app into the app store... I want to advertise the crap out of it on my YouTube channel(s). I have one with 700 subscribers, so definitely there, and then on some few others. After that I will send the videos/trailers to review sites, and then to gaming sites like IGN or Game Informer.
I think marketing and exposure really helps, and it looks like DTownTowny got it. Good work!
My game AWESOME Land pays for my rent now. Made me $3,200 so far. Spent about $150 advertising it. Working on several others now. One game isn't going to mean you can quit your day job, but the key is in numbers - if you can spend a year producing a good number of high-quality games and invest in advertising them, game dev can become your career.
Problem is everybody thinks it's just make game, put on store, wait for money, and it doesn't work that way at all.
My major strategy this time was that I put AWESOME Land out for free for a while, a whole bunch of times, which raked a huge number of users though with no profit on those days, and in future updates I will advertise my new released from inside of it, that's 80,000 people I can advertise to for free.
Give them a reason to buy your game over others.
Could you Post a List of Review Sites Out there?! Thx!
I'm at around 280ish for Clash Force right now. Game was released March 20.
A lite version is getting launched this tuesday (assuming it's approved in time). We will see how that affects business.
I received a couple reviews from sites that probably get very few views. I got one from iFanzine, which is a nice looking site, but I don't know what kind of traffic they get. The biggest boost I got was from the Appspy review. My game was actually their april fools video review, and it got posted twice for that reason. Between the two reviews it amassed about 4,000 views on youtube in about 3 days. That ended up only turning into maybe 30-40 sales though.
Right now I'm looking into more social types of advertising like getting people who do "let's plays" on youtube to play my game. Of the 20-30 review sites I sent info about my game to, only the ones I mentioned above actually did anything with it. iFanzine wasn't even one of the sites I marketed to, and the other review was by a guy who asked me if he could review my game (he saw the post on touch arcade). He reviewed it for one of those sites that pays people sheckles to write articles (examiner.com)
Otherwise, sales have been under 10 a day. Hitting a low of 2. Of course if I could stay at 5 downloads a day for a full year, I'd make around 1,000. But that's still way below what's optimal.
Jregork" you could use one of crazy mike's app advertisment pakkage to promote your game more. I think your game is good enough to get more sales and great reviews.
I "only" made around 100 Dollar so far with my drums app "drumpal" and a couple of $ with "Stromfeld" (its free but i put in iAds). Itīs not much but at leas itīs "making money with your own apps and games"I think the 2 most important things are 1. LUCK 2. Promotion & Advertising. Itīs a lot of work after you have put your app online but i guess if you spend a third of your time in promoting your app you can make a couple of hundret dollars with your game. Just guessing.
Good luck!
Jot
Crazy Mike's higher packages are invaluable since they post it all over their social network accounts for a week, or even two weeks, depending on how much you pay. While the YouTube vids get a modest number of views they put the higher-tier advertised games all over their site, put the video in their podcast and on other video sites like vimeo etc., facebook and tweet about it constantly.
I'll say it again, price drops and free-promo-days are amazing, they spread the word like wildfire thanks to the app-stalking bots out there. Seriously, try it, put your app free for a day, or drop the price one tier, and a day later search for your app on Twitter, the feeds will be swimming with updates about it with little links their followers click to try and take advantage of your deal. After a freebie period I always get a little spike of sales the next day or two, probably from the people who missed the deal but liked the look of the app when they clicked the link. Always remember also that all the people who caught it on free day have friends, and if they like it they will show their friends. Each free promotion I've done has slightly increased the daily number of sales which comes in on the days when no promotions or updates are going on and I reason that this is due to more people sharing the game and more awareness of it. Just be careful to limit how much you do freebie days and how early you do it (if at all) for two reasons, firstly it often generates angry reviews from people who missed the freebie sale by a day or so (I even got one 1-star review that said 'Brilliant game, but selling it to me and then making it free? F U!!'), and secondly you may get a reputation for it thus people will start to see your new games and 'wait for it to go free' if you see what I mean.
I keep insisting that even if your app feels worth only $1, to put it out for $2 and then drop the price down to $1 after, due to the mass-reporting from all the spy bots. It's like a massive chunk of free advertising. If you think that people will shun it for $2, perhaps add some bonus features to make the game feel more fleshed out. If you think it's worth $2, after the release-spike is over, drop the price for a limited time to raise awareness. I wouldn't recommend going over $2, unless it's either A. a big franchise name, B. 3D or C. full of nude women, as people tend to avoid even the most profound of indie games on iOS once the price is higher than $2.
My strategy next is, rather than aiming for repeated large sums of money on release, to work on a number of good niche titles and market them with the intent to get a steady amount of income from all of them. Six apps each making $10 a day would equal a good living!
What about upping the price for a day, then dropping it? I would assume it would have the same effect of being picked up by the bots and pricedrop sites.Originally Posted by DistantJ
Btw, which package did you get from Crazy Mike's? From my point of view, I think most of your downloads are due to the front page feature on toucharcade and the 'controversial' discussion on their forums, but you'd have a better idea.
Hey DistantJ / DTownTony, just wondering how you guys performed in your first week? Did you take a long time to take off or was it basically instant for you? I'm unsure what to expect right now since it's so early in our sales to predict / view a trend (but we aren't doing badly).
Straight away, the first $1,000 was in the first two days...
The package I bought from Crazy Mike was the highest one, lots of tweeting went on. Talk of the game spread to neogaf and other such forums, and the price drops got tweeted everywhere which helped a lot. I think Crazy Mike's social advertising did more than the video(s), but I paid for expedition so that the video would be timed with the release.
Raising the price and then dropping it, it might work but I've read that the majority of the bots only pick up price drops on something which has been a certain price for over a certain period of time, say 4-7 days or something? But I can't see how it could hurt to try.
I think really the key to getting a good number every day which doesn't just drop off is to make it so that people know it exists. I mean people need to search for the app or find links to it, otherwise there's no reason why they'd find it. Think of it like selling a product in a shop. If the product's there and on display (and not completely worthless) people will steadily buy it, but they need to have had a reason to have come into your shop and they need to be able to see it. If you hide the thing behind the counter chances are you won't sell it. Put a big sign up out the front of the shop and you'd be likely to sell more.
Posting Permissions
