How do you get people interested in your games?
getawayapps
Member Posts: 14
I'm a little frustrated. Our game has been reviewed and featured on several websites recently and still sales are no better than when we just dropped it in the store. Actually, they've dropped. Based on a projected website reach of at least 100,000+, how do we not sell a single copy?
How do other developers here promote their apps? Is there some magic formula? Who do you have to know?
How do other developers here promote their apps? Is there some magic formula? Who do you have to know?
Comments
@themoonwalls, I would greatly appreciate it if you could set up a meeting with me and mr. Luck. :-)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hen-house-havoc/id528940631?ls=1&mt=8
Thanks for asking.
Reminds me of that level from Earthworm Jim where you have to bounce the puppies or your puppy sidekick will go crazy and tear you to pieces. So there's a few things that you need to be aware of. As with any business you have to do your research, know your competition.
You are selling a game for .99 which is not a lot, but have you seen what else you can get for .99? EA and other AAA studios are releasing a lot of their old games for a dollar, or FREE!! Its hard to compete with that (see: impossible).
There are two things you CAN do;
Release your game as a lite version with in-app purchase of the full game. Let ppl play the first 5-10 lvls for free. no one wants to pay for something without trying it unless they are totally in love.
or
Release your full game as free and rake in ad revenue money from 1,000,000 free downloads. Its a considerable amount of money so I wouldn't scoff at it.
In my mind your strategy for entering the market was ambitious but not a lot of games can get away with the pay-before-you-play method and the ones that are are investing serious amounts of cash into art and development.
I wish you the best with this game and your future games!
So here's what I would do with it.
1) Make it free
2) Put iAds in all scenes except the actual game (I find it really annoying when it's in the game itself)
3) Use Kiip highscore
4) Depending how you have the game set up it may not be too hard to do kiip achievements
5) put as much playhaven in as you are comfortable with
6) Move on to your next app
I definitely agree
With my first apps I used terrible screenshots and I think I have really suffered because of it. My latest game has done a ton better and I am almost sure that some of it is because of the screenshots. But, another part is just that it is a better game overall.
You really do need to have this discussion with your partner. After all, slow money or low money... is always better than no money.
For a first app, this is well done. I'm sorry to hear about the cracking but unfortunately its something we're all going to have to deal with.
I believe iAd has the highest payouts, but you may want to ask someone with a few games released to see what has worked best.
If I can ad another tip:
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
If this game doesn't do well, so what? Its your first game, you probably learned a hell of a lot making it. Move on to the next one and remember what you learned.
@Ebreeze - I think you're right. You practically have to have a Pixar level app to get noticed. OK, time to crank up the heat! :-)
I don't think it will get a million downloads if its free because many good apps which go free don't get nearly that many, I would say closer to 1-5 k free downloads when it first goes free, and then tapers down.
@getawayapps
Just shake it off since its your first game and try to work on new ones instead of worrying about this. Its good for your first app but people's most successful apps or normally not their first. As you make more, they will get better. Good Luck!
Its very disheartening to think about the kind of games that got downloaded or sold hundreds of thousands of copies when the app store first came out. Some were pure garbage, but still made the developers large amounts. If only we had GS back then!