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How To Advertise an iPhone Game

B

bridgeyman

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 16, 2008
42
0
Hey,

I just released my first iPhone game, Lumen. It has got a very good response from people on the App Store, but only moderate downloads. (700 from the 1st to the 5th). What is a good way to advertise iPhone games? There is so much other stuff on the App Store already, it is hard to be seen. The people at Tap Tap Tap said they purchased an RSS add from Daring Fireball, and that worked out very well for them. I would have never guessed to do the same. What else am I missing? All I can think is to ask Mac blogs to post reviews.

Thank You,
Bridger Maxwell
 
i saw your game iin the app store looks nice, havent bought but some ways could be by posting a bunch of screens on here, at least for me =]

at least you could try selling 1 person
 
You netted almost $1000 in a 5 day period, and you're complaining because you aren't getting enough traffic? I am also a developer, and if I were making that kind of money I'd be in heaven.
 
Jeremy1026 said:
You netted almost $1000 in a 5 day period, and you're complaining because you aren't getting enough traffic? I am also a developer, and if I were making that kind of money I'd be in heaven.
Click to expand...

You are right, I did come of as sounding like I didn't appreciate the money. That is more than the desktop version of Lumen has netted in its entire lifetime. My thought was that if iPhone Lumen was able to make so much without advertising, I could be earning a lot more with a bit of effort. Besides that, Tap Tap Tap's sale numbers got me drooling... :p

In all, I look at many of the apps in the top 50 paid applications, and think I can compete with many of them.

What do you think of releasing a lite version of Lumen? How many puzzles would I include? 15, 30?
 
bridgeyman said:
You are right, I did come of as sounding like I didn't appreciate the money. That is more than the desktop version of Lumen has netted in its entire lifetime. My thought was that if iPhone Lumen was able to make so much without advertising, I could be earning a lot more with a bit of effort. Besides that, Tap Tap Tap's sale numbers got me drooling... :p

In all, I look at many of the apps in the top 50 paid applications, and think I can compete with many of them.

What do you think of releasing a lite version of Lumen? How many puzzles would I include? 15, 30?
Click to expand...

I think that a lite version would be a huge boost to your numbers. I would throw it out there with only 5-10 levels personally.

Another key to keeping good download numbers is to keep updating the app. Each update puts it back to the top of the list when sorted by release date. If you add 5 puzzles a week, and release a new update every week you will always be up near the top of the app store (sorted by release date) and it wouldn't be too much more work for you either.

Also add links to your website in your signature here (and any other Mac/iPhone sites you visit.) I am getting about 40 unique visitors a day from people clicking the links in my signature here.
 
You could ask about buying one of the ads here. You might also try a MySpace or Facebook page advertising your game. Also, make sure you have some sort of Web site listed on Google.

Best thing to do is to make it affordable for what it does and to release good updates. Oh yeah, make sure to interact with customers who e-mail you. The people who made maps of the subways (iTrans, I think) sent me a response back saying thanks for the input and they would consider my idea for another system to create an app for.
 
The signature is a good move. I get a lot of visits just through the signature on MacRumors. You might want to try advertising on an iPhone directory site, or on other Apple rumor sites. You'd have to see which gets you the best bang for your buck and click-through rate. I'm sure you can start off small, maybe a few hundred dollars, and see how well each site goes.

Make sure you also have a site set up, so Google and Yahoo can index it and people can reference it when they talk about your application. Mention any press reviews on your site.

Other ways would be to send out an email to blogs and sites that review phones. Send one to TouchArcade (run by people from MacRumors). Check a site's contact policy and whatever you do, send it to the correct address in their policy. Thats a pet peeve among people who receive press releases. Write up a little spiel about your app that highlights some features and see if you can get a few reviews that will drive traffic to your application.
 
There are websites that will advertise your iPhone Apps for you.
 
Have you used Twitter to promote iPhone apps?

My app has a built in Twitter client. I am counting on users promoting the app by using it. The app allows regular folks to track & share daily things, compare graphs and share via Twitter. http://bit.ly/xB5Cv Any one else with experience in using Twitter for app promotion?
 
App Ads Reviews....kinda

There is a handful of sites for placing your ads for apps. I, as an iPhone app dev, have been on a handful. I do primarily well with sales but some of the "featured" are way too much. I found one called envybox and it seems to be really cheap, and not filled up so I sent a question to them about reduced advertising since they have a lot of empty slots. But if you are on a budget that would be a site to check out.
 
Write up a press release. There are ton of sites out there that will distribute it for you. None are that pricey and some are free though you'll get better distribution if you invest a couple hundred bucks. Well worth the investment for the media exposure.
 
SuperRoOt said:
There is a handful of sites for placing your ads for apps. I, as an iPhone app dev, have been on a handful. I do primarily well with sales but some of the "featured" are way too much. I found one called envybox and it seems to be really cheap, and not filled up so I sent a question to them about reduced advertising since they have a lot of empty slots. But if you are on a budget that would be a site to check out.
Click to expand...

Envybox looks appalling.
Hint: If the site's not filled up and its cheap, its probably not getting any visitor hits - not a wise investment.
 
Signature is a good move?

So using your signature is a good move? I've done this on other sites and haven't had much luck. Maybe the issue is my apps are golf / disc golf related and my domain name doesn't stand out and say that.

I'll give the signature idea another try here and will come back and report :cool:

http://www.stealthstormlava.com
 
Good call creating a lite version. I just downloaded it and think it's a great game, so I'm definitely going to buy the full version.

Some people may say that $2 is no big deal and just plunk down the money to try something out. Unfortunately for you developers, I'm not that kinda guy. I prefer to play with an app before I spend my hard earned cash.

So thanks for catering to guys like me. :D

Also, I know it's giving away your profits, but maybe offer a few promo codes here on Macrumors. Even if I missed out on the promos, I've come across a lot of good apps by scanning that thread, and ended up paying for them.

Just a thought from a non-developer...
 
Find it in Yellow- The Yellow Pages. Although you have missed out on this years, but you got plenty of time to come up with a catchy ad before next years.
 
something like this. Getting people that are fanatics about their phones and the lite version def helps. I have bought numerous games after I tried them
 
My best method:

The best place for advertising of course is within the top 25 itself!
However, that coveted position is difficult to obtain because it is directly
related to how many sales you generate daily, and to generate sales, to get within the top 25- currently will take about 200+ sales per day.

I've received some descent coverage through small features and paid for video reviews, and I've made a few large purchases on some high traffic iphone game related sites but they didn't prove to be worth it. There are too many other games to compete with and the prices are too high.

As for my best method- it has so far been press releases. I have an advantage though because of the nature of my game calls attention to it- "My Virtual Girlfriend". Many men are automatically drawn to it out of curiosity, (women too for that matter). So the bloggers/ news writers read the press release and immediately have something interesting to write about. If you have something notable, novel or non-conventional subject matter- Press release is the best bang for the buck.

I use gamespress.com and prmac.com
both are good- gamespress costs a little more but you get more out of it.

I hope this helps!

Mike Amerson
Creator of:
My Virtual Girlfriend for Iphone.
 
How to advertise Shape Connect

Okay so I see all of your strategies that you guys have there. One of the strategies that I don't really understand is the posting to different forums. Is there certain forums that you should post to or can it be basically anything. Also I was wondering if you guys new of any other RSS feeds and how one can buy time on their stations? The application I am trying to advertise is Shape Connect. I was kind of wondering how I could advertise an app like this. Is their certain websites that it would do better on? Here is the itunes link for it so you can check it out. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shape-connect/id437161181?mt=8
 
How To Advertise a WP7 App?

Let me start by saying I'm not trying to hijack your post but I can't find any WP7 forums worth a damn. So I just released my Windows Phone 7 app Super Words and Super Words Lite. Does anybody know a good way to advertise on WP7? I can't find any good places to go or ask to review my app.

grrrrr... I wish I had a mac :)
 
I also am having trouble identifying a niche market for my iOS app. It is for the upcoming London Olympics. What do you guys think? There is a link to it in my signature below.
 
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