What marketing methods have worked for you?

Hey all, I’m trying to compile a list of worthwhile marketing methods that actually generate decent downloads for my free apps and weed out the ones that aren’t worth my time. What marketing methods have worked well for you guys? Here’s my list of what’s worked and what hasn’t.

What’s worked ( sort of ):
Spam relevant forums ( Had decent success on XDA forums before moderators started deleting my posts )
Some reddit posts

What hasn’t done shit:
Posting my apps in relevant facebook/google groups ( There’s just too much noise and your post is relegated to a tiny portion of the page )
Fiverr promotions

What I haven’t tried:
Pay for downloads/advertising through ad networks
House ads

Does anyone have any advice?

House ads do miracles if you have popular app that is similar to your current in target group.

If you have thousands of dollars to spend, paid advertisement is the god of installs. (But also known as Money Toilet, as it flushes all your money like its nothing…)

the way which is most logical is paid mobile app installs, if you spend something close to 2-3k $ you’ll be atleast in the trending list for sure, from there, its easy to get to top new apps categories.

I’ve tried everything youve mentioned but it doesnt really make an app successful, i then did paid campaigns and the result was really worth it, its a great ROI if you get it right.

I’m hesitant to essentially dump a month or two of earnings into paid downloads unless I’d see a moderate to huge spike in organic downloads. Is this like 90% guaranteed thing or could it just be money wasted? The game I’d like to promote is above average I would say ( it’s very similar to another well performing game I have ) so I think if it got enough exposure it would get decent reviews and new downloads…but 2 - 3k is still solid chunk of change for me…

Thanks for the help 8)

Can spending $5000 on paid installs (for example via AppBrain) - make a shitty app be tops in rankings and stay there ?

I mean is there a judgement call involved - that a developer who is investing in putting money on an app - should balance the “sticking potential” of an app he promotes ?

That shitty app will plumet in the rankings as soon as you stop advertising it. And people who you paid to install it will remove it right away, meaning you will just lose that 5000 (and google algorithms might notice this high uninstall rate and lower the app in rankings even more).

So really the true skill is for the developer to know which app to really promote - where spending the app will help.

And which apps will only be valuable for harvesting the “long tail” of users - i.e. users who just install the app by accident or keyword matching etc.

But the question then becomes - if the app is so good that it will stick once promoted, could it be argued that not promoting it will do as well (if google algorithms are to be trusted ?).

Or what the $5000 or whatever ad budget will do is push the app into a certain territory where the numbers start to make sense for google algorithms - i.e. talking about a couple thousand downloads a day (because google may not be able to make sense of apps which are getting 100 downloads a day ?).

Although it should be doable for google algorithms to be operating at the 100 download level as well - I suspect once an app is below the top 50 in ranking for any keyword, that ranking movement is going to be irrelevant.

By the way, I have noted that for one of the keywords for which one of my apps is listed - varies day to day also - which could be reflective of day to day changes in downloads and google algorithms adjusting ranking to match that. But I suspect that even when download numbers are relatively stable, that Google probably engineers some type of “jitter” to app’s rankings (i.e. move them up suddenly by 5 ranks and so on) - just to see how well an app could benefit from a rise in rankings etc. And then it may analyze the impact of that move - and if the impact is huge then it may make that ranking movement stick etc. … just conjecturing …

Like some others have said, If you are promoting a game that is similar to another game you have that’s popular, I will give you 100% guarantee that cross-promoting both games will be your best bet. When you drop $$$ on installs you really need to figure out if you will be able to get that $$$ back and what your user lifetime value is.

To answer a question by @adforandroidapps … you can move a shitty app up the ranks, one was called flappy bird :wink: remember it had shitty reviews and 3.5/5 rating on average.

If you have a solid game with solid reviews of 4+ out of 5, then drop some cash on some downloads, it will work!

Another thing I noticed is that google ranking algorithm is looking at active installs, not total installs, if active installs is rising, you will move up the ranks, if its dropping, you will drop out of rankings rather quickly!

When your app reaches a point where it opens up a huge organic downloads potential you better be sure people will like it because if not you just wasted 5k $ for rank pumping. Its a slippery slope.

here’s what i have done so far, as i’ve mentioned before , spend a little amount and look how it performs, if the trends are good, spend as much as you can , optimize it for SEO, put new translations, put new icons and screens,etc etc. Getting at least 3-4k new downloads a day will help you stay in top new charts, I’ve managed to do it twice and its paid me amazing dividends… Dont hesitate to campaign if people think your app is good. I have made about 25 apps, 21 of them have around 1k daily downloads but the remaining 4 have 25-40k daily downloads , so its unpredictable without experimenting a bit.

That’s a lot of downloads, I am just curious if you go for USA installs first and work out wards or the other way around?

great tips proton. are the downloads only critical for the first 30 days or does is still matter past that? also what paid install networks do you recommend?

Out of my 4 top selling apps, I paid for only 1 of them , I purchased for USA and UK, once it got momentum there, it got into top charts of other 16-17 countries, and hence you get those huge downloads. Other 3 apps have been even more successful without I cross promoting, no house ads, no penny spent, only alot of time spent on analysis.

I used appbrain , found it from these forums and seems to bring the downloads you want …! The only thing that matters for long and short term incomes are those 30 days, you nail it and you’ll have exponential growth of your app!

How much did you invest for these 30 days?

Yeah how much for 30 days?

Sorry for the late response, i spent just 300$ in different regions, thats it… but mind you ,thats now how I got so many downloads in first place, if you were to ask me “how” , I wont be able to pin point to one thing, partly luck , partly keywords, partly good screenshots and UI, its a mix of everything

Have you ever been banned?

nope , i have developed everything myself , Im into image processing and similar stuffs…

Above all I’ve read so many posts about being banned in the process of making money on the store, Im not aware of which practices they follow, if I knew I’d try them out one day :smiley: