Hi all,
I’m Geoffrey, very new to the scene and still catching up with everything about app development business.
Self-intro:
- I’m a digital artist, 2D animator.
- Little knowledge in coding.
- Started game/app development in Nov 2014
- Published 5 games so far
- Total downloads for 5 games combined: 1.2k +/-
- Ad networks: Admob only
I have spent the first few months on learning how to develop games using different tools, and actually making them, that includes reskinning some source codes and learn from there as well. So I didn’t pay much attention about the downloads/installs. Not until recently when I got more or less familiar with publishing games in Google Play.
That’s how I found out about this forum and now trying to have some discussions about marketing apps to increase downloads/installs. Here are some info about my games:
Basically all of the installs are very little and I think they can actually perform better. Here are the links to the games:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.studioc.acecom
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crystallink.studioc
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spacephoenix.studioc
After some research and studies done online about ASO, I went and redo all the app description in hope to get more downloads, but the downloads for each games are at 1~2 downloads/day. I also share my games on Google+ Communities that are related to mobile games etc. Well, that didn’t help much either.
Now that I have 4 games in my list, I will cut down my time on producing new games and spend more time in marketing them. Here are some questions/challenges that I believe beginners like me are facing most of the time. Kindly give me some suggestions so that I can gain some traction on my app development career. And I will constantly update this thread and maybe come out with a beginner guide and share here so that you guys won’t be answering them again and again. (Even better if you can share some existing threads that share similar topics here)
Questions:
1. Keywords
How keywords really works in ASO? And at which part of your app description that you need to pay attention to? I found some articles saying to include keywords at least 5 times in the description to increase visibility, how true is that?
2. Golden Timeframe
I found out that you can get the most out of the first few weeks after you publish your new app, to get more downloads and exposure. Are there any exact time frame for this? 3 weeks or less? What happen after that? Let’s say my games are published more that 3 months, should I give more effort in boosting the downloads or better off with coming out with a new game?
3. App Performance in Google Play
I understand there are a lot of uncertainties in how well an app should be performing in the app store. And it is also related to how much marketing done on promoting the app/game. But please take some time to visit my games (links above) and let me know what you think about my games. Is there something bad or wrong about the graphics, screen shots, app description, game title, etc. If they are okay, that I can only say there are still things that need to be done to get a decent amount of downloads.
4. Increasing Organic Downloads
Correct me if I’m wrong, the logic behind getting more organic downloads should be increasing the visibility of your app/game. So what options are there to achieve this? Increase the ranking of the app/game? Exchanging reviews with fellow developers? Buying reviews/downloads? Advertising? It seems like there are million ways to do this but which is the most cost and time efficient way? How you guys normally do this?
That’s all so far, I will edit this thread from time to time. Hopefully this will help others in the time to come.
Thank you for your time.
Best,
Geoffrey