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Ask HN: Mobile developers – how do you market your apps you made for fun?

23 pointsvivqu6 comments

I recently released my app WorldAnimals (https://worldanimalsapp.com/), a $0.99 game on iOS & Android makes language learning super fun by teaching you how different countries all over the world say animal sounds (ex. do dogs "woof" in Chinese? Does a frog "ribbit" in Russian?).

I'm not planning on turning this into a full-time startup idea so I'm not looking for comprehensive marketing strategies. I just want to make sure I'm doing a passable job at getting the word out there to users who might enjoy my app.

I posted on ProductHunt and hit up my own personal networks (FB/Twitter/etc). I also had the good idea to answer related quora posts with a promo of my app. I've reached out to a few tech reporters too.

What else do y'all do?

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We found that media would pull in spikes of about 20-100 downloads. Whereas a post on a Facebook group would get spikes of 800-3000 downloads. Organic search brought in a total of 15k downloads, which later dwindled to very little after we had a nice brand name and not just "Diet Recipes".

I wouldn't bother with Product Hunt, reporters, etc, because they likely won't get it.

So I'd say find groups that are your target market and show it to them. Who did you have in mind when you built this? Where do they hang out?

Thanks for the numbers! Really cool that you tried so many different strategies.

I'll definitely try out posting on FB groups, that's a great idea. I think general target groups are families with young kids, or people interested in language learning.

Do you have a link to the app that you made? I'd love to check it out.

Sorry, I don't have a link. It was a recipe app, targeting Malay keto recipes. I sold the whole company, including app and IP to diet marketing company, and they haven't maintained it, so the app is down.

Well, I do have small kids who learn languages. But for one thing, you don't come with name brand backing like Pink Fong or Ryan's Toy Reviews, so you'd have to stand out from them. Sites like Cocomelon/ABCKidsTV are posting videos with over a billion views. I guess off the top of my head, a lot of parents direct their kids to YouTube, and then look for apps when they need something more interactive.

Maybe one approach is to pay influencers, though the topic of influencers varies widely.

Another approach is to do what a friend does and work with a major influencer. Here's an example of his app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astro.didi...

They made a great game, distributed by a major media company, and a smaller YouTube content creator. The game elements weren't the main selling point; the players just wanted a "Didi and Friends" game. But it was a lot of fun for the kids and easy purchase for parents.

Do kindergartens buy apps? I’d try to increase the price a bit and go talk to them if they want to buy it. Maybe make a demo version to get the kids hooked.

Or specific groups for parents.

Maybe make a small booklet to give to schools and say they can buy it as an app with sounds included!

Also crowdsource adding animal sounds through mechanical Turk or something like that. Then draw the animals you receive.

Cute with the hats btw.

Neat idea, I would maybe look for communities online around learning new languages through non typical means.

What brought you to making this game?

Did you build each version natively or is react native?

I would also be curious on search term frequency on some of these phrases, there could be a good SEO opportunity there if you write good educational content :)

Good point about the communities online! I did post on r/languagelearning but there's surely more I can reach out to. I also like the idea around educational content since many of the resources I used to find the animal sounds were articles anyway.

I thought of the game when I was taking Japanese classes in Tokyo. One day we were learning about Japanese animal sounds and the teacher asked us to go around the room and share what animal sounds like in our native languages. There were folks from America, Italy, Norway, Thailand, China, the Phillipines. It was one of my favorite experiences.

I built it using React Native; it was very straightforward since the game doesn't need any particularly deep integrations with the native platforms.

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