My app failed and makes no money | Hacker News Reader

My app failed and makes no money

shoestring.com.au

1 pointmatbeeche4 comments

Sorry to hear about your app failing. However, a link to the app on iTunes in your post might help a bit :)

I would love to hear/read what your thoughts on your user acquisition strategy. Did you get it reviewed by sites? Was there anything built in to share the game (not multi-playing features, but a way to get others/friends to play)?

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/gravityicons/id534926366?mt=...

Over the years, I have tried most (free/cheap) avenues to help market my apps. In general, I market them through PR (I know this is not a sustainable strategy despite my arguably successful track record with it). As with many 'rookie developers', I thought this app would be the next Angry Birds and little promotion would be needed for it to take off. Additionally, I didn't attempt to get PR for this app because in my eyes, it would be difficult to pitch to the media and for every media pitch that doesn't go ahead, I see this as slowly breaking away a relationship built with journalists, reporters etc.

I did try to get the icon owners (eg. Temple Run developer etc) to post on their Facebook pages etc about the app but only a few did, and the ones that did, didn't have tens of thousands of 'likes' or anything like that, unfortunately.

I added in an alert to share the game after beating one of the bonus levels (I forgot which one but I think it is around 25/30). I should probably put it earlier but in general, people close those alerts anyway without an incentive to share the app. Overall, I have made quite a number of mistakes with this app. I have learnt from them and I am moving on.

btw To promote your app, app review sites are up there with the biggest time wasters on the planet. Unless you have some sort of ground-breaking technology in the app, it is very unlikely that pitching your app to review sites etc have any effect at all. I've tried submitting lots of my apps (even my 'successful' ones) to these sites and nothing ever comes from it. Other developers seem to have the same results as me...

Thanks for sharing.

While I'm not a game developer, I have been trying to get our team members to focus not just on building the product/app but also on thinking about developing a user acquisition process for each app. This may sometimes involve PR and talking to the media and app review sites, but my experience (which matches your thoughts) media exposure doesn't always result in an actual boost of registrations/downloads/revenue. So it's not just a goal of "get more customers" but making it more specific, e.g. "get more people to share my game/app" or "increase exposure to a specific target interest group", etc.

Thanks again for sharing. Best of luck with your future projects!

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