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There is nothing about marketing right? I mean real marketing not just by cutting the price. For me it is one of the main reasons they didn't earn a lot, specia

by nazka 14y ago

There is nothing about marketing right? I mean real marketing not just by cutting the price. For me it is one of the main reasons they didn't earn a lot, specially with the video game industry. For instance, it is not surprising to see the marketing at 60% of expenses, and it can be even more. They should send keys to journalists, do a real marketing strategy with trailers, put ads every time they do a big update, talk to the community, etc. Marketing is a core of the formula to be rich and successful. In an entertainment industry, more you can give emotions to your future players more you increase the rate of conversion and their future value (trailer, teaser, quality of gameplay, etc.), and at the same time if you put these ads on as much people as you can, it directly increases your own wealth. It reminds me this article: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/173068/congratulations_your_first_indie_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/173068/congratulations... And for the equation you have the excelente book "The Millionaire Fastlane" by MJ DeMarco or more quickly: http://personalmba.com/billionaire-formula/ http://personalmba.com/billionaire-formula/

SaxonDruce 14y ago
We spent about $1600 on ads, resulting in about 3,000,000 impressions and about 2,000 clicks through to the app's promo page (http://www.class3outbreak.com/iphone-ipad-ipod-touch/games/zombie-outbreak-simulator http://www.class3outbreak.com/iphone-ipad-ipod-touch/games/z...). From there it's impossible to tell how many of those people bought the game, but I assume it's much less than 100%. Those clicks cost us 80c each. This is not effective for a $1 app which gives a 70c profit after Apple's 30% cut. Even for a $2 app, it would only be effective if about 60% of people who clicked the ad bought the app - it seems unlikely that it would be anywhere near that high. Most advertising seems to cost about $1 per click. Based on the cost per click and the potential return from a sale I don't think advertising is cost-effective for promoting apps. The only way it might work is if you spend tens of thousands of dollars, so you're on "all" the websites and so "everyone" becomes aware of your app. Therefore it gets talked about, and each click results in potentially more than one sale, by spreading through word of mouth. This also only works if the game is good enough :) I mentioned briefly in the blog post that we got a few reviews written up. Jay contacted dozens of review sites and sent out about 20-30 review codes. We had a poor response. In the end I think the only marketing that was really effective was that we had an existing community around the web versions of our games - at the time of ZOS's release we had about 30,000 visitors a month to our website, and about 8,000 fans on Facebook. I think this is the main reason that we did as well as we did :)

by nazka 14y ago

SaxonDruce 14y ago

We spent about $1600 on ads, resulting in about 3,000,000 impressions and about 2,000 clicks through to the app's promo page (http://www.class3outbreak.com/iphone-ipad-ipod-touch/games/zombie-outbreak-simulator http://www.class3outbreak.com/iphone-ipad-ipod-touch/games/z...). From there it's impossible to tell how many of those people bought the game, but I assume it's much less than 100%. Those clicks cost us 80c each. This is not effective for a $1 app which gives a 70c profit after Apple's 30% cut. Even for a $2 app, it would only be effective if about 60% of people who clicked the ad bought the app - it seems unlikely that it would be anywhere near that high. Most advertising seems to cost about $1 per click. Based on the cost per click and the potential return from a sale I don't think advertising is cost-effective for promoting apps. The only way it might work is if you spend tens of thousands of dollars, so you're on "all" the websites and so "everyone" becomes aware of your app. Therefore it gets talked about, and each click results in potentially more than one sale, by spreading through word of mouth. This also only works if the game is good enough :) I mentioned briefly in the blog post that we got a few reviews written up. Jay contacted dozens of review sites and sent out about 20-30 review codes. We had a poor response. In the end I think the only marketing that was really effective was that we had an existing community around the web versions of our games - at the time of ZOS's release we had about 30,000 visitors a month to our website, and about 8,000 fans on Facebook. I think this is the main reason that we did as well as we did :)