Alright I see a lot of people asking how to market thier games and apps to the top. In truth its very hard and almost impossible if you don't have at least a small marketing budget. Now if you would like to share this on your blog you have permission as I am making this to help developers learn.
Deciding What I was Going to make
I decided to make a game that had very simple controls.
I am just a pixel artist but I know majority of gamers like vector art. So I brought artwork from an artist who is indie developer friendly. I went for a non- serious cartoon character.
I made the game easy enough so that a gamer can play it without instructions.
Before Launch
After I finished the Bomb Attack Max game I didn't release it to the appstore , that would equal a fail. I played the game and took screenshots about 8 of them and narrowed it down to 3 . The screenshots I picked had to look funny or be humorous for the simple type of game it was.
I posted screenshots of Bomb Attack Max game coming on facebook groups about 10-12 of them that I was on. I did this for 2 days in a row 2x a day. Also I tweeted the game is coming.
I also made a video of the game did the same thing posted it on facebook groups and twitter multiple times a day.
Set up android ADs with the little marketing budget I had $80 . This would give me a small boost in downloads. Used ayetstudios.com
Game
Link to game its now on Opera because of googleplay banning my Movie quiz apps saying it was copywright infringment as of Dec 5, 2014 . Here is the link to Bomb attack Max
sourceforge.net/projects/andr...k.apk/download
Launched my app , posted on facebook and twitter that its finally arrived . Also launched the small AD campaign. And here comes the numbers
Day 1 250
Day 2 150
Day 3 150
Day 4 80 Ran out of money in banner AD campaign had to find more money
Day 5 89
Day 6 190
Day 7 140 Got featured in top new free in Adventure category , lower banner AD campaign
Day 8 130 Started getting good organic traffic from Top new free section so cut down to much less banner AD campaign
Day 9 103 Finally hit #49 after going well over 1,000 installs July 4Th
Special Note**
I started the game with 2 modes of play. In those 8 days I updated the game 2 times to bring the total modes of play to 4 modes of play. This extended playing time and kept my game installed on people's devices. Real content updates are critical to kept users playing your game especially if its a simple one. Just add different themes or 1 new badguy that stands out makes huge difference.
Special Note*
One Big Mistake***
Not saving up enough budget to reach higher and deeper on the charts. Yes I did get in the Top New Free Adventure category at number #15 but I should have saved enough to get to top #5 . In India I learned consumers there don't really search the store the same as U.S. store they only look at top lists and not so much the category lists. I was #49 on list and that didn't get me enough organic downloads until I reached Top Free List. Top Free List gives much more organic traffic. Had I saved enough to budget I would have had it easier when the bigger developers came and gave a hard fight about 5 days into climbing the charts. Plus some good indie games came to make it even harder. Got knocked down to #55 place after being #49 place. Also I should have been more aggressive with ADs.
Total cost $180 promotions and art
Time it took to break even 3 months
Time it took to 3x profits 6 months
Profits came from AD revenue, plus selling source code to the game and other games getting boost through cross promotion.