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[Uncle Scotty]

Hi! My question to the TIGSource community is: How do you generate traffic and downloads for your game or app on Google Play?

I have several games and live wallpapers published on Google Play for android, but have not yet found a successful marketing formula for getting many downloads. I realize that, on one hand, a high quality product helps a lot. There are, however, many low quality games and apps on Google Play that still have thousands, or even tens or hundreds of thousands, of downloads. Have any other indie developers found a marketing strategy that is successful for getting a high number of downloads for their game in the now-cluttered Google Play marketplace?

I have had minimal success with a variety of marketing efforts. For my first few games, I published a PRWeb press release that was syndicated to a large number of sources. This generated several hundred downloads each for the free versions of these very simple games. For a PC project, Rogue Story: Phase One, I published two press releases through gamerelease.net, but this did not seem to generate much traffic. For my Android mini-game collection Anachron's Arcade I tried a little bit of Google adwords advertising with limited success. For my latest game, Uncle Scotty's Arcade, I have focused more on trying to build an online and social media presence. This strategy has been successful in getting people to review the game, but I have not been able to build up any real momentum with downloads. I have also submitted the game to many app review sites, but have had no success with them as of yet. I also purchased some low-cost advertising with iwantitapps.com and on fiverr but I do not believe these have helped generate any downloads. The amount of time I need to currently invest for each download/rating is also prohibitive. There is just no way I can spend thousands or even hundreds of hours marketing each of my games alone, since I work and have family and other commitments.

The only app I have that has had significant success with downloads is my Free Fireworks Live Wallpaper, which has over 13,000 downloads and ~5,000 active installs. These downloads, I believe, have all been acquired organically through search and/or word-of-mouth. Perhaps it is SEO that has contributed to these downloads, since this is a product that people could conceivable find by searching for fireworks wallpapers in the Google Play marketplace. Is exposure on Google Play all about SEO, or are there other marketing efforts that have proven successful for other indie devs?

I understand that it can take a long time and a lot of effort to build up a fan base as an indie developer, but I'm wondering if anybody has had success with paid promotions or advertising from different marketing agencies. If so, and you're willing to share your experiences, I think it would be helpful to me and other indie developers to gain a better understanding of how to get our products noticed and played. From my experience so far, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing a large number of people enjoy something that I made. There is also nothing as disheartening as seeing a product that took a relatively long time and large amount of effort to make get largely ignored. Perhaps advice from successful developers on these forums could help other new developers like myself have more success with their early projects.

Thanks!  

[LStro]

Hey Uncle Scotty, I've tried out a handful of your apps now and its fairly obvious to my as to why your most successful one is Free Fireworks WPS. While your games may have cool gameplay mechanics in them, they are overall not very polished and aesthetically pleasing. It looks like very little time/effort was spent on the graphics of your apps (except for Fireworks, which looks polished and has a good app icon etc). This will deter most mobile users as they are used to seeing really nice looking (yet simple) graphics.

Another issue that is most definitely holding you back from getting downloads are your poor name choices. They are poor in the sense that they are lengthy and really hard to search for. I knew your Fireworks app name but couldn't even find it, I had to end up searching for your developer page in order to get to it. Short, catchy, general (popularly searched) and interesting names are the best to use.

I think a few key things that you could definitely incorporate into your plan is a solid and catchy name for each app. Polished and pleasing graphics go a long way and its worth investing time into. Game-play videos are really important and will sway a lot of potential viewers to download your game (but it has to look interesting!).

Making posts on various boards is also a good way to get more exposure. A development blog/site is not a bad idea, also having a stand alone landing page will generate views. Getting bloggers/editors/youtubers to post a story about your game would do wonders for getting more attention, but first you have to make something that is exciting enough to write/talk about.

These are a few of my ideas, hopefully someone else can add more to the discussion.

[Uncle Scotty]

Hey, thanks for the feedback eh. It's tricky with the graphics. I just started making pixel art this year and am definitely going through the learning process. I know outsourcing my art would probably result in a more appealing product, but making the pixel art is one of the funnest parts of my game development so I'm not eager to let it go.

Not so sure about the app titles and keywording. Seems like a trade-off. My fireworks app is hard to find when you search exactly for the title, but then again over 13,000 people have found that app through organic search downloads so far (presumably for 'fireworks' and 'live wallpaper'. On the other hand, my apps like Uncle Scotty's Arcade and Anachron's Arcade that have snappier titles can be easily found by searching for their unique keywords, but they don't get any organic download traffic because nobody finds them through searching for other keywords.