@SpellCollapse Unfortunately, I think it was the novelty of an app “developed on the iPad” that got ScramWords noticed. I’m not sure that card can still be played… but hey, can’t hurt to try!
I made a press release for each game and sent them out to around thirty review sites and general tech blogs, each of them with a code for a free copy. Only two sites ran with it… but those two made a big bump in sales.
The combination of the fact I am a 15 year old developer (14 when released), it was developed on an iPad, and it’s not a crappy game (to be blunt) didn’t do much for me for App Review sites. I’ve sent StackIt to a total of 18 sites without a single reply. Quite discouraging.
One day, I’ll get around to putting a bit of money into marketing.
@SpellCollapse what @Mark has done with ChipBots is a good example of targeting a niche.
If you’re looking into this from a purely business perspective, you can try to find a group of people that is under-serviced by the current offering of apps in their field. Then you learn about their needs and make the best, most polished app to suit them. You’ll find it much easier to get press coverage on the websites that service the niche your app targets, because there will be less competition.
This blog post is quite interesting: http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-year-in-the-app-store/ — this guy decided to make a Spanish Bible app because he felt the niche was not well serviced by other apps in the store. It ended up being quite successful.
If you are looking to focus on games, then I think you have done really well in your marketing attempts so far. Being able to break even and still make games is something that few developers are able to reach.
I’ve nothing to add on the marketing, so this isn’t really a contribution to this discussion.
I just wanted to say that I really enjoy SpellCollapse. I like the differing game modes: there’s some real variety in there and not just harder versions of the same idea. I’m not much of one for playing games on the iPad - I get bored easily - but SpellCollapse is one that I keep coming back to.
To try to make that a comment about marketing, maybe that variety of game modes is something to put some weight on. It’s possible to play a “Timed” game for a few minutes, or to have a normal game running over a week.
@Simeon - Thanks for the advice and the tweet!
@Andrew_Stacey - You really seem to know the game well. Thanks for playing!
@West - Thanks, I was going to ask you to take a look. Your suggestion for changing it inspired me to do so.
I’d just like to know that I’m being featured on AppGratis on the tenth, so I’ll post the sales when that day comes around. Reports say that they get about 300-500K users in one day with that; that’s a bit scary.
Wow, that’s great. That kind of numbers, even on a free app, can make a big difference—both for your resume and your next release.
@Mark - Ya. Thanks. At the same time, it’s going to be quite a headache due to all the support emails. I’m afraid there’s a horrible bug in it somewhere.
@zoyt how did it go with appgratis? i am really sorry you are moving on from codea. we will miss you. Thanks for all your contributions.
@piinthesky - Whoops! Forgot to post that. Basically, since the lady over at AppGratis was doing this for me just out of kindness, it only got to a few countries. So somebody paid AppGratis to take my spot. So I only got 15K free downloads. Thanks!