Promotion experience in the Russian AppStore

Make a good application for the iPhone or iPad can many. But not everyone on this manages to earn money. I won’t brag, but I’ve got both. I would like to share with the community habrachitaley some of the subtleties of the kitchen.

Under the cut a bit of statistics and experience placing reviews and banner advertising advertising with numbers.



I will not long rant about the need to make high-quality application; Do not rush to release the application without testing it as expected. All this is obvious. But there is an important nuance that many novice developers and producers (customers) do not take into account.

Everyone knows very well that the biggest money in the American segment of appstore. Well, the first thought: "I will make my way there - and the money will tumble down." The result is the most common mistake: everyone makes applications for the American app. And rarely does anyone pay attention to Russian. If you look closely, he, too, is no longer small. There is a good saying: “It’s better to be the biggest fish in a pond than a mediocre one in a big lake.”

Compete with the players of TOP100 American appstore is a very expensive pleasure. Small developers rarely can afford it. But with Russian appstore everything is easier. Getting into the TOP100 is much easier. Of course, there is less profit. But you can hold on for a hundred long periods, and it is easy enough, and for many of you there is already quite decent money (If applications are kept in a dozen of their categories and periodically fall into the TOR200 of the Russian app store, then $ 3000- $ 10,000 can be had without much strain. For indie developers and small friendly teams - quite an acceptable option).



Consider how this can be done.

After the release of the application there are always 2 options (as in that joke): either the starting kick will lead to the tops, or not.

My IMHO: to do advertising simultaneously with the publication of the application is not profitable.

First, if you have a high-quality application, and has potential users - it is very likely that the starting kick can work, and you will get your users at no extra cost.

Secondly, high-quality platforms for promoting applications in the Russian segment did one or two, so they should be protected like silver bullets.

Thirdly, if suddenly at the beginning, in the first version, some not very pleasant bug will come out, and there will be reviews about it - then the advertisement will become “image-based” (as advertisers call that advertisement that did not work, in other words it did not increase sales) .

If the kick start worked, then it is very good, but not for long. In any case, there will be a recession. Whether it will be soon or not is curled from you.

If the kick did not work - then you need to start active work.

Below I will describe my experience in advertising and promotion with reviews and banners in the Russian segment.

Reviews

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1. iphones.ru

Obviously, the most rated site is iphones.ru. There are respected and self-respecting people. Therefore, there is no real shit there. Even for the money. I know for sure, because I myself have published there more than once - they don’t take money for reviews. Therefore, only quality. If the application is interesting (if the editors think so), they can make a review. If not really (for example, a narrow audience of the application, or just laziness) - they have a Dev Story heading. There can write the developers themselves. The effectiveness of this review is very good. As a rule, if the application is written on iphones.ru - you can search for it in the tops. Even TOP10 (in the top ten of the Russian appstore, depending on the price of the application, profits from $ 800 to $ 2000). This effect lasts about 3-4 days. But then there is a lasting effect that increases the average daily sales.

Contacts: you need to interact with Arthur. Mail it is on the right of the site.

2. planetiphone.ru

No matter how surprising you may be, I can say with certainty that they have second place in terms of influence. Outside, a slightly nalyapanny site has a huge plus - a native application for iPhone - i Planet . Thanks to him, with the help of this service, you can really bring the application to the tops in a day. Push messages that they send create a fast wave of races from the appstore, and the application takes off to the top. But the placement of the review they have paid. Somewhere from 100 to 250 dollars, depending on the subject and some other human factor.

They also had an interesting campaign for distribution of promotional codes for the new year - every day 10-20 codes were distributed to readers. It cost about $ 100 - it was useful and profitable.

Update 30.03.2012: Prices started to bend, every month more and more expensive. Already almost 2 times increased. It's sad of course.

3. ???

On this, my search for sites for promotion ended. I mean, they don’t end now, but I didn’t find anything worthwhile. If anyone knows, and uses something else that is worthwhile, let me know, I will be grateful. Reviews of my applications have been on other sites. But they did not do special weather. Although the background sales raised, I guess.

Banner advertising.

I admit honestly. I tried only iphones.ru. Banner advertising is good for free apps. The gain is significant. On paid - less, but on this site, for me it definitely paid for itself and made a profit. Issue price - from $ 300 and higher for the week. Plus, although someone can say that this is a minus: a place under the banner is sold for a period, and not for shows. As a result, all visitors see it.



And, in confirmation, several graphs with captions. All is well illustrated.

This is the sales schedule for the Coaching Speaker application .





This is the download schedule for the Proverbs About Everything application .



There was no advertising.



The sales schedule of the Family Expeses application during the period when it was only in the Russian appstore.





I want to note that all the above applications were in the top 10 Russian appstore.



I hope the information will be useful to readers. If anyone has info on the topic, share in the comments.

UPDATE:

Literally an hour after the publication of this topic, my new publication was published on iphones.ru in the section Dev Story www.iphones.ru/iNotes/195256 . After 4-5 days I will update the article with additional statistics.

UPDATE 2:

Asked - add statistics on fries.





And this is the statistics of the places in the appstore separately iPad and iPhone (as it considers, if it was downloaded from the computer, I did not understand).







UPDATE 3:

Interesting statistics to make something clear about Habré.

The topic header per day seen 222,269 times.

The topic itself was opened 12,946 times.

Statistics collected from the logs of the Apache server, where pictures are posted.