Million downloads per month or how to make a good start on Google Play
Hello,
First I wanted to title the topic “Million downloads per month or how to make a good start on Google Play using the example of one game ”, but then I decided that it was too long. However, today I will talk about my last game. Not only because I want to advertise it a little (although this is also something to hide), but also because each launch of a new game is individual and it would probably be not entirely correct to tell each time without launching to the terrain.
The game itself is not some kind of breakthrough in the industry or an example of innovative gameplay, I understand that perfectly. This is a shooting gallery, where the player will try on the role of a sniper. The pseudo-realistic game chip: the distance to the target, the wind and the heartbeat affect the bullet's trajectory (a special pulse indicator is located in the upper left corner, the trigger must be pressed when the marker is in the center position). Each of the rifles presented in the game has its own unique “character”: accuracy, different effects of wind, distance, and so on. As a result of passing the level, the player gains experience points that can be spent on acquiring more advanced weapons or bonuses, such as additional ammunition, for example. In general, such a mediocre indie game. However, by the end of the first month we came up with 1,000,000 downloads, a daily increase of ~ 100,000 and a place in the TOP-30 Arcade US. Below I will try to tell in order what was done, what was done well, and what could be done better.
')
So, it all begins with the publication / page of the game in the Play Store. The first thing you should pay attention to is the keywords, for me these are “shooting (range)” and “sniper”. I tried to simply stuff the description with them, especially the word "sniper", by listing the weapons represented in the game, for example. Also, we should not forget that the "weight" of keywords in the title is much higher than in the description, so the keywords in the title are simply obliged! As a result, we are now in 3rd place in the search results for the query "sniper", immediately after the contract killer - the game has a completely different weight category.
Secondly, you need to translate the description into all available languages, even if there are no other options besides auto-translation. This alone will give you quite a noticeable increase in downloads.
Next - screenshots. Here we have added post-processing screenshots. I do not know how positively this affects the interest of users, but it clearly makes the page of the game more solid or something. Here is an example:
Be sure to make a promotional video and do not forget to leave a link to the game page in the description. For Shooting club 2, I first tried to order a video, this is one of two items of expenditure for this game (the second is the soundtrack). In my opinion, it turned out quite well.
Last but not least, as they say - this is the icon. Surprisingly, an icon attractive to users can outweigh the remaining 90% of your marketing efforts. The most active growth of daily downloads began when we changed the game icon. We discussed for a long time, considered various options, and as a result settled on this.
After the game is published on Google Play, it's time to think about promotion. It is worth starting with thematic forums. In RuNet - this, of course, w3bsit3-dns.com plus a review on the main one, in the framework of the "Project for the support of our developers", about which everyone has already heard, probably. This alone is enough to get into the "Trending Apps (Gaining Popularity)" Russian Play Store, provided that the game will interest users, of course. Please note: their rules have changed a little, a special form has appeared for placing such reviews (I could not understand for a long time why my usual review did not want to miss the Editor).
On the English-language forums, I do not know something like w3bsit3-dns.com. Googling, I wrote for myself a few small forums. There is no need to wait for some kind of return, our goal is to simply increase the number of external links to the game page.
Examples:
- androidpit.com
- forums.androidcentral.com
- androidcommunity.com
- androidforums.com
and so on.
Separately, it should be said about two resources. Firstly, forum.xda-developers.com , here we also post a topic with a review of the game, but our main task is different. Our task is to get to the main page of the portal. Here the traffic is much more, and you will definitely notice the result! To do this there is a special form for the request . I wrote a request in broken English, added a link to the forum topic and after about a week (oh, a miracle!) They published a small note about our game, choosing a screenshot of the loading screen for some reason as an illustration (probably as the most attractive, from their point of view).
Secondly, reddit.com . There are at least 2 subreddits suitable for us on the subject, these are / r / Android and / r / AndroidGaming . Leave the game page links on the trailer, you can write a small topic, at least there is always some activity in the comments.
If you have other games / applications, cross-promotion will be a great help. For the first 7-10 days after launch, I take 100% of requests to display my banners, restricting geo-targeting to the most “interesting” regions (US, UK, JP, etc.). Not so long ago, in AdMob, there was such an interesting feature for house ads: you set the title and page of the application and get something like this banner (the ratings and the icon are “pulled” by the Play Store):
Although, as practice shows, a well-made “Image ad” has, of course, a higher CTR.
The indicator that everything is going as it should be is getting into “Hot apps” on appbrain.com (you will receive an email alert linked to a developer account). We cannot affect it (for free), but we can at least rejoice. Shooting club 2 several times this month got into the list with an AppBrain rating of 82 out of 100 (I don’t know the truth of what their rating means).
Unexpected to me was the way the idea with promo codes “shot”. Initially, I did not plan anything like that. Once again, thinking about what else to add to the game, I decided to make a simple entry and verification of promotional codes that add a certain amount of bonus experience points. Actually, these are rather cheat codes, since there is no server verification, the codes are not personalized - the disadvantages in this solution are obvious, I think. However, people simply magically react to the word “promo code” (even if they don’t really need it). Requests "to give a promotional code", naturally allow you to keep the topic above, on the same forums. And it is clear that the user who received the coveted code is already guaranteed to be more loyal in the ratings of the game. Now I understand that it was necessary to make full-fledged, individual promotional codes for different types of weapons in the game, for example. Writing and deploying the server part solely for this task still seems to me a bit unjustified, but using ready-made systems (such as boomcodes.com ) is an excellent compromise.
The game does not need to forget about self-promotion. There must be a request (button) to vote, we have a dialogue at the exit, when the user has probably already watched the game and made up some opinion. Also, the sharing of results and achievements in social networks shows itself well, especially if you have something to reward the user. In Shooting club 2, we made the button “Share (+500 exp)” on the screen with statistics on the level passed. As a quick search on VKontakte shows, for example, this method works fine.
In the week while I wrote this topic in fragments, the game “grew up” by another million downloads, so it’s difficult only at the beginning! In conclusion, a couple of beautiful graphs from the developer console. Growth in the number of active installations:
Dynamics of downloads by day:
PS Taking this opportunity, I want to express my deep gratitude to Natalia Makeenko for help with the preparation of texts and translation.
First I wanted to title the topic “Million downloads per month or how to make a good start on Google Play using the example of one game ”, but then I decided that it was too long. However, today I will talk about my last game. Not only because I want to advertise it a little (although this is also something to hide), but also because each launch of a new game is individual and it would probably be not entirely correct to tell each time without launching to the terrain.
The game itself is not some kind of breakthrough in the industry or an example of innovative gameplay, I understand that perfectly. This is a shooting gallery, where the player will try on the role of a sniper. The pseudo-realistic game chip: the distance to the target, the wind and the heartbeat affect the bullet's trajectory (a special pulse indicator is located in the upper left corner, the trigger must be pressed when the marker is in the center position). Each of the rifles presented in the game has its own unique “character”: accuracy, different effects of wind, distance, and so on. As a result of passing the level, the player gains experience points that can be spent on acquiring more advanced weapons or bonuses, such as additional ammunition, for example. In general, such a mediocre indie game. However, by the end of the first month we came up with 1,000,000 downloads, a daily increase of ~ 100,000 and a place in the TOP-30 Arcade US. Below I will try to tell in order what was done, what was done well, and what could be done better.
')
So, it all begins with the publication / page of the game in the Play Store. The first thing you should pay attention to is the keywords, for me these are “shooting (range)” and “sniper”. I tried to simply stuff the description with them, especially the word "sniper", by listing the weapons represented in the game, for example. Also, we should not forget that the "weight" of keywords in the title is much higher than in the description, so the keywords in the title are simply obliged! As a result, we are now in 3rd place in the search results for the query "sniper", immediately after the contract killer - the game has a completely different weight category.
Secondly, you need to translate the description into all available languages, even if there are no other options besides auto-translation. This alone will give you quite a noticeable increase in downloads.
Next - screenshots. Here we have added post-processing screenshots. I do not know how positively this affects the interest of users, but it clearly makes the page of the game more solid or something. Here is an example:
Be sure to make a promotional video and do not forget to leave a link to the game page in the description. For Shooting club 2, I first tried to order a video, this is one of two items of expenditure for this game (the second is the soundtrack). In my opinion, it turned out quite well.
Last but not least, as they say - this is the icon. Surprisingly, an icon attractive to users can outweigh the remaining 90% of your marketing efforts. The most active growth of daily downloads began when we changed the game icon. We discussed for a long time, considered various options, and as a result settled on this.
After the game is published on Google Play, it's time to think about promotion. It is worth starting with thematic forums. In RuNet - this, of course, w3bsit3-dns.com plus a review on the main one, in the framework of the "Project for the support of our developers", about which everyone has already heard, probably. This alone is enough to get into the "Trending Apps (Gaining Popularity)" Russian Play Store, provided that the game will interest users, of course. Please note: their rules have changed a little, a special form has appeared for placing such reviews (I could not understand for a long time why my usual review did not want to miss the Editor).
On the English-language forums, I do not know something like w3bsit3-dns.com. Googling, I wrote for myself a few small forums. There is no need to wait for some kind of return, our goal is to simply increase the number of external links to the game page.
Examples:
- androidpit.com
- forums.androidcentral.com
- androidcommunity.com
- androidforums.com
and so on.
Separately, it should be said about two resources. Firstly, forum.xda-developers.com , here we also post a topic with a review of the game, but our main task is different. Our task is to get to the main page of the portal. Here the traffic is much more, and you will definitely notice the result! To do this there is a special form for the request . I wrote a request in broken English, added a link to the forum topic and after about a week (oh, a miracle!) They published a small note about our game, choosing a screenshot of the loading screen for some reason as an illustration (probably as the most attractive, from their point of view).
Secondly, reddit.com . There are at least 2 subreddits suitable for us on the subject, these are / r / Android and / r / AndroidGaming . Leave the game page links on the trailer, you can write a small topic, at least there is always some activity in the comments.
If you have other games / applications, cross-promotion will be a great help. For the first 7-10 days after launch, I take 100% of requests to display my banners, restricting geo-targeting to the most “interesting” regions (US, UK, JP, etc.). Not so long ago, in AdMob, there was such an interesting feature for house ads: you set the title and page of the application and get something like this banner (the ratings and the icon are “pulled” by the Play Store):
Although, as practice shows, a well-made “Image ad” has, of course, a higher CTR.
The indicator that everything is going as it should be is getting into “Hot apps” on appbrain.com (you will receive an email alert linked to a developer account). We cannot affect it (for free), but we can at least rejoice. Shooting club 2 several times this month got into the list with an AppBrain rating of 82 out of 100 (I don’t know the truth of what their rating means).
Unexpected to me was the way the idea with promo codes “shot”. Initially, I did not plan anything like that. Once again, thinking about what else to add to the game, I decided to make a simple entry and verification of promotional codes that add a certain amount of bonus experience points. Actually, these are rather cheat codes, since there is no server verification, the codes are not personalized - the disadvantages in this solution are obvious, I think. However, people simply magically react to the word “promo code” (even if they don’t really need it). Requests "to give a promotional code", naturally allow you to keep the topic above, on the same forums. And it is clear that the user who received the coveted code is already guaranteed to be more loyal in the ratings of the game. Now I understand that it was necessary to make full-fledged, individual promotional codes for different types of weapons in the game, for example. Writing and deploying the server part solely for this task still seems to me a bit unjustified, but using ready-made systems (such as boomcodes.com ) is an excellent compromise.
The game does not need to forget about self-promotion. There must be a request (button) to vote, we have a dialogue at the exit, when the user has probably already watched the game and made up some opinion. Also, the sharing of results and achievements in social networks shows itself well, especially if you have something to reward the user. In Shooting club 2, we made the button “Share (+500 exp)” on the screen with statistics on the level passed. As a quick search on VKontakte shows, for example, this method works fine.
In the week while I wrote this topic in fragments, the game “grew up” by another million downloads, so it’s difficult only at the beginning! In conclusion, a couple of beautiful graphs from the developer console. Growth in the number of active installations:
Dynamics of downloads by day:
PS Taking this opportunity, I want to express my deep gratitude to Natalia Makeenko for help with the preparation of texts and translation.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/162767/
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