And we have an SDK, and you?

Turnover in the advertising business is even higher than among fast food trainees. 2 years ago, I finally decided to leave the gray office and go about my business, but the unpaid bonuses and bonuses continued to keep me in advertising for a while. I continued to advise the former employer on strategic planning and promotion on the Internet, working from home. At the same time I thought about my business.

The “gold rush” of startups attracted everyone, and I was no exception. One day, I came across an English article on App Store Optimization (for those who don't know, this is SEO for the App Store). I was so fascinated by this mysterious and unexplored topic that I decided to devote myself entirely to ASO for years to come. So I got into the new wondrous world of mobile applications.

Then I could not even imagine what awaited me in the future. With my savings (about 5 million rubles), I formed a remote team in Ukraine from two mobile developers, a server-side developer and a designer for full time, and began developing, coordinating the team myself. After 9 months of work, my first application was ready. It was a dating app and on the third attempt, the harsh moderators missed the app on the App Store.

The rating turned out to be an extremely competitive environment where the winner takes it all. Success in this area is even more difficult than creating a Facebook killer. The traditional vicious circle - if you have few regular users, then new users irrevocably leave. Additional investments and an aggressive advertising campaign were needed. But having spent several meetings with Russian venture capitalists, I firmly decided that I did not want to work again for my uncle, because it would bring me back to what I wanted to leave ...

However, it was at this moment that I discovered all the power and power of ASO - replacing just one keyword in my application increased the number of downloads 10 times - from 200 to 2,000 per day!



I started thinking about monetizing an existing application and came across an article about the Aviasales Travelpayouts partner program. But it was not entirely reasonable to introduce air ticket booking to the dating, but it seemed to me very interesting to highlight the search for cheap air tickets in a separate application. Besides, I was always attracted to travel, and the view of the planes was breathtaking. Literally a week later in the App Store my new application appeared Cheap flights from 729 airlines . The application was completely based on the Aviasales SDK.



It's no secret that all air ticket reservation applications have the same functionality. Enter the city of departure and arrival, select dates and get the options, sorted by price. To come up with something new is extremely difficult, and even an outstanding design does not guarantee success.

The experience of the recently launched Corner application only proves it. The guys from Russia did a gigantic job, developed a really new approach to finding air tickets, were noted on the main page of the Russian App Store and brought the user experience to a new level. What is the result? While the media is writing about them, the application is in the TOP10 category (several thousand downloads per day in Russia). As soon as the journalists calm down, the application in a matter of days slides below TOP200 (several downloads per day). If the project team spent ASO at least 5% of the time spent on development, everything could be different.

By the way, not only me, but all readers would be very curious to find out from the Corner team the current indicators of the application (for example, conversion of visitors into reservations and average income per user). Personally, I have a feeling that sometimes too bold design can adversely affect the financial performance of the project.

But back to my story. My application has a very simple design, however, the application itself does an excellent job. Simplicity was put at the forefront. Like any meta-search, the application compares the prices of 729 airlines, 30 online agencies (OTA), filters the results and shows the user the cheapest flight options. In fact, this is a simplified analogue of the application Aviasales, which works on their technological platform. The application was further localized into 24 languages ​​and useful tips on booking flights were added to it (for example, few people know that if you travel with your family or a large company, then you should buy tickets separately - as a rule, this will help you save a lot).



Since no PR stories can be inflated from such a simple functional, all forces were thrown onto the App Store Optimization. As it turned out, literature on this topic is too small, and professionals who really have valuable knowledge can be counted on the fingers of the world. All articles on the topic of ASO repeat 10 standard clauses, most of which are described in the Apple documentation - to remove spaces between keywords, not duplicate words in the heading and in the keywords, localization to the most popular languages, etc.

I had to comprehend all the secrets of the App Store myself. When my first air ticket booking application started generating revenue, I decided to conduct AB testing of keywords in an unusual way. Instead of testing the keywords on the same application and waiting for moderation for 7 days each time, I simply created several applications under different names and uploaded them to the App Store, in order to choose the most successful one and promote it.

In practice, it turned out that the keywords “cheap flights” work better on the Russian market, the names of the airlines are on the American market, and neither the one nor the other on the European market. Loukosterov like a virus, struck the whole of Europe. No matter how much you compare, you still will not find anything cheaper than Ryanair, while low-cost airlines do not pay a commission.

An unpleasant surprise was waiting for me where you least expect it. During the next update of the applications, the App Store moderators threatened to exclude me from the developers, explaining this with the following: “Developers will be able to get rid of the iOS Developer Program.” But after lengthy negotiations, I found a compromise with them.

Exclusive. A few words about the secrets of App Store Optimization, which you will not find in any book or article. For obvious reasons, I will not reveal all the cards, but here are some techniques that will help you with the promotion of your application:

• If you focus on the US market, then the number of keywords can be doubled by entering additional English keywords in the Spanish localization. In the US, there are many immigrants from Mexico and Cuba, so the App Store automatically includes keywords from the Spanish localization in the ranking. Yes, this market is extremely saturated with competitors, but if you enter the American market, you will not be afraid of any currency fluctuations or surprises of Russian lawmakers.

• The Arab market is also very promising. The population has a high income, and the families are large (the man often has from 2 to 4 wives and several other children). Only in the Arab market you will find booking air tickets for 7 people from Dubai to New York and back business class for $ 25,000. Localization of the application in Arabic is not particularly difficult. You can achieve a high number of downloads by launching on this market a separate application with a single Arabic localization instead of the English one. Local moderators are very fond of applications in Arabic and will help advertise your application on the first page of the App Store, which in my experience brings about 11,000 downloads per day in only Saudi Arabia.



It should be noted that ASO completely repeats the path of SEO - ranking mechanisms are constantly being improved and more and more new factors are included in the game. But no mechanisms will deduce and keep your application in the TOP, if its rating is less than 4. At the same time, satisfied users, unlike dissatisfied, rarely leave feedback. Over time, this leads to the fact that the ratings of even the most high-quality applications fall to 2-3 stars, and the rating has to be tightened up with not entirely honest methods. I can say with confidence that all major market players (both in Russia and the USA) use black ASO methods, buying positive reviews and user ratings on special exchanges. By the way, the pleasure is not cheap - about $ 1.25 for a positive review.

And now about the numbers. 6 months later:

• Entry into the TOP5 of payments in the affiliate program (November 2014, total about 50,000 participants);
• 2,500 tickets sold (17 full Boeing-737 aircraft);
• Total number of application downloads: about 900,000 (5,000 per day);
• Permanent presence in the TOP100 US App Store (Travel). For example, the native JetRadar application (a clone of Aviasales for the international market) is not even included in the TOP200;
• Permanent presence in the TOP50 of the Russian App Store (Travel);
• Current income from 200,000 to 250,000 rubles per month (including bonuses)
• Average income per user: $ 1.2 (yes, the margin in this business is very low, about 1% of the cost of the ticket);
• Modest conversion of visitors to reservations: 0.5%.



It should be additionally noted that these indicators were achieved at zero costs for marketing and advertising.

Of course, success is a loose concept. For me personally, success was the achievement of a stable income, which exceeded my salary at the previous place of work. In my future plans, an increase in conversion by 3-4 times, and work on this has already begun. For example, Americans are very fond of stories, the so-called storytelling. Therefore, I am currently testing an explanatory video Booking Cheapest Flights Tips , which is recommended for viewing to all new users of the application from the USA.

Well, now a few words about the SDK itself:

Frankly, the emotional component took precedence over the rational, and as shown by the experience of real work - not in vain. The team of the partner team is very friendly, even the most difficult issues are resolved promptly.

Creating an SDK-based application in the hands of an experienced developer takes only a couple of hours.
I am also very close to the team spirit of Aviasales and especially the principles of the company's founder Konstantin Kalinov (by the way, I advise everyone to subscribe to his Facebook page ). What does Kostya's phrase cost in an interview for the CP? “We give up to 70 percent of profit - no one gives up so much. I believe that greed breeds poverty, so we are not greedy. ” Checkmate.

In addition to mobile applications, I have already begun work on a content project focused on the US market, which will use both widgets, and API, and search forms.

In the course of work, there were also difficulties, without them nowhere. There were many nuances with localization into different languages, with regional settings and currencies - something did not fit, something moved out, something stretched. But the guys from Aviasales quickly helped with the solution of all problems.

If you pay attention to the graph above, you probably noticed a failure in September and October. This is not seasonality, we just did not have time to catch the bug, as a result of which users on iOS8 could not choose the dates of departure and arrival. As a result, sales sagged heavily.

This bug affected several users in the United States and Australia - they managed to buy tickets for the wrong dates. They could not return all the money, so I compensated the affected users for about $ 2,500 from my own funds. In the US, you can't joke with the Customer Service, especially when you work on the Apple platform.

All statistics are presented in your account - it provides the most complete information on users, searches and bookings in real time.



As noted above, Aviasales’s approach to sharing the commission with partners is beyond praise and, unequivocally, these are the most favorable conditions not only in Russia, but throughout the world. If your monthly income at a rate of 60% exceeds 60,000 rubles, then the rate rises to 70% subject to payments to the ePayments card. By the way, this card is useful to everyone who works in the IT industry, it is issued in London on behalf of the Electronic Payments Association and allows you to withdraw cash dollars with a very low commission - only $ 1.5 per transaction of $ 200. Transfers within the system are instant and free.

My plans are to reach a net profit of 10 million rubles a year over the next 12 months.
Now about what is missing in the API and the SDK. Definitely, the SDK lacks iPad support. Also, sooner or later I would like to get the SDK not from native elements, but a more elegant solution. For example, take JetRadar application as a basis, clear it from mentioning the brand and, in fact, make the White Label SDK, which will look more presentable in the eyes of users. I am sure that this will allow to increase the average income per user by 3-4 times.

Finally, I wanted to note that the documentation was written more than qualitatively. While developers have no questions.

I want to appeal to all Russian online booking agencies that read this article. Guys, nothing kills conversion as much as the need to enter user data in small, non-optimized mobile fields. Please, finally, make mobile versions of your sites - 2015 is already here.

You will also be able to significantly increase the number of bookings from the USA, if you localize your sites qualitatively into English, taking into account the nuances of the American market. Most US citizens do not have a passport (they need it only for travel abroad). Instead, Americans have an ID (driver's license). Therefore, you should not ask the Americans to enter the passport number when booking domestic flights, because they simply do not have it.

So far, only the trip.ru agency has handled these, in fact, obvious tasks. It is through their website that most of the bookings from my applications in the US, Europe and the Middle East countries pass.