Cards, money, two stars

New Year's Eve is easy to bet. So I bet that it is useless to promote your phone applications in the absence of a lot of money.
That amounts smaller than $ 10,000 can be considered a donation.

I had to prove my thesis to a sober head.
I chose three known methods of paid promotion of the application to the masses.

• Buying reviews
• Buying advertising
• Buying Rating

Each action was spent no more than $ 200.
An old game King of Hearts was chosen as a guinea pig.
The outcome of the bet is under the cut.

Initial conditions. Prior to the experiment, the King of Hearts app brought in between $ 1 and $ 5 per day. The average number of downloads is 10-20 per day. This is a classic offline offline card game for children, clerks and builders on a smoke break.
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Overview

Review was ordered on the appadvice.com service.
From these guys came a letter that they would make a review and newsletter for only $ 99, instead of the standard $ 200.
I gave them money, as a result I received a good review text in English and 10% -50% of additional downloads during the week.
At the noise level, we will consider 5 dollars beaten off.

Thus, the overall result of the survey company is minus $ 95 dollars, but now I have a good English text in the chest that can be used anywhere.

Advertising

Advertising was bought on a radish. Or reddit.com .
I periodically published on this resource short links to my free games on the advice of someone from the habr-user , and some of the ads was even successful. 1 time.
I gave 100 dollars (it is very easy and convenient for them to take money) for advertising a game on a radish. The tariff was chosen - show all the right people for a week, until a hundred dollars run out.
Total - 0 additional downloads.

Thus, the total result of the advertising company is minus $ 100 dollars.

Rating

Rating bought from the service fresh-reviews.com at the request of IvanFF .
The guys wrote me reviews for King for 3000 rubles ($ 50 at the February exchange rate) for 30 reviews with an average rating of 4.5 stars.
5 stars seemed immodest and suspicious. In addition, as a bonus, I received 30 reviews of three more of my applications.
As a result, the rating of applications has risen, there was a small surge in downloads.
To write a review, you need to download the game - perhaps from here and growth).
In all applications, except King, no additional income was found.

For King, the situation is better. Admob ad changes are not found. But on advertising from Chartboost received a surge in profits of up to $ 10 per day. 50 dollars spent, I think, got out.
The result - a positive rating and reviews. Apparently, the rating somehow affects the CPM.



After the experiment, the application King of Hearts brings from 3 to 10 dollars a day. The average number of downloads is still 10-20 per day.

findings

To promote a mobile application in 2015, it is necessary to spend large sums and beat in all directions. Otherwise - money down the drain.