What interesting things have I learned in two years of developing and promoting a mobile game?
Hi, Habr! I haven’t seen each other for a long time ... Since the last publication - “What I learned from my mistakes or how to make the second game better” 2 years have passed! Today I will talk about what's new, I tried to promote, monetize the application, and of course what came of it.
At the time of the last publication I had a small Space Monsters toy in my piggy bank. As they say - "The first pancake is lumpy." Total 6000 installations for all years.
Released at the time "Quick Brain" (September 22, 2014). before November 18, 2014 showed a good start and reached 5000 installations. The main stream came from unidentified sources, which took more than six months for the alignment of forces to change in favor of Google play.
')
What now :
Below, I will describe the steps I used to maintain the light in the project, how I didn’t let it go out and what helped to bring it to the top (I use appannie.com to view positions).
I asked everyone who can install the application and of course appreciate. (It works well for the market, along the way you get a verbal feedback on the application). Found a large list of forums and posted on everyone, as much as possible. (It worked great, but not all forums are worth the time spent)
As a result, the following list of free favorites remained:
Since the publication of the post on the forum is lost in history. The solution is simple, for w3bsit3-dns.com and xda - a new version has been released, something has been updated, or just wanted to raise the top, write it with a comment to your article and it immediately rises. Conduct conversations with commentators, each message also update the post. Trashbox is the same story, only here it is enough just to edit the post and it is again in the top (I was even sent a warning for this).
Reviewsmotion.com. You rate, you rate - everything is simple here, the daily limit is 10 ratings. He worked well until he began to notice that Google deletes comments on Google play, which he considers not real, and then turned down the shop, but the site then changed the rules for users to rate and not delete right away.
Paid promotion - I turned to him only a year later. The growth of the active base was stable, slow, no extravaganza. And I got bored, I wanted explosive growth.
November 2015 is the time to look for paid ways to promote! The option of buying paid traffic did not work, bought few users, the price is high, and the worst is that they are motivated and are not in principle your active users.
Perhaps someone from the reader has a positive experience in buying traffic, it would be interesting to know your opinion.
Vkontakte - for me was the best option, cheap, easy to use.
For all the time, during the year, I spent only in VKontakte $ 1139 - I received 37,000 installations. On average, $ 0.03 per user. The most important thing: pick up your target audience, draw an attractive image. I used both Mobile Application Targeting and advertising in communities (here it is better for each group to have its own post, which is most suitable for the topic, then there will be a good profit). Of course, it all depends on the application. “Quick Brain” was 2-3 times cheaper than the “Russian language” application (It’s worth considering that it was not advertising during the current season and the advertising image was disappointing).
Pros: cost, large audience, not expensive, ease of use
Minus: The audience from the CIS, difficulties with the updates of posts, editing.
I advertised not constantly, intermittently, put a maximum of $ 10-15 per day. This was enough to climb some positions in the top. However, I did not risk spending more to go to the very tops, because the whole thing didn't pay off. Due to such advertising campaigns, it was possible to increase by 2-3 times the daily active audience, which continued to persist. It was possible to reach the first positions of the top category for some countries. For example, Belarus and Latvia did not bring such a significant increase, as the same Russia. But to get to the tops in small countries is very simple, just a couple of hundred installations per day is enough.
Maybe you had an advertising experience, maybe you should spend large sums at a time to get to the top positions of the market as much as possible?
Examples of effective advertising posts:
Tell me which of these advertisements do you like more?
In fact, it all depends on who you show it to. I conducted an experiment, turned them on at the same time, they differed only in their image and target audience. It turned out that the first version works fine for girls from 13 to 16 from the CIS countries with an interest in games. CTR came out 4 - 5.5% every third who followed the link installed. This same image for a male audience worked at times worse.
The second option was effective for a mixed audience under the age of 17 years. CTR average 4.5% for the CIS. Again, a good result.
Conclusion: Target your ad for your target audience, you can test it by advertising the same ad for different ages, interests, countries, etc. So you will find the most effective audience and you will not spend extra money on attraction. Do not be lazy to do so. Unfortunately, the approval of one post on Vkontakte can take a day, there are also difficulties with updating the advertisement. Changed the name for the Russian market audience - that's it, consider not editing the advertising post. Change the text - wait for the approval of half a day. Age, country, gender, interests can be changed instantly. Application rating is also not updated, you need to create a new ad.
Facebook / Instagram
Advertising is more expensive at times. Having spent $ 300 received 1500 users - $ 0.2 per user. Targeted the United States and Europe. Most came from Europe. The result was very positive, due to this audience I appeared in the tops of European countries and remain in them until now. The USA turned out to be an extremely expensive market and difficult to master.
I used more Instagram. It is very interesting that with an advertising post you can interact, like, leave comments and the more response from the audience, the cheaper you can receive the user.
I have been puzzled for a very long time what kind of comments it is. "10, 10, 10, etc." But it turned out - this is an example of good user interaction with the image and its involvement in the process of advertising.
Can anyone share stories about how you conquered the Western world?
Everything is standard here.
AdMob brings the most revenue. For the best month, an average of € 6 a day came out. In the corresponding month there were 40 outages of advertising.
Coin purchases - 0 ! (Here I set up the balance or not correctly, I give a lot of coins and everyone has enough or is it a bad monetization model for this type of application) - Dear Habr users, what do you think about this?
To be more flexible, I decided to customize the display of the frequency of advertising.
Each ad has its own ID, in adMob I study which ones bring the most money, click on what, read reviews about the application and configure this setting flexibly. Since Advertising settings affect how often ads are turned off, revenue and app rating. Not easy to find a middle ground between indicators.
Application rating is an important indicator for users and affects the location in the tops of the store.
Therefore, it was decided to show a custom dialogue. In it, if the user is rated at 4-5 stars, we immediately send to Google play. Otherwise, we give the opportunity to enter a comment that we send to the mail. Hence, we immediately cut off the negative estimates. Often you had to see 1 star with the comment “Good! (Photo under the spoiler) ".
I show it once in 20 launches of a page with levels, and there is also a button to evaluate on almost every page.
The important point is to respond to comments on your application, it is often possible to change the user's rating in the best direction for you.
First of all, I introduced daily reminders that remind me strictly at the same time that I should practice with the possibility of turning off or changing the notification time. For August, only from this notification, the application was opened 17,800 times, and this is 20% of all users per month. This has increased almost all positions in the tops and with the help of this tops it has become much easier to hold, without special advertising costs.
Firebase Notifications: As it turned out, the tool is not very flexible with bugs, but useful. If you do not often, but periodically indulge in sending users to push, you can return many to the application. The most important thing here is not to overdo it, people don’t like constant notifications, especially those that do not turn off in the application settings (unfortunately, they still haven’t made it possible to turn off notifications for Firebase) - Can anyone do this and know how to properly and properly register from the push? (without the use of topics)
Little life hacking:
Often a situation arises in Google play when your Designed for phones application and console notification constantly reminds you that your application is not optimized for tablet PCs! And no matter how you download apk, it does not disappear, but it loses traffic without being in the tops on the tablets ...
Solution: If your application is actually displayed correctly for tablets and complies with certain rules , feel free to write here in a special form .
Maybe I'm not doing the right thing, trying to optimize an application that does not bring enough to recoup the investment in it. But it is already like a child, which is difficult to let go and forget. Every time it is nice to see positive reviews that remind you, why you do all this and for whom. And it’s a pleasure to find loopholes and optimize every little thing, to do better and better. “With great force, great responsibility comes”, there is a fear of a mistake in front of a large audience, each mistake costs more and more each time, especially with the growth of the audience. (Thanks to Google for beta testing, for phased implementation)
I promised shortly, so I will divide the post into several parts.
Next time I will talk about how the application translations into different languages, screenshots, have affected. What tests in Google play I conducted, the notification of the new version at the start of the application, about how I analyzed the user interaction and what I did with it. I'll tell you about the video for Google Play, what came of it, how I changed the category for the application. If I haven't covered in detail any of the above, I can dwell on them in detail.
Thanks for attention!
Respectfully,
Alexander.
1. Introduction
At the time of the last publication I had a small Space Monsters toy in my piggy bank. As they say - "The first pancake is lumpy." Total 6000 installations for all years.
Released at the time "Quick Brain" (September 22, 2014). before November 18, 2014 showed a good start and reached 5000 installations. The main stream came from unidentified sources, which took more than six months for the alignment of forces to change in favor of Google play.
')
What now :
Installations - 350,000
Active - 98 000
August 2016 - 88,500 active users. Income of € 200 for August with adMob, adColony, applovin and in-app purchases.
Below, I will describe the steps I used to maintain the light in the project, how I didn’t let it go out and what helped to bring it to the top (I use appannie.com to view positions).
2. Promotion
2.1 Free
I asked everyone who can install the application and of course appreciate. (It works well for the market, along the way you get a verbal feedback on the application). Found a large list of forums and posted on everyone, as much as possible. (It worked great, but not all forums are worth the time spent)
As a result, the following list of free favorites remained:
- W3bsit3-dns.com - views articles forum - 14 200)
- forum.xda-developers - 11,000 page views on the forum.
- trashbox.ru - From here I got a huge influx of users. From the representative of the forum, who unsubscribed in the comments November 8, 2014 there were already more than 2,000 downloads!
Since the publication of the post on the forum is lost in history. The solution is simple, for w3bsit3-dns.com and xda - a new version has been released, something has been updated, or just wanted to raise the top, write it with a comment to your article and it immediately rises. Conduct conversations with commentators, each message also update the post. Trashbox is the same story, only here it is enough just to edit the post and it is again in the top (I was even sent a warning for this).
Reviewsmotion.com. You rate, you rate - everything is simple here, the daily limit is 10 ratings. He worked well until he began to notice that Google deletes comments on Google play, which he considers not real, and then turned down the shop, but the site then changed the rules for users to rate and not delete right away.
2.2 Pay
Paid promotion - I turned to him only a year later. The growth of the active base was stable, slow, no extravaganza. And I got bored, I wanted explosive growth.
November 2015 is the time to look for paid ways to promote! The option of buying paid traffic did not work, bought few users, the price is high, and the worst is that they are motivated and are not in principle your active users.
Perhaps someone from the reader has a positive experience in buying traffic, it would be interesting to know your opinion.
Vkontakte - for me was the best option, cheap, easy to use.
For all the time, during the year, I spent only in VKontakte $ 1139 - I received 37,000 installations. On average, $ 0.03 per user. The most important thing: pick up your target audience, draw an attractive image. I used both Mobile Application Targeting and advertising in communities (here it is better for each group to have its own post, which is most suitable for the topic, then there will be a good profit). Of course, it all depends on the application. “Quick Brain” was 2-3 times cheaper than the “Russian language” application (It’s worth considering that it was not advertising during the current season and the advertising image was disappointing).
Pros: cost, large audience, not expensive, ease of use
Minus: The audience from the CIS, difficulties with the updates of posts, editing.
I advertised not constantly, intermittently, put a maximum of $ 10-15 per day. This was enough to climb some positions in the top. However, I did not risk spending more to go to the very tops, because the whole thing didn't pay off. Due to such advertising campaigns, it was possible to increase by 2-3 times the daily active audience, which continued to persist. It was possible to reach the first positions of the top category for some countries. For example, Belarus and Latvia did not bring such a significant increase, as the same Russia. But to get to the tops in small countries is very simple, just a couple of hundred installations per day is enough.
Maybe you had an advertising experience, maybe you should spend large sums at a time to get to the top positions of the market as much as possible?
Examples of effective advertising posts:
Tell me which of these advertisements do you like more?
In fact, it all depends on who you show it to. I conducted an experiment, turned them on at the same time, they differed only in their image and target audience. It turned out that the first version works fine for girls from 13 to 16 from the CIS countries with an interest in games. CTR came out 4 - 5.5% every third who followed the link installed. This same image for a male audience worked at times worse.
The second option was effective for a mixed audience under the age of 17 years. CTR average 4.5% for the CIS. Again, a good result.
Conclusion: Target your ad for your target audience, you can test it by advertising the same ad for different ages, interests, countries, etc. So you will find the most effective audience and you will not spend extra money on attraction. Do not be lazy to do so. Unfortunately, the approval of one post on Vkontakte can take a day, there are also difficulties with updating the advertisement. Changed the name for the Russian market audience - that's it, consider not editing the advertising post. Change the text - wait for the approval of half a day. Age, country, gender, interests can be changed instantly. Application rating is also not updated, you need to create a new ad.
Facebook / Instagram
Advertising is more expensive at times. Having spent $ 300 received 1500 users - $ 0.2 per user. Targeted the United States and Europe. Most came from Europe. The result was very positive, due to this audience I appeared in the tops of European countries and remain in them until now. The USA turned out to be an extremely expensive market and difficult to master.
I used more Instagram. It is very interesting that with an advertising post you can interact, like, leave comments and the more response from the audience, the cheaper you can receive the user.
I have been puzzled for a very long time what kind of comments it is. "10, 10, 10, etc." But it turned out - this is an example of good user interaction with the image and its involvement in the process of advertising.
Can anyone share stories about how you conquered the Western world?
3. Monetization
Everything is standard here.
- AdMob - banners and full-screen ads.
- Purchase - disable ads for denyuzhku
- Video advertising
- Buying coins
AdMob brings the most revenue. For the best month, an average of € 6 a day came out. In the corresponding month there were 40 outages of advertising.
Coin purchases - 0 ! (Here I set up the balance or not correctly, I give a lot of coins and everyone has enough or is it a bad monetization model for this type of application) - Dear Habr users, what do you think about this?
To be more flexible, I decided to customize the display of the frequency of advertising.
Each ad has its own ID, in adMob I study which ones bring the most money, click on what, read reviews about the application and configure this setting flexibly. Since Advertising settings affect how often ads are turned off, revenue and app rating. Not easy to find a middle ground between indicators.
Customize advertising. Json
{ "ad_rules": { "banner": { "home_frequeancy": 4, "levels_frequeancy": 1, "multiplication_table_frequeancy": 2, "training_start_frequeancy": 2, "quick_math_gameplay_frequeancy": 2, "true_false_gameplay_frequeancy": 3, "training_gameplay_frequeancy": 3, "game_over_frequeancy": 2 }, "fullscreen": { "home_frequeancy": 50, "levels_frequeancy": 5, "multiplication_table_frequeancy": 4, "training_start_frequeancy": 4, "quick_math_gameplay_frequeancy": 0, "true_false_gameplay_frequeancy": 0, "training_gameplay_frequeancy": 0, "game_over_frequeancy": 5 } } } 4. Increase performance
4.1 Rating
Application rating is an important indicator for users and affects the location in the tops of the store.
Therefore, it was decided to show a custom dialogue. In it, if the user is rated at 4-5 stars, we immediately send to Google play. Otherwise, we give the opportunity to enter a comment that we send to the mail. Hence, we immediately cut off the negative estimates. Often you had to see 1 star with the comment “Good! (Photo under the spoiler) ".
I show it once in 20 launches of a page with levels, and there is also a button to evaluate on almost every page.
Assessment dialogue
Post grades
The important point is to respond to comments on your application, it is often possible to change the user's rating in the best direction for you.
4.2 Returns to the app
First of all, I introduced daily reminders that remind me strictly at the same time that I should practice with the possibility of turning off or changing the notification time. For August, only from this notification, the application was opened 17,800 times, and this is 20% of all users per month. This has increased almost all positions in the tops and with the help of this tops it has become much easier to hold, without special advertising costs.
Firebase Notifications: As it turned out, the tool is not very flexible with bugs, but useful. If you do not often, but periodically indulge in sending users to push, you can return many to the application. The most important thing here is not to overdo it, people don’t like constant notifications, especially those that do not turn off in the application settings (unfortunately, they still haven’t made it possible to turn off notifications for Firebase) - Can anyone do this and know how to properly and properly register from the push? (without the use of topics)
Little life hacking:
Often a situation arises in Google play when your Designed for phones application and console notification constantly reminds you that your application is not optimized for tablet PCs! And no matter how you download apk, it does not disappear, but it loses traffic without being in the tops on the tablets ...
Solution: If your application is actually displayed correctly for tablets and complies with certain rules , feel free to write here in a special form .
Conclusion
Maybe I'm not doing the right thing, trying to optimize an application that does not bring enough to recoup the investment in it. But it is already like a child, which is difficult to let go and forget. Every time it is nice to see positive reviews that remind you, why you do all this and for whom. And it’s a pleasure to find loopholes and optimize every little thing, to do better and better. “With great force, great responsibility comes”, there is a fear of a mistake in front of a large audience, each mistake costs more and more each time, especially with the growth of the audience. (Thanks to Google for beta testing, for phased implementation)
I promised shortly, so I will divide the post into several parts.
Next time I will talk about how the application translations into different languages, screenshots, have affected. What tests in Google play I conducted, the notification of the new version at the start of the application, about how I analyzed the user interaction and what I did with it. I'll tell you about the video for Google Play, what came of it, how I changed the category for the application. If I haven't covered in detail any of the above, I can dwell on them in detail.
Thanks for attention!
Respectfully,
Alexander.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/309612/
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