Experiment to promote the game on Google Play. Part 1

Hello! In my free time, I am an indie developer of android games. At the moment I am trying to promote the game on Google Play. I think there will be those who will be interested in this experience. Perhaps the advice received from you will help me avoid unnecessary expenses.

* The author of the publication does not claim to be a professional in the field of promotion and development. The experiment is conducted to gain experience - positive / sad.

Why do I need it?

I have a game which as of 02.12.2017 727 thousand downloads and 18 thousand active installations. The game is collected on the knee, for a couple of days. I do not develop the game, I can say abandoned. Despite this, it generates $ 3-6 per day. I wanted to run the game for a foreign audience, but the specifics of the game (Guess the song by smiles) does not allow.

It was decided to rewrite my “framework” for the quiz and on its basis launch a new game in two languages. After analyzing the competitors, the choice fell on the genre of cinema quizzes and so the game was launched - Guess the movie from the picture. Nowadays, it is very difficult to come up with a unique idea, much less unleash it. I took the quiz seriously, did not bluntly make a clone, but introduced my own zest.
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What it looks like:

Promotion

The game started on November 22. Statistics at the moment:
Installations on active devices - 1,575
Total downloads - 2 851
Total 1276 removed.

Free ways to promote:

- Friends / enemies - 10-20 downloads
- Own group of the previous game for 8k people - 100-200 downloads
- Own application, banner at startup - unknown

GP traffic source:



For me, the most valuable is the pure traffic from the Play Market. This means that my game was found in the search / leafing through the store. To achieve this goal, we have to use the shadow methods of promotion and we smoothly move to a paid method of promotion.

Paid ways to promote:

- VK group dedicated to Android games (1000r) - unknown
- Adword (2000r) - 113 installations

We should also say about Adwords . To advance through adwords, you need to be a multimillionaire. Service eats money and gives 10-15 installations. 2000 rubles were credited, for which I received 113 installations. Also to my surprise, adwords forbade the use of the word "films" for the Russian-speaking audience. Adwords is probably a good service, but I don’t know how to cook it.

Go to the side of evil

Most gusto - services for races cheat and promotion by keywords. There are about 15 top services for buying traffic. Of these services, 10 use opanso, GP violently rubs paid reviews and ratings. At the moment, I found for myself a cool foreign service that sells quality (players actually play the game) traffic at an affordable price. Russian services have caused me only negative emotions because of the high cost, intrusive support service and empty promises.

On 12/02/2017 it was decided to promote the game for the keyword movie quiz in the UK. In the UK, as this country accounts for the largest number of search queries for my keyword. To analyze the positions of the game, I use appannie and asodesk . The game is at 133 place, it is planned to spend $ 100 for 3 days.

The cost of promotion covers the income from "Guess the songs by smiles" for a couple of months. I will not go beyond the budget. Your advice (proven in practice) will be extremely useful. I hope the material is interesting and will be useful for someone.