How (not) to sell your iOS app

Here's what DID work for you -- summing up all those failures into a well written, entertaining and light-hearted article that is genuinely helpful to anyone else in the iOS game.

Oh yea, and the front page of HN this time around.

It sounded like you got your hands wet in a lot of different things. That doesn't necessarily mean you are going to retire on this game, but think how many people are aware of you now and when you do Bullet Factory X (where you skeet-shoot puppies and elderly people) you'll have that much more information on how to promote the game or where to spend your time. It also sounds like you had a successful working relationship with your sister (as an artist) which is half the battle for any game title. So that's a big win right there for your next game too.

I'm not that surprised as the lack of feedback from bloggers though. I think I get 10 emails a day following the format:

  OMG, Super Games Factory, LLC has just released the
  most amazing game on the planet: Dish Washer!
  Wash dishes in amazing stick-figure 3D! Contact us for
  a free evaluation code!

It just wears you down after a while so ignoring something like Bullet Factory isn't an insult, it just falls into the 'spam' category of garbage announcements I'm sure most bloggers get every day.

Bullet Factory is a fun/simple concept, but it seems better as an ad-supported title (it's too simple) than a 99 cents title when you compare it along side other 99 cent titles I've seen in the app store. The bar is getting higher and higher and unless I see something amazing in screenshots or a trailer, it's not even worth the purchase barrier to entry for me to try it. Unrealized value (purchasing a game for 99 cents only to realize I hate the gameplay mechanics) is so frustrating to me, I'd rather just not buy something I'm on the fence about.

I would take the low-sales-since-december-even-though-you-are-marketing as an indicator that it isn't a high-demand game. Release a free ad-supported version of it "Bullet Factory FREE" and move on to your next title. Keep track of the download differences to learn a bit more about what worked, what didn't and where the bar is.

That's not to say your next game or the game after that won't hit -- keep pushing, you'll have a success and it will catch you by surprise.

They always do.

Here's my experience with a Hangover 2 app I released 1 month before the movie came out. (it was taken down after Warner Bros sent Apple a C&D.)

1) Reviews are the most important things when you sell an app. I made the app free for the first week or so until I had about 10 5 star reviews. DO NOT use scammy tactics for fake reviews. Make sure your app is well polished for what it does. If it's not, don't put it in the App Store.

2) Review reminders. Basically the user uses the app a few times and they get a notice asking if they would like to review it. Include something like the appirater class. Google that.

3) Built-in sharing options for Facebook and Twitter. These should link back to the iTunes page for the app or to a custom site.

4) Setup bitly links for each sharing option. This helps in keeping stats about where your app is being talked about.

In the first week or so I was getting 3000 downloads a day. When I hit my 10 review goal, I switched to $.99. It's disheartening to see that 3k number drop to 20 the next day, but that's money in your pocket now. For the rest of the month, I averaged 20-30 paid downloads a day.

Things not to do: There are lots of stupid people out there. They will leave 1 star reviews because they hear no sound. Their mute is on. Don't get upset about these people.

Twitter is great for campaigning. Don't write bots that listen to the stream for people talking about the movie that then follows them and does @Soandso check out my Hangover2 app! Surprisingly, it actually works very well. It ran for about 45 minutes and followed 400+ people. About 50 of them clicked through (bitly again) and I think a few people bought it. However, Twitter banned the account after 45 minutes. So, don't do what I did.

Don't write well polished apps that use sound clips from a big upcoming movie. You might argue that it's fair use, but that doesn't mean crap when WB decides to stomp on you.

I'm an independent iOS developer. My paid apps have sold over 100,000 copies at 99¢ or higher. In total, my iOS apps (including free apps) have been downloaded over 7 million times.

I took a look at your app in the App Store.

Here's your problem: your icon.

The icon is the most prominent thing the user sees when first looking at your app in the App Store.

Change your icon, and you'll get more downloads. Trust me :-)

Feel free to contact me if you'd like to discuss good icon design, or other under-appreciated aspects of selling an app.

As you're not looking for any sugar coating, after watching the video showing the gameplay you would need to pay me to want to play it. The reason is that there is no "why" to it. Shooting low-resolution textured balls wasn't fun in the late 80's, and I'm not seeing anything in the video that tells me it won't just be a chore to play.

Is there some back-story to this game that is interesting? Are these spheres of mutant gel being produced by the evil Dr. Klaus Scheitzenburger to turn children into mindless drones so that he can take over the planet and only I can stop it using my Mutant-b-Gone sphere blaster?

Oh, none of that? It's just a sphere popping game? There's no marketing that can save that.

Now a killer back-story isn't a requirement, but it would help if it were "juicy fun". There's some great advice here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2438/how_to_prototype_...

The game lacks the fit and polish that sells iOS games. Yeah, much easier said than done (this coming from an aspiring iOS game developer). The advice to change the icon is spot on. I'd also advise changing your screenshots (which would probably also involve changes to the game graphics): all that grayscale is very depressing, and the monospaced serif font for "Gyroscope Controlled" is very bland and ugly. You want something more fun, possibly at a jaunty angle, definitely using layer styles.

Your game screenshots scream "tech demo", which is no way to sell a game.

Just played it. Fun game. Here's what it's missing...

First time I loaded it the menu seemed sluggish. When I pressed buttons, the button gave no feedback and I wasn't sure if the click had registered. I understand there's loading time involved, but some feedback would be nice.

During game play when I "Shoot" there is nothing that displays a shooting event. Balls just explode if my cross-hares are on it. That seems odd. Again, a feedback issue.

Also the menu buttons seem smaller than needed and there are too many options. If you could make it simpler that might be better.

Overall the game play is smooth and the gyro controls are cool. I think this would make a really engaging first person shooter. Maybe shooting something other than balls for points would be more fun.

I know how you feel. I invested a lot of time in a game that just isn't selling. Nor is the free version. I mean what is wrong with free games? :)

I think sometimes we just fail to see that our games are really crap. I totally fell in love with the idea of a real-time multiplayer quiz for the iPhone. But nobody else did.

[EDIT]I am not saying your game is no good. I haven't really played it. More of a general comment on how we may not fairly judge our own work[/EDIT]

I'm trying to buy it but the app store isn't working right now. At any rate, here are some ideas from an iOS developer with nothing shipped yet, for what it's worth:

Be way more explicit with your branding and marketing about exactly what the game is, right down to the name, if you're willing to change it. Looking at the top charts right now, there are games that show you exactly how to play just with the title and the icon: Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, Flick Golf, Feed Me Oil. You want to be the gyro shooting gallery app. So, something like Gyro Shot or Gyro Shooting. It's sounds lame but it seems to work. It may also give Apple a reason to feature you, since you are demoing a hardware feature.

I think you also need a more fun look. The game looks really drab right now. A grey factory is not a terribly exciting backdrop and the balls are pointy. Choose a look that you can execute at grade A level. This is where the "glowing neon" look came from -- programmers who can't do art. Use shaders to make the balls perfectly round and give them some sort of cool effect. The screenshots should be attractive on their own.

Thanks for sharing.

A couple of details - icon (as someone else mentioned). Another thing is - you're a textbook example of promoting "features", and not "benefits". Instead of writing "Using Oscilloscope", which nobody cares about, you should've written "The smoothest shooting experience there is (thanks to oscilloscope)".

Also: get a graphic designer. Your graphics are not that bad, but a good painter could really make this app work much better. People buy good looking games.

As for your trailers - they aren't that bad. As a tech person I'll say: wow. It really looks smooth, I'm impressed. BUT most people aren't technical - aside from the screen they should see a happy person playing, and they should see someone really TILTING the device - now it's barely visible (perhaps even exaggerate the moves so they can be seen on the camera). Look at one of the Kinect trailers. You can't do as good, but you can get close. Oh - and remember that there should be a link close to the end of the movie, directing to the app store.

Anyway - these are just a couple of things for a good product / landing page. Doing this alone won't increase sales though...

Ok, I didn't actually buy the game, instead I had a look at what all your potential customers see. Your screenshots are too gray and muddled, the game doesn't look exciting on these shots. Have a look at top selling games (i.e. Angry Birds), and how colorful their screenshots are. Your icon is not good. It doesn't tell a story, it doesn't look fancy, it is not colorful. I'm selling a couple of apps, and one think I'm sure of is that customers never, ever, read the text description. They just have a look at the screenshots. And they decide which apps / screenshots to check by your icon. I've, accidentally, had a non working app (there was a huge bug in there for the first 2 weeks which made it basically dysfunctional) reach huge sales (150+ sales a day) just because the icon was really, really beautiful.

The problem with the screenshots, of course, is that the in game content looks to dull. I can't really say how you can improve it, but have a look at top selling games.

The biggest change I've ever seen is when I changed one name from "* Lite" to "Free *". Went from about 100 to 1,000.

Regardless, I stopped promoting my best selling apps and they sell exactly as many copies.

Yeah, I agree with @rkalla that this marketing anti-pattern summary will likely prove to be your best marketing piece so far.

Also, I would recommend finding a good graphic designer to help you out. The icon for Bullseye Factory doesn't promise $1.99 worth of fun. Plus, I'm sure you can think of something more creative than stripped balls in a perfectly preserved yet empty factory. How about going along with the Jester theme and making it some sort of a factory taken over by zombie clowns?

Your game is technically very impressive, but needs a good theme to sell it. Looks at Nuts for instance. It's probably slightly less complicated technically, but it has a funny, slightly juvenile name, cute squirrels, and various alternative objectives.

It doesn't look like you've ever offered the full app for free. Have you considered playing the "free for a day" game to drive some interest? http://appshopper.com/games/bullseye-factory

Have you considered updating the app icon? It looks quite dark and flat rather than fun and cartoony like many game icons.

I was a little surprised to see how non-spherical the balls look in your screenshots. If it can still perform well with a more detailed ball model, I would think that would help the look of the screenshots.

Having successfully finished many bad games, while gradually making better ones, here is my advice:

You can know from very early user feedback whether the game is going to interest anyone as a product, but you have to stop believing in your game for a moment, or you'll ignore the warning signs. The in-person pitch or demo lets you pick up some details, but product releases give you broader feedback. Do lots of both.

If, after pressing people in-person for thoughts, the feedback is "hmm...well...i don't know...that sounds interesting..." the concept is wrong and you need to start over. You should have something that gives people a foothold to really discuss it and take ownership, or the subsequent marketing efforts won't have much impact on anyone. Online, this is reflected in dead silence. People look and then go away, or if there's interest, it's in something not really related to the product's selling points, like the technology stack it uses.

If there is a product there the volume of commentary will be much higher and drastically more opinionated. From there it's a matter of managing the conversation and picking the path that is likely to open the doors further for the product - pivoting it if necessary. The feedback here is from other developers, which means a heavy bias towards polish. Try to find deeper user concerns instead.

Most of the time, it takes stops and starts, failure, heartache, and most importantly years of work and some luck to make an overnight success.

Your Ask HN not making it to the front page? Probably just bad luck (there are lots of good stories that don't make it to the front page). Game blogs not writing about it? Probably just bad luck that they heard about other games at the same time that they wanted to write about more.

I think there's a common feeling that there's just that one magic bullet that's going to make you a success (that TechCrunch article, or that Touch Arcade article, or if you can JUST get into YC or get that first investor). I think all that stuff definitely helps, but from what I've seen the best way to do it is to get a good amount of sleep, hustle your ass off 5-6 days a week, and have a partner in crime (even if it's just a drinking buddy who works on their own, separate projects).

I think you just have to pick up and start on the next project. The App Store is extremely competitive, but if you just keep making better and better games every time, something will stick. Just be sure to do some client work or keep your day job in the meantime to stay financially solvent. :)

I wonder if this is the common theme among many of us who try to put apps in the app store: figuring out what does not work. For our app: iEBT (which is an interface to a server allowing you to track your euro notes: eurobilltracker.com), we not only took a very tiny niche, but didn't think about marketing either.

What we did was this: - picked a somewhat hight price point ($2) This seemed to use like the sweetspot, with what we could live and what we would expect an honest buyer to pay. (who knows?!)

- we wrote to the canonical forum, where we expected most of the potential users. That resulted in an initial rush (two days after writing to the forum), but it wasn't much at all.

- the domain iebtapp.com was registered prior to publishing, but contained nothing more then a simple "Something's coming this december" string. Watching the server logs, there seemed to be some who were trying to figure out where the link from the app pointed.

- after some time, we wrote the current, very limited text on iebtapp.com. Not even with images. That seems to have resulted in a minor increase in sales.

- with some text on the website, we thought it was time to do some advertisement, and went with Google Ads. This too seems to have resulted in a minor increase in sales.

And here's what we plan to do: - add Appirater to the App. We have only a very few reviews, and they are not enough to get any star rating on the AppStore. Maybe this helps, who knows. I will closely watch this.

Personal conclusion: iOS development is really /a lot/ of fun. But I think we need to change two things: - More marketing. But not all at once; results should be measurable. - Niche markets, that are this tiny, can be a very high risk game. (Especially if someone else, writes to the forum that he's going to release another iPhone app and lets people sign up for the beta :-))

-- [1]: see iebtapp.com

You mentioned posting to Hacker News before, and hey, I was the one guy who left a comment! heh.

I also have an iPhone game in the store, but I've done a little bit better than you have. I made about $8,000.00 in my first year.

Just echoing everybody else's comments: People are very reluctant to spend any amount of money on a game without being able to try it first. You must have a free option to get them interested. In my case, I have a crippled free version and a paid version. I started before in-app purchasing was available. Today I'd probably go with "free but pay to remove ads" instead.

The mistake I have made is that I program too slowly (heh). Eight grand a year for an app is not bad, if I could crank out a new one every three months or so. The app store audience favors having a bunch of shallow apps, rather than one big app you pour your heart and soul into.

a couple notes on the app store page:

the testimonial paragraph is awkwardly worded ("... a portal into a virtual shooting gallery overflowing with beach ball-shaped targets just waiting to be popped") and i can't tell how to play (or what makes it fun) from the screenshots. it's gyroscope controlled, but what the hell does that mean?

i'm going to give the lite version a try, but the app store page totally didn't grab me.

i thought "the heist" had a pretty good write-up and screenshot section, for what it's worth. i usually just read the first paragraph and scroll to the screenshots.

EDIT: i tried it, it's like an FPS where you shoot beach balls and twist the phone around to aim. looks pretty well done, but not my bag (i hate aiming anything by moving the phone)

Wow that was a very interesting article. Thank you so much for the advice. I am working on an app of my own now and my marketing plan was essentially the same as what you did. I would have never guessed it would be so hard to get people to look at an app.

Thank you for writing up your experiences. I hope that things improve. I've experienced much if not all of the things you have gone through with Infostripe http://infostripe.com. Was to be an iOS app but lives as a HTML5 one. iOS to return eventually.

I guess what I am saying is that you have to keep going, market, iterate, try things and as said not give up. At some point hopefully your product will begin to sell itself enough for you to improve or version 2 it.

Chin up man, I've been studying behavioral decision making as it relates to marketing "nudging" for years and am still learning everyday. The only thing I've found that consistently works with any meaningful probability is being different. Just like this post. Yet another iOS game doesn't though I do feel the gyroscope is the most underutilized piece of hardware with the most potential for ios devs...

BTW the "Stoic Jester Studios Web Site" link on http://itunes.apple.com/app/bullseye-factory/id408231799?mt=... leads to http://stoicjesterstudios.com/2010/12/bullseye-factory/ which is 404.

I looked on the App Store at the screenshots and as much as I wanted to like it after reading your great article, it just didn't look like the sort of game I would download (even if it were free).

The graphics are dreary and the screenshots don't make it look fun (or even give me a sense of the gameplay)...

tl;dr There is plenty of advice out there on how to publicize your iPhone app, and all of it is worthless.

I suppose a lesson that you might have learned is that doing things the expected or accepted way is not always the right answer.

As you alluded to, releasing pre-Christmas and pitching bloggers with free promo codes is so common as to render it useless unless you're remarkable about it.

Not to be rude, but I think the best way to sell your iOS app is to make a really good one.

Great comments this time around. I'd buy the game if I had an iOS device. Looks truly fun. I agree with others though that the icon can be improved. I found the trailer very good.

From watching the video, your game actually seems like it has a pretty fun core mechanic.

Go play Fruit Ninja, and then go hire the best artist you can afford. (and put fruit ninja in your keywords!)

on a tangential note - "This was not the easiest thing in the world for me to sign myself up for, seeing as how I usually tend to avoid going places where there are likely to be people (not a big fan). However, somewhat bizarrely, I do enjoy public speaking, so I decided to give it a whirl."

I thought I was the only one that behaves like that!

C'mon man, this is targeted to FPs people. You need a better reticule than that!

This article/blog post is wrong. None of the reasons listed had anything to do with his app store success.

Word of mouth was there: and it was 'don't bother'. If it's an app or game that people have to have, most of these techniques would have yielded different results.

Except for a few: like submitting to websites for review... most of them are looking for cash for reviews, so you get what you pay for.

I haven't seen any games that topped the list that were not worthy of chart-toppers... If games or apps like this were chart-toppers, then the chart wouldn't be worth much.

'Most of the major iOS gaming message boards have a section where developers are “allowed” to announce the arrival of their games. This is convenient for gamers as they can just avoid this one section altogether.'

Stoic Jester indeed!

Nice overview of app marketing wasteland. I went thru much the same and the needle never moved, or not very much at least. My new approach is to give away a free version that is slightly hobbled but still useful and use that base of users to launch other ventures.

Newsflash: "if you build it they will come" is bullshit. It's dawned on your that you're not getting your message out.

Now what?

1. Buy ads. It costs about $0.00001 to show an ad banner on mobile. $0.01 to buy on a click basis. $10k to get into the app store top 25. Do the math. Minimums apply.

2. PR: meet/call or otherwise contact the people who can get your message out and convince them how cool your game is. Or pay someone who can do this for you.

3. ?

Marketing is hard work, get busy!