作者：Jeff Hangartner

独立游戏《Elusive Ninja》市场营销策略系列文章已发布四篇，主要内容如下：

文章1——社交营销篇

通过Twitter、博客、论坛等方式进行口头营销，以构建起用户对游戏的关注。分析价格下降的利弊以及对微工作服务的使用。

文章2——传统营销篇

深入分析行业中不为人所重视的部分，比如下载购买、付费评论等等。而且还涵盖了传统高级营销途径，比如条幅广告和诸如AdMob之类的营销代理和广告服务。

文章3——资料及维护篇

应该在Press Kit放置哪些内容，如何使用媒体宣传，创造截图和测试版等等。而且，如何有效地维护我们谈论过的所有东西。

文章4——心理素质篇

作为独立开发者如何在复杂的营销环境中生存下来，如何处理花钱、销售量数据上扬和跌落、做出重大决定、处理批评带来的压力，直面iPhone应用中的盗版现象。

以下是本文第二部分：传统营销篇

广告渠道

1. 促销码

我在促销码方面积累许多经验，且听我细细道来。游戏通过App Store审核后，你会得到50个促销码。每次更新游戏内容，你都会再得到50个促销码。数量不会超过50个，所以一旦用完，就结束啦。遗憾的是，关于如何使用，我没有事先进行广泛调查，所以我在广场中像发放糖果一样将它们全部送出，白白浪费这些资源。所以为让你免犯下相同错误，下面是些小建议：

* 送给媒体，而非好友

这是关于促销码的一个重要建议。不要通过它们让好友和家人得以免费享受内容，或是其他愿意掏出1-2美元支持作品的人士。将促销码送给媒体。评论网站需要评价很多作品，通常不会付费下载。你会希望自己能够告诉他们：“嗨，很高兴能够向你免费提供内容，这样你就能够进行检验！”，尽可能方便他们发表意见。你也许也会希望能够把这些促销码当作比赛奖品，或让热门网站发布促销码信息，或在Touch Arcade论坛中发送。

* 不要过早行动

作为新手，你也许会想：“我最好还是通过电子邮件向评论者发送促销码，这样我就能够幸运地获得他们的些许关注，我要把流程简单化，他们多半不会回邮件索要代码，等我送出，他们会选择其他直接送出代码的游戏进行评论。”这会让你很快失去许多代码，或白白浪费资源，无从知晓代码最终是否有进行兑换。

相反在邮件中标注：促销码只要索取就能获得。多数发给评论者的邮件都会石沉大海，所以若你直接送出促销码，它们多半只是弃置于某人收件箱中。我发现想要评论你作品的评论者多半都会回复索要代码。有些人士还会在其联系页面提示；“请不要直接在邮件中发送促销码，若有需要，我们会同您联系。”我想自己大概因此浪费了30个促销码，因为我就是抱着上面所说的那种心理。

* 促销码无法发表评论

最近苹果做出系列调整，所以我们无法通过已兑换促销码在App Store发表评论。所以如果玩家免费体验游戏，他们就无法发表评论。这些媒体人士虽然无法在App Store发表评论，但他们会在自己的网站上写一些评论。

* 截止日期

促销码在得到的4个礼拜后就会过期，所以你知道什么是糟糕举措？在头天请求获得大量代码，这就是我采取的策略。待到媒体朋友重新和我联系，我逐步发现更多联系媒体人士的渠道，找到利用促销码的新途径，很多我头天索要的代码都差不多到期。所以我后来发送的是对方还没来得及体验前就过期的代码。整个过程完全一团糟。

* 利用和滥用？

另一有关促销码的糟糕情况就是你无法判断哪个促销码已用过。送给某人促销码后，你无从知晓他们是已进行兑换，还是代码尚未使用，仍旧有效。

* 解决办法

我通过AppFigures追踪游戏数据（游戏邦注：其费用是5美元/月，服务很好，能够提供各种数据和图表）。追踪数据的一个优点是，你能够获悉促销码每天带来的购买量。这个数据非常有用，因为若你只给出少量促销码，通过你所获得的邮件回复以及AppFigures中的“今日销量覆盖国家”数据，你就能够缩小已用过促销码的范围，这需要进行许多猜测，但已是最佳方案。

在Touch Arcade的帖子中，大家倾向补充：“请发布你用过的代码”，然后大家就会照做，所以开发者能够获悉哪些代码还能够使用。我当时没有想到这点，但你可以参考这个方式。但这依然是个恼人情况，若有人没有回复告知你代码已用过，然后你默认代码依然能够使用，将其发送给其他人，那么那个你一直希望得到其关注的知名网站最终给出的反应会是：“促销码无法使用，下款游戏！”就像去工作面试时一直在犹豫不知道自己要穿什么衣服，直到达到面试地点才知晓。

* 礼物

若你真的用光促销码，最后一招就是把游戏当作礼物送给评论者。问题你是只能送给国内人士，所以作为加拿大人，若美国网站想要促销码，那我就束手无策，我只能让美国朋友将我的游戏送给他们。这个我还没有试过，但这是种创造性思维！

* 如何获得更多促销码？

我还只用过自己的首批代码，但若你推出更新内容，游戏就会得到另外50个代码。所以这非常值得你就内容稍作更新，修复些许漏洞，换得这些代码。但随后你需要经历苹果的整个审核过程，这非常麻烦。过去当你更新内容后，你就失去前个版本所拥有的所有评论，但不妨看看某些App Store上的应用，现在似乎完全不是那么回事，它只会在评论旁标注“（V1.3）”（游戏邦注：即某个版本编号），所以大家就知道这是针对前个版本的评论。

2. 旗帜广告

“凭借商业理由做出商业决策。”这是我的商业导师在课堂上告诉我们的。只要你的举措具有商业理由，你完全可以不按牌理出牌，坚持自己的主张。营销是耗尽资金最快的方式，因为你或许由于随意决定资金用途，未获任何回报，而白白浪费资金。

在哪里挖掘广告位置？

很多网站的顶部或底部都设有“广告业务”链接，他们会在那里提供位置和价位信息，或邮件地址，让你能够发邮件咨询相关内容。我发现很多网站都通过BuySellAds.com出售广告位置，这个平台提供优质服务，从中你能够获得数据、图表等信息。你甚至还可以过滤搜索范围，将目标缩小至和苹果相关的网站。

调查研究

我借助Alexa和SiteTrail调查网站数据，主要是了解他们的流量，来自哪个国家，每月的页面浏览数量。我还在台式电脑和iPhone查看这些网站，主要是了解他们的广告陈列位置和陈列方式，我还会查看他们是什么类型的网站，他们的用户主要集中在哪里，其更新频率。BuySellAds呈现网站的月印象次数和点击率。坦白讲，很多信息对我来说意义不大，但我从中积累不少经验：

* 印象次数不等同于点击数量

网站具有500万印象并不意味着你的旗帜广告会获得庞大点击量。若就有500万印象/月的家具设计网站和有1000印象/月的iPhone游戏网站而言，你当然要选择后者，因为其用户才是会购买你作品的群体。若就网站有500万印象，但广告位置在页面底部，会滚动展示，和网站只有1000印象，但广告处在页面顶部，且保持固定而言，你还是要选择后者。印象次数只是指广告的加载次数，所以若广告处在底部，且还会滚动展示，用户不一定会看到。

* 费用

有些网站的广告费用只需10美元/月。有的费用则很高，需300美元左右。我发现价位，而非印象指数，是判断广告运作情况的最佳参考。若现在有两个广告位置，一个500万印象，一个1000印象，但500万印象的费用是10美元/月，而1000印象的则需300美元/月，很可能是因为后者网站经营者是根据自己的统计测量发现自己的网站广告确实值300美元这个价钱。

* 点击费用

坦白讲，我很少谈及此方面，我觉得这没什么价值。根本来说，这就好像是你需就广告点击量支付相关费用。所以通常以XX美元/1000印象（点击量）的形式呈现。但我觉得其中意义不大，印象或点击量并不会自动带来销量。所以你可能拥有500万印象，但毫无销量，除非在1美元/1000印象标准中，你投入5000美元。若你是家大公司，拥有雄厚资金宣传类似《愤怒的小鸟》之类的作品，也许这就有其价值，但现在资金有限，我宁愿采用XX美元/月这样的固定费用，这样我就能够规划我的预算。通过5000美元，我能够购买许多300美元的广告。关于网络营销，我并不是很了解，所以这个理念背后定有其原理，或存在最佳运用时机，但现在我作为独立开发者，没有那么多资金，暂时无法采用这个方案。

* 广告设计

若你能够制作动画广告，那就制作动画广告。它会比静态广告更吸引眼球。若你没有任何美工技能，那就咨询UpHype或Fiverr之类的微工作网站，只消花费5美元就能完成内容制作。在这个项目中，我自己承担广告中的主要美工工作，我自己绘制草图，然后将其调整至iPhone屏幕，所以拼凑广告内容就变得相当简单。我截取某些画面，然后套入设计框架当中，就大功告成。你会发现几乎每个网站的广告尺寸和形状都不相同，所以记得设计种规格（游戏邦注：如横向瘦长广告、纵向宽幅广告、四方形广告）。

* 追踪预期

不要只是购买广告位置，然后弃置不管，或者只是随便瞄下数据。购买广告位置后，写下你对广告位置的预期，如“20位新Twitter粉丝”、“每天增加50次点击”、“在意大利增加10份销量”，选择适合自己的目标。然后追踪实际成果。若你购买投入100美元购买一个月的广告位置，你的目标是在当月获得100份销量，而你最终只获得5份，你需思考，是由于广告位置需要更新，还是需要改变广告设计方案。根本来看，是由于实际情况和预期存在出入，所以不要再投入资金，直到你发现问题所在，弄清其中原因，获悉如何解决。

* 不受诱惑

我参加的商业课程提醒我们：记住营销者有宣传游戏的职责，而其他销售广告位置的人士也有其职责——销售广告位置。所以你会碰到这样的情形：你购买某些广告位置，但其未带来任何成果，而销售者告诉你：“你需耐心等待，再注册1-2个月，你就会收获成果，这就是广告的运作模式”。这并不完全错误，但这又回到商业决策。你是否觉得这是个好构思？你是否有理由相信情况会因广告位置而发生扭转？若可以，那就没问题。关键是你不要出于内疚或压力决定长久坚持，而是要把握充足商业理由。

* Touch Arcade

我谈论Touch Arcade是由于这是判断iPhone游戏风靡程度的权威网站，我想很多iOS开发者都充满好奇。TA相比其他网站价格昂贵，但其拥有庞大流量和目标群体，目前我无所成就，只是和TA保持愉快合作关系。他们即时回答我的问题，发送我所需的信息，帮我把广告安排在我希望的时间段，至于专有插播广告，他们允许滚动展示，或安排其他不同广告、动画广告。

我其中购买了9月中旬的专有广告位置，广告处在边栏的顶部，每周600美元，将维持2周。这对独立开发者来说有些夸张，是吧？我也不知道最终会带来什么结果，但不妨看看我的商业理由：

1）他们具有庞大流量

2）其流量来源就是我的目标群体

3）广告位置专有，所以内容将全天24小时呈现。

4）广告处在醒目位置，所以用户定会看到

5）上述优点全年不变，但最重要的是：我把广告定在9月12日，这期间会有什么大事？大家都开始回校。开学头个月会发生什么事情？学生还没有完全走出假期，还在调整自己的学习状态，老师才刚刚开始自己的课程大纲，尚不会布置大量家庭作业，也无需复习考试，所以这些每天被困8小时的目标群体会开始玩弄手机。他们很可能会拼命通过手机发短信和玩游戏。更重要的是，大家处在同个教室、学校，这是个绝佳的口碑宣传时机，这就像耳语一样简单，“嗨，试试这款游戏”，或看到彼此都玩这款游戏。

6）随着事情的进展，我或许会在头个礼拜把价格降至99美分，作为“返校促销”，这会给我带来些许曝光度，因为网站会发布这款游戏正在进行开学促销的消息。

7）我或许还会引入些许高分竞争，鼓励用户参与体验。

8）我也许能够在此之前赶出《Elusive Ninja》高清版，所以我就能够同时宣传当前版本和高清版本，能够在高清版本中交叉宣传当前版本。

以上就是我采用此策略的理由所在。现在也许还没有任何成果，我已投入1200美元的广告费用，只有等待最终结果。但就黄金时间、绝佳策略和理想位置来看，投资1200美元广告费，已是我想到的最佳方案，所以我很满意我做出的决策。我现在也可以向相同的广告位置投入这笔钱，但我暂时没有这么做的商业理由。

我预期游戏在这2周内至少能够取得1200份销量的成绩，因为就目前来说，若游戏能够抵消开发和营销成本我就很满足，我完全把这当作一个学习过程。就网站数据来看，我觉得这是个合理销售目标。若我的销量依然很糟，我会检查自己的操作方式，看看哪里出错。若取得不错销售成绩，我会总结其中原因，未来再次复制相同佳绩，这包括在Touch Arcade购买更多广告位置，或者扩展营销活动，或举办更多比赛。我只有静静等待，到时就有相关数据辅助商业决策。

营销从某种程度看是个冒险活动，其宗旨是探索大众用户的内心世界。但当你就所做事情握有足够理由时，就不会那么紧张和困惑，就不会每天深感愧疚，内心平静非常重要，它让你能够专心下个项目，不会怀疑自己的决策，每天担心所投资金。

3. 评论

评论也是个重要方面。大家都知道这非常重要，可靠网站的给力评论从理论角度看会让你获得名声和财富。而未能获得足够评论是iPhone开发商会遇到的情况。

记住我不是支持“付费评论”或者“付费下载”或者“奖励下载”机制。我不是说评论者不应就自己付出的时间和劳动获得相应资金补偿。我只是陈述这些机制如何运作，你作为开发新手所需应对的方面，这样你就能够做出明智决策。使用，还是放弃这些服务，完全取决于你自己，但你需要记住的是苹果平台抵制App Store的欺骗行为，所以付费评论虽然不是什么大事，但若你存在付费收买下载量的行为，应用还是会遭到抵制。

付费评论？

我猜想iPhone刚问世的时候，评论者应该是迫不及待地评论游戏，能够参与至App Store热潮非常美妙，所以评论一款可爱的新游戏会提高网站的关注度，但随着时间的流逝，情况开始出现变化，评论者慢慢发现评论影响差异很大，或埋没其中，或成为大众焦点。从变化角度看，评级颇有价值，因此现在很多评论者开始收费评论。

或许有人会发邮件联系你：“我和好友可以便宜帮你在App Store给出5颗星评价，若要了解更多，请和我联系。”我或许有些夸张了，但真实情况确实是大同小异。我无法想象这被列作不合法行为，这很难导致敲诈现象。这不过是有些年轻人发现自己能够通过联系某些小型开发商赚钱些许收入（游戏邦注：他们绝不会向Rovio和Capcom发送邮件），写App Store评论只要1分钟时间。

但若你打算购买App Store评论，最好还是寻找那些透明化的服务，如你可以找某个愿意以5-10美元在UpHype和Fiverr给你的作品5星级评价，若他们企图敲诈，你可以取消合约或给出服务差评。同样你也可以寻求更专业的广告代理网站（游戏邦注：如ComboApp，他们提供“独立评论者的10个App Store评价”等服务）。

保证

通常这些“购买App Store评论”的服务都会给出系列保证：“所有评价都会在4-5星级之间，若评论者给出的评论低于4星，我们会要求他们向开发者提交建设性评论和反馈，这样开发者就能做出相应调整，将应用提高至4-5星级。”若你算走此路线，这是个很好的保证，为什么要付费购买糟糕评价？有些人会考虑不周，所以最好还是确保资金花得有所值。

媒体职业操守

记住有些评论者不索取费用，说来也怪，就我所知，大型网站通常不收费，反而是小网站常常收费。所以不要激动，不要觉得你读到的所有好评都是开发者花钱买来的。而且有些收费评论者通常承诺会客观评价，不论好坏，他们把费用当作投入时间的回报。他们不保证会给出5星级评价。我并不是要把评论者刻画成无道德形象。

其实我并非对付费评论有意见，所以我也不是在发表任何评判。书写适当评论需耗费时间，App Store每天都会涌现上百款新应用，它们每天会发出许多邮件要求他人评论，所以我觉得评论者就其付出劳动和时间收取一定报酬合情合理。我的意思是说，我们是游戏开发者，游戏开发行业如今因要求他人完成无报酬额外工作而声名狼藉。你无法对此有所不满，认为：“评论者工作一天后还应该在晚上腾出时间免费帮我写评论！”

所以这里不是要抱怨当前评论模式的运作方式，而只是阐述：“作为开发者，你可能会遇到的问题”，因为其中有些实在令我措手不及，作为开发者，你需把握其中利弊。

4. App Store评论

别人想要什么，你也会想要什么。这存在心理作用，但从根本来说，我们期望别人期望的东西。这就是为什么我会在购买评论前先了解其他评论。这就是为什么App Store有个前10排行榜，很多应用长期处于其中。这就是为什么大家会购买5颗星评价。这就是为什么麦当劳广告牌显示有超过10亿顾客在此用餐。这就是为什么要请名人代言产品。这就是为什么电影会在预告片中称：“埃伯特赞不绝口！”（游戏邦注：罗杰·埃伯特是著名影评人和剧本作家）当然这些是个别情况，但通常我们会希望尝试已有人参与且表示赞许的内容，这会让我们更有安全感，特别当这需要花费金钱时。

现在想象一下：你浏览App Store，发现某个非常不错的应用。它没有什么惊人之处，但似乎非常有趣。但其中没有评论、评级。似乎没人下载过这款游戏。你在下面发现一款质量相当的作品，但其有10个5星级评价，极力描述其独特之处。你觉得在哪款作品中掏钱更保险？

这同样也体现在Facebook粉丝页面。花5美元给你的粉丝页面购买几百个粉丝，让路过用户觉得你的页面颇受欢迎，而非一片荒芜。我个人不太注重粉丝页面，所以我也没觉得花钱购买粉丝有什么不妥，因为它对我来说几乎没有什么实际用途。但注意这里你会遇到道德滑坡问题。

评级

App Store评论算是最重要的评论，它们会影响游戏的App Store级别，App Store严重依靠“冲动购买”，你App Store页面的内容会极大影响用户的购买决策，会影响内容评级（游戏邦注：若你从好友那获得10个5颗星评价，有人给出1个1星级评价，游戏依然魅力不减，相比无好友评级，却有人给出1个1星级评价情况而言）。这并不算欺骗，你好友和家人也许真的很喜欢这款游戏，但就像我所说，大家都这么做，所以你最好还是不要让自己处在不利地位。

5. 购买下载量

这里是另一有趣内容。首先，苹果显然抵制这些服务，但为取得成功，以及有些简单服务会无视苹果警告，向你推荐服务，这里我将进行详细描述。而“付费安装”后面会详细谈论。

情况就是你支付XX美元/下载。那么假设你的应用在App Store售价99美分。你选择某服务，假设你将支付3美元/下载。随后会有很多玩家登陆，因为他们知道若下载游戏，就会得到3美元。最终结果是你花钱促使很多用户下载游戏。这提高内容的App Store排名，让作品能够处在榜单前列，让更多随机普通用户看到你的作品，促使你的榜单位置更进一步。我知道某大型专业开发公司曾在此服务中投入2000多美元（他们的游戏在短短几周后就进入榜单前10名）。

从逻辑角度看，我发现借助系列服务的最佳时机在于作品已具有一定曝光。所以若你推出某更新内容，或获得某大型网站的推荐，作品的销量就会直线上升，此时你会希望他们获得更多曝光，而在销售业绩非常低的情况下使用此服务则效果不佳。这有点像让星星之火变成燎原之势，而不是尚未有火苗就将其抛出。

“基于奖励”

这其实是间接购买下载量。这个模式不是直接以真实货币进行交换，相反下载游戏的玩家能够获得虚拟货币，这些货币能够在其他注册此服务的游戏，或网站所提供的服务和产品中使用。

道德标准

可以通过两种视角看待此模式：游戏行业(开发者、发行商）视角；玩家购买和体验视角。

就游戏行业角度来看，若你有足够资金，付费完善排名和评论非常有吸引力。你能够通过各种方式声援作品：“这带给我绝佳机会，App Store充斥太多糟糕应用，我的游戏很好，但它在混乱中被人遗忘，所以我要说的是它应该出现在App Store榜单中”，或者“确保5颗星”的评论者可通过“评论者就投入时间获得回报，开发者能够从目标群体那获得有价值反馈，或他们能够在App Store上获得4-5颗星的评价，所以这是个双赢模！”给自己辩解。我并不是说这不是正当辩护，这其实取决于你自己的感觉。

开发者需要注意的弊端是，付费收买下载量的方式很难判断游戏的真实成就。当然你拥有50个5颗星评论，但是否40个都是靠付费获得？当然你能够让游戏挤入前10，但其是否真的有此资格？若游戏不够杰出，付费过后，作品又掉出榜单，除半天出现在前50榜单中，你是否真的有从中获得什么？若快钱是收益底线，那么这些都不是问题。但很多iPhone开发者都是喜欢制作游戏，希望扬名的小公司或双人工作室，这些就是他们需要考虑的问题。

另一方面是购买和体验游戏的玩家。下载5颗星游戏，结果发现5颗星评论不符实际，不仅会让玩家感觉受骗，而且还会促使他们留下极差评价（游戏邦注：如果内容渐入佳境，结果还不会这么糟）。知道有人付费获得评价后，你就很难再相信评价。这同时也会影响游戏的成功，存在此类服务会让玩家觉得：“为什么这个蹩脚的计算应用会出现前20中？他们肯定是花钱挤进来的！”，其实也许并非这么回事。

促使我们采用这个模式的诱惑是玩家至少看过游戏，若作品处在底部，他们也许连看都没看过。此外，游戏还有可能在前10榜单中呆1天完全捞回成本。

我还没给《Elusive Ninja》购买任何付费评论。我觉得没必要，我觉得游戏非常优秀，我愿意接受挑战。我更愿意把资金投入其他营销活动。我更愿意跟进作品的运作情况，所以扭曲结果没什么好处。我更愿意投资开发下款作品，而不是花钱购买游戏评论和销量，毕竟这是我的首款游戏。

但这完全取决于个人决定。一旦游戏出现在App Store，进入大众视野，你就会收到提供这些服务的邮件。所以想想要怎么处理，若你决定通过付费品牌、下载帮自己一把，设定“我的预期结果是什么”的目标，留心这些目标是否实现，这样你才不会白浪费资金。

苹果政策

我觉得苹果在抵制App Store“欺骗”现象方面做得很好。其制止购买下载量服务，不允许促销码兑换者评价游戏，其显示日常数据，而非当前数量（游戏邦注：所以若游戏获得大幅宣传，只有隔天才能知晓，这令人很难判断合适宣传时机），且还改变排名算法，现在排名不单基于下载量，还参考游戏时间。这些都是苹果在平衡App Store竞争领域方面所付出的努力，这样各开发者都享有公平机会。

我觉得这还有完善的空间，但苹果的举措颇值得称颂，这原本对他们来说毫无影响，不论排名机制是否公平，他们都能从中获利，但他们还是坚持替开发者主持公道。若你选择尝试这些“付费评论”服务，苹果会限制你的应用，你也只能默默承受。你要知道苹果反对你欺骗App Store。

6. 网站评论

这些通常被称作获得关注的必杀技。《Elusive Ninja》已获得若干大小网站的评论，但还未出现在顶级网站中（如Touch Arcade和Gamespot）。下面是我从中积累的经验：

* 一鸣惊人后往往很快就销声匿迹

获得大型网站的评论能够促进游戏销量的提高。这不是由于网站非常热门，所有用户都听说你的作品，而是由于如今网络联系密切，大型网站的评论会自动被其他网站和Twitter消息转发。我的TweetDeck设有“Elusive Ninja”搜索专栏，所以只要这些词语在微博中被提及，内容就会出现在我的检测区域。当tipb.com 评论我的内容时，我的页面就会整天持续弹出微博和转发内容，看到整个专栏信息满满，我感到非常兴奋。有人告诉我说我的评论“同时获得报道”，也就是“遍布各处”。游戏销量3天内跃升至“可观”的12-15份，这就之前的每天0-2份来说是个很大的突破。我脑中开始浮现变身百万富翁和购买黄金快艇的憧憬。

几天后，游戏销量重回到每天0-2份水平，所有谈及“elusive ninja”的微博都戛然而止。这是常出现于App Store应用的情形。不论你是刚推出作品，获得媒体关注，还是开展竞争宣传，发布更新内容，成为话题内容。基本模式通常是销量激增，然后又回归平淡（游戏邦注：如未采取其他促进举措），有时你会因此获得超越先前状况的日销售成绩，但通常相差不大。我觉得我们最好基于这个模式制定策略，做好下滑的心理准备，而不是怀揣快艇之梦。

* 小型网站

我过去曾运作过小型网站，所以我非常欣赏这些平台。但坦白讲，就数量来看，这些平台似乎成效不大。但获得这些网站的评论也是好事一件，在你宣传游戏名称和创建品牌的过程中，任何评论都有其价值，很多小型网站的评论者都是杰出人士，他们都喜欢谈论游戏，你能够因此结交到朋友。但回到日销售数据上，低流量网站评论的影响力微乎其微。待到游戏具有知名度，用户在谷歌搜索相关评论时，若这些是积极评论，就有其相应价值，但这些评论本身的曝光度就不高。

就付费评论来说，若网站以30-80美元评论游戏，不妨参考我在旗帜广告部分提到的，展开系列调查，探究网站流量情况。网站评论的影响力究竟有多大？若网站规模不大，自然就不值得你投入这些资金。若你花100美元购买评论，而这只让你在接下来几天获得每天3-4份的销量，是否真的值得？再次重复，跟进结果，特别是在有投入资金的情况下。

* 超级必杀技

由于评论的促进性质，游戏最好能短期内获得众多网站的评论，而不是仅获得零星好评。短期关注带给App Store排名的影响很大，这会带来更多关注，保持良性循环，让作品窜升至榜单当中。

* 发送促销码

就像我在促销码部分提到的，不要直接发送促销码，除非评论者索要，或者你愿意冒浪费之险，代码数量有限。记住即便向索要者发送代码，也不代表他们会评论你的游戏。曾经有人向我索要代码，在我送出后，他们回复：“非常感谢，你是否考虑在我们的网站购买广告位置？”他们没有明确表示：“若你想要获得评论，就购买广告位置”，但这就是此次互动留给我的感觉。这里的教训是记住你的目标不是获得尽可能多的评论，因此我的建议是有效利用促销码，而不是毫无计划地挥霍。

* 跳过个人邮件

下面的内容可能会不那么令人愉快，但我发誓绝不是刻意营造这种感觉。若你是新手，你没有媒体的联系方式，对营销服务了解不多或没有什么资金，你会自然形成这样的想法：“我在谷歌搜索iPhone游戏评论，直接给出现的网站发邮件，我能够找到其中的编辑，写封个人邮件，表示自己读过他们的内容，附上我的宣传资料和促销码，促使其给出评论。”

不要浪费时间！我只从发出的30封个人邮件中得到2-3个回复，而且发现其他开发者也面临类似情况。我花很长时间书写和发送这些邮件，我不是对评论者心存不满。他们无法一一回复每天收到的大量邮件，很多游戏因此被人遗忘，或作品还不够优秀，不足以促使对方发表评论。它们和我的游戏不同，不愿花时间获得差评，这也不是坏事，完全能够理解，但记住，若你从中得到的只是通过剪切&粘帖邮件得出的相同回复，那你最好还是直接剪切&粘帖，利用省下的时间去做更富创造性的事情。

慢慢你会认识更多媒体人士，有更多露面机会，你需要在个人邮件中投入更多时间，特别是给那些曾评论过你游戏的评论者，因为你的名字和声望已具有一定份量。想象一下某个名不经转的新开发者给小岛秀夫发邮件称喜欢《合金装备》，和小岛秀夫给某开发新手发邮件称他很喜欢他们的作品。哪个人收到邮件会更高兴？

7. 不同网站，不同模式

所以若你决定自己完成这些邮件，你可以通过剪切&粘帖格式化邮件节省时间。好极了！除非你刚开始寻找邮件地址，发现有些网站有提供填写表格，而不是邮件地址。这个网站是这种格式，那个网站采用另一种格式。忽然间，你原本以为只要花半小时发送邮件，现在你得腾出几天时间，填写这个表格，遵循各种提交指南。

这会让你坐如坐针毡，即便是腾出1个星期，提交的数量也在100份以下。所以我们要如何提高效率？

* 评论请求提交服务

我发现有些服务会有偿帮你向各网站发送评论请求。我感觉最好的是iSpreadNews。它收取的费用相比其他网站低很多，你还可以定制内容。而且他们的反馈时间和用户服务都很令人满意。我建议你阅读他们的问答内容，其中很多指示信息，特别是“你是否希望所提交的内容扩散至美国？”版块。他们的提交系统也很令人满意。我是在自己发送许多邮件后才发现这个网站的，发现其“1000 char描述”、“100 char描述”功能解决了我手动发送所遇到的公差问题。

我订阅149美元的“西欧”包裹（303个网站，9种语言）。我觉得我并不需要“所有”内容，因为我很生气中国盗版了我的游戏。哈哈，开玩笑的。但我觉得完全可以去掉阿拉伯的5个评论网站和1个冰岛网站，节约些许费用，我觉得这些地方的iPhone游戏市场潜力不大。我7月6日提交我的请求，我觉得之后销量没有迅速下降要归功于此，后来便有评论网站发邮件索要促销码，所以我知道他们确有帮我发送邮件。我真希望自己能够早点发现这个服务。

我发现不论是通过服务，还是自己发送，我得到的邮件都相差无几。我宁愿花点钱，免操这份心，然后着眼其他内容（游戏邦注：如投入其他营销活动，或设计下款游戏），而不是花1周多的时间亲力亲为。而且我还发现致力此方面的专业服务公司和这些网站的关系更密切。如果我是评论者，我会给予专业机构提交的评论请求更多关注。

* 其中荒谬性

下面我想谈谈其中的荒谬性，因为我所谈论的不是付费评论，而是付费购买有偿评论机会。想到这，你会觉得这个观点非常荒谬，但这就是行业目前的情况，我们所能做的就是探索此荒谬机制的高效运作方式。

* 建立关系

和评论者、媒体建立关系非常重要。但我觉得若你具有一定名气，或你推出过1-2作品，曾和多位评论者和编辑沟通过，个人邮件就效果显著。这些关系也会随时间的流逝逐步建立起来，随着你积累更多经验，越来越有知名度。但最初你尚未建立这些关系时，最好还是借助这些宣传服务，因为你毫无名气，大家的期待都不高。

你刚来公司只会收到老板发出的集体圣诞节卡片，随后你就会到老板家吃饭，下一年你就会收到他送出的私人卡片。你 不会头年就期待私人卡片，但若在你们已建立一定关系，你还只收到普通卡片，你就会觉得很寒心。

* 追踪评论

我在WET Productions（游戏邦注：作品有《My Virtual Girlfriend》和《My Virtual Boyfriend》）Mike Amerson的营销文件中学到这些策略。我给“elusive ninja”和“bulletproof outlaws”设定谷歌通知。若出现新评论，谷歌就会发邮件告诉我：“有新网站出现你标记的这些关键字，请查看”，所以我能够获悉作品何时获得新评论，何时被谈到。这点很棒因为我能够密切关注口碑传播情况，我能够访问这些网站，向评论者表示感谢，回复评论和问题。建立关系益处多多。

另一策略就是设定同你作品类似的谷歌通知。若你制作的是钓鱼游戏，你知道市场存在许多钓鱼游戏，你会希望基于这些游戏名称创建通知，因为有时评论这些游戏的网站也对你的游戏感兴趣，因为它们存在共同之处。你会发现某款钓鱼游戏在钓鱼爱好者网站获得评论，你原本也许根本就不知道这个网站的存在，通知功能让你开始注意这些网站，所以你可以发邮件给它们，向他们发送游戏内容。若你很懒，不想创建通知，你可以每周进行谷歌搜索，指明“过去1周”或“过去24小时”。

* 标记评论

我标记所获所有的评论。这能够促使引用和连接更便捷，大家无需每次都通过谷歌搜索。我将引言呈现在App Store商品信息，若我另外制作预告片，我也会将这些内容融入其中。这也让我们能够在推出更新内容时迅速联系自己希望联系的人士，若他们想要深入了解Bulletproof Outlaws，我会直接同他们联系，告知我的下个项目，或给他们发送专有内容。

8. 营销机构

我在评论版块谈到一些，但市场存在许多处理开发者广告需求的服务机构。有些机构就其服务内容表述模糊，采用很多流行词汇，没有具体说明价位，他们“创造满足用户需求的定制协同营销方案”。若我早知道这些公司的意思，我就不会同他们联系，我喜欢网站富有效率，开门见山。

ComboApp这样的网站更符合我的要求。其列表陈述网站提供的系列服务，详细描述可能结果，且还表明价格。我以开发者视角深入研究这个网站，我喜欢定制协调营销方案，但现实是我只有XX资金，所以请直接告诉我能够凭此获得什么服务？

仔细研究列表中的服务，下面是我对比网站描述、价格和体验时考虑的因素：

* 对比价格

相比其他服务，应用发布组合包裹似乎是个不错选择。从中你可以获得新闻报道（183美元），10多个应用评论（98美元），以499美元向50多个评论网站提交信息（427美元）。但若你通过自己写新闻公告稿获得UpHype或Fiverr之类网站的App Store评论，你就能够以427美元获得50多个评论申请，省下60美元。然后就像前面提到的，你就能够以149美元通过iSpreadNews向300多个网站提交评论请求。然后就需要查看ComboApps提交的网站是否优于iSpreadNews，但由于这些服务不会体现在通讯录中，我通常只能猜测。ComboApps或许更多关注北美网站，但若北美网站收取费用，你就会陷入荒谬的“付费争取有偿评论”境地。

我并不是说这没有价值，我没用过ComboApps，它们看起来很专业，很受欢迎，注有编辑的热门网站贴牌新闻公告似乎要比通过免费PR服务提交的新闻公告更具份量，但这些都是预算有限独立开发者需要考虑的问题。这又回到“商业决策”理念。可以投资，只要你进行充分研究，具有投资的商业理由，设立目标，追踪投资结果，做出进一步决策。

* Twitter陈述

我发现Twitter通常带来瞬间曝光。想要让粉丝3万的Twitter帐号提及游戏内容不是难事，但通常大网站都会发布很多微博，以致鲜有人关注它们发布什么内容，你的信息会因此淹没其中。1小时内就会消失。Facebook的陈述内容会维持几天，博客目录或内容也会关注1周左右。所以若你付费获得某人的Twitter陈述，不要抱太大希望，若3万粉丝中，恰好有80%恰好不在正确时刻查阅消息，他们就不会看到陈述内容。星期二凌晨3点的Twitter消息对3万粉丝而言意义多大？或者Twitter消息早晨9年发布，但此时粉丝有50多条新微博需要阅读？或者下午2点，当大家都忙于工作，无暇浏览Twitter消息？

* 保障评论

这是我愿意深究，获取更多信息的内容，但我发现其此方面表现突出。他们很可能同付费评论网站有联系，聘请他们评论你的游戏，你可以通过自己承担省下其中费用，但这存在时间和精力问题。我觉得唯一值得花钱购买的评论是流量庞大的大型网站，但这需要花费很多钱，所以若你打算投资这笔钱，就注意追踪数据，看看下次是否还值得继续。且记住同我们分享从中获得的经验。

* 销量/下载量生成

这其实就是我在购买下载量中有谈到的，只是这听起来更像Admob和Flurry App Circle模式，在此模式中，你不是给予下载游戏的用户金钱奖励，而是让游戏名称或广告优先在Admob弹出窗口中呈现。

9. Admob

我觉得资金有限的独立开发者使用Admob的意义不大。你投入些许资金，表明愿意支付的广告点击费用，你支付的费用取决于广告在Admob弹出窗口呈现的机率。我投入50美元，将我的出价降至最低，旨在查看最终结果。我在1天内获得1250次点击（游戏邦注：1250 X 0.04美元=50美元）和23.8多万印象（广告呈现的次数）。棒极了。

点击量不同于下载量，当天销量增长为零。所以看起来你似乎只是付费让大家加载你的App Store页面。若你具备雄厚资金，这也许是个好方案，你无疑能够因此促进大家使用你的游戏页面，但若你资金有限，无人能够保证投资会换来销量。我的App Store描述非常糟糕，其他拥有更优质描述的作品也许取得更好成绩，但综观他人成绩，我开始持怀疑态度。

若你是小型开发商，我建议你省下50美元，放弃尝试Admob。我无法想象若你投入5000美元，结果会怎样，但我绝不会第一个吃螃蟹，损失50美元已非常多。

既然Admob的主要问题在于点击量不等同于销量，那么按实际销量收费的服务呢？这将我们带入：

10. Flurry App Circle

在这里，我深入挖掘Admob以外的理念。这是相似的构想，你投资资金（虽然你最少有投入250美元，而不是50美元，设定出价（出价越高，广告呈现的机率越大）。区别在于Flurry App Circle按实际销量收费。若当日看到App Circle广告的用户购买游戏，这就是广告创造的销量，他们就是基于此判断实际销量。这无疑更令人放心。你可以选择投资5000美元，若游戏未获得任何销量增长，资金依然完好无损。

另一落实此方案的安全方式是若游戏在App Store售价1.99美元，苹果分成30%，你的每份实际收益是1.4美元，若你出价1.35美元，你依然能够获得0.05美元净利润/份。所以从理论来看，你完全可以选择投入50万美元，若全部打水漂，你依然能够从每份作品中获得5美分净利润，所以通过用苹果商店所获收益抵消Flurry资金，你也不会出现亏损。这是个安全机制。当然问题在于1.35美元是个较低竞价标准，平均出价是1.5美元，最高出价超过4美元。“Flurry推荐引擎首先向用户呈现理想应用，出价决定应用呈现顺序，”所以若你只出价1.35美元，作品就无法频率呈现。

一个重要方面是你可以设定日常预算极限，若你投入资金，最好进行相应标注。我把预算设定在250美元，并未发现任何问题，但你不会希望碰到这样的情形：侥幸成功，获得5万份销量，但未设定日预算，结果只能将钱欠着。就我所知，若碰到这种情形，你可以联系Flurry，他们非常乐意提供帮助，但要保持理智，确保自己处在安全情形。

所以我在《Elusive Ninja》投入250美元，要价1.35美元/安装（作品在App Store售价1.99美元，所以每份能够获得5美分利润）。过去1个月，我获得5.2万多印象，6499次的点击量，而通过App Flurry则获得6次安装，由于我只按安装数量付费，而不是按点击量，所以我的250美元只带来了6份销量。

最终结论是若你设定日预算计划，压低出价，使其处在能够创收的水平，运用App Circle就不存在什么负面影响，但若你采用此策略，就不要心存过多期望。若你把出价抬高到4美元以上，我想销量可能会出现迅猛增势，但若作品定价99美分，每次安装，你就要付出3美元。若你具备充足资金，试图提升销量以落实游戏的超级必杀技，这能够帮你提高榜单位置，从而获得一定回报。但若你是资金紧张的独立开发者，这就不是最佳营销方案。

若我资金雄厚，作品销量成绩突出，我会进一步试验Super Combo策略，这归根到底是App Circle和Admob的选择问题，我会选择App Circle，因为你只需就合法下载量进行付费。

11. 苹果的强大推荐功能

众所周知，这是个大型工具。这是能够促使你获得名声和财富的销量助推工具。无人知晓获得推荐的标准是什么，或哪个应用获得金色标签。遗憾的是我也不知道苹果推荐机制的运作模式，所以若你希望从文章中获悉如何获得推荐，恐怕要大失所望，但下面有些根据调查得出的相关内容：

* 影响因素

这基于研究受推荐作品的相关内容，还有某些基本逻辑。苹果似乎倾向推荐机制看似完善的作品。不论是运用大量设备功能，还是展示杰出画面效果，抑或者在游戏设计、控制方案方面有所创新。

除此之外，短期内的庞大销售数据也能够吸引苹果关注。若作品备受大众青睐，苹果也会进行特别介绍。大量5颗星评论很可能会让游戏在苹果页面获得展示，但我无法估算所需具体数量或好坏评级比例。还可以通过结识某苹果员工，或者直接获得某个苹果雇员的关注，但若你能够做到这点，你就完全无需读这篇文章。

你会发现很多有关如何通过进行简单谷歌搜索获得推荐的秘诀和建议。关于这点有很多更详尽的理论（游戏邦注：就像创造细分应用，在一周中某特定日子发行内容）。所以最后提示：直接给苹果发邮件，请求其推荐内容，或者提醒其作品多么精彩作用不大。我不知道这是否有所作用，但根据开发者的试验结果来看，这无疑无法带来什么正面影响。

* 精品应用

作品首次上线会自动获得精品应用版块的介绍，所以这天，你会感觉良好，觉得作品能够在被其他精品应用挤下前一举成名，变得风靡。这就是开发者特别关注作品头天营销和销量情况的部分原因，此时你能够不费吹灰之力就获得些许地位，而之后就很难轻松获得，所以你非常希望用户能够访问你的作品。

* 提前准备

苹果通常会在出乎意料的情况下推荐你的作品，你通常会收到一封邮件：“请发送给我们若干XX尺寸的图像”，你不确定随后会发生什么情况。但你会照他们的要求操作，随后你就发现自己获得推荐，作品销量疯狂增加，你驾着黄金快艇朝夕阳驶去。

其实通过索要更多图像并不意味着你会获得推荐。但无论如何，我们最好还是有所准备。

* 设计超级必杀技

所以若你刚获得苹果的推荐。你现在所能做的就是坐等丰收，考虑购买哪个类型的黄金快艇，是吧？你完全可以这么做，但就像我之前说的，App Store的所有内容通常都是突然出现销量高峰，然后陡然下滑，回归为零。推荐除带来获多点击，并没有产生什么不同。若你获得推荐，推荐消失后，你的日销售成绩也会有所提高，但若是Rovio、Chillingo和Halfbrick获得推荐，你觉得他们会放松地坐等丰收？还是他们会采用行动促使作品排名更上一层楼？

不论是购买Touch Arcade网站的视觉修复，还是通过营销机构进行大量口碑传播，抑或是发布新闻报道推荐，举行比赛，制造商品，添加更新内容，若游戏获得推荐，记得设计总体规划。在推荐魔力退却前，你只有几天，最多1周时间将计划付诸实践，就像马里奥的Invincibility Star消失后，你又重新回到摆脱Goomba的情境，所以事前是否做好计划相差很大：推荐或许会让你窜升至60名，但1周后就跌回150名，或让你升至60名，而超级必杀技则能让你几个月里稳居前20名。

* 大众融资

这在互联网领域是个非常新颖的概念。模式就是你创建页面宣布项目所需资金，许多感兴趣的人士就会捐出些许资金。公布项目者最终筹得所需资金，而大家仅需献出绵薄之力。这是个有趣理念，若某天我资金紧张，无法靠自己的资金完成项目，我也会尝试此方式。

* Kickstarter

这是目前最受欢迎的大众融资服务。Kickstarter的FAQ版块详细陈述所有内容，所以我这里就不详细解说（游戏邦注：其中的“Robots Love Ice Cream”项目在Twitter非常活跃，获得某些博客的专门叙述，已成功融资1.8万美元）。

总结

在上述内容中，我们结论投资广告的主要方案。你需确保投资有所回报。诸如百事、耐克之类的大公司每年都在营销中投入大笔资金，他们并不是想要获得即时回报，而只是为了让品牌出现在大众视线中。作为独立开发者，我们通常没有大笔资金，当创收时，我们急切希望通过强制政策维持局面，或者将其投资于下款作品中，而不是将某些收益投资于营销活动，持续推动发展势头。最重要的是确保进行研究，追踪结果。设定确定目标，若你无法取得这些目标，就调整模式。犯错并不可耻，除非这种错误是只要稍做调整就能避免。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE II – Traditional Advertising

by Jeff Hangartner

INTRO

Hi, my name is Jeff Hangartner! Recently I started a small Indie game studio called Bulletproof Outlaws. I’m an artist working from home and outsourcing the programming, music, etc. I’ve just finished my first iPhone game – Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief (the App Store link is here). It was officially released on June 6th, 2011. I’ve jumped into the wonderful world of marketing and I’m approaching it from a bunch of different angles and trying various marketing avenues out. I’m fortunate enough (and planned ahead strategically enough) to have some money to spend experimenting with marketing and I figure by sharing what I’ve learned, these marketing articles can help other small Indie Developers who can’t afford to waste money heading down dead-ends and trying experiments that might not pay off.

There are 5 marketing articles:

ARTICLE I – Social Marketing

Using word-of-mouth marketing via Twitter, blogging, forum threads, etc. to build awareness for your game, and a realistic look at the pros and cons of price drops and using microjob services.

ARTICLE II – Traditional Advertising

An in-depth look into the sketchy side of the industry that people don’t seem to talk about like buying downloads, paying for reviews, etc. Also covering traditional expensive marketing like banner ads and marketing agencies and ad services like AdMob.

ARTICLE III – Game Related & Maintenance

What to put in a Press Kit, using Press Releases, creating screenshots and trailers, etc. Plus how to efficiently maintain everything we’ve talked about so far.

ARTICLE IV – Psychology

How to survive the internal side of marketing as an Indie Developer and dealing with the stress of spending your money, watching sales figures rise and fall, making big decisions, handling critics and pushy marketers, and a big blunt look at how rampant iPhone App piracy is.

ARTICLE V – Optimal Marketing Plan

A summary of everything, condensed down into 36 steps from Pre-Launch to Launch Day to Post-Launch, that I feel make up an Optimal Marketing Plan for an Indie Dev with little to no money who needs to make sure every dollar spent counts.

ARTICLE II – Traditional Advertising

ADVERTISING

Promo Codes

I learned a lotta’ lessons with Promo Codes, lemme tell ya! When your game is approved for the App Store you get 50 Promo Codes to give out. Each time you update the game, you get 50 more Promo Codes. You can’t get more than 50, so once you run out, you’re out. Unfortunately I didn’t do a lot of research on how to use them so I was handing them out like candy at a parade and wasted them. So in hopes of saving you from the same pitfalls, here are some tips:

Press, Not Friends

This is the main advice people give with regards to Promo Codes. Don’t use them to give your friends and family free copies of your game…of all people THEY should be the ones who WANT to give you their dollar or two to support you. Give Promo Codes to the Press. Review sites get a ton of games to review and generally aren’t going to pay to download them all. You want to be able to basically say “Hey, I’ll be happy to give you a free copy of my game so you can review it!” to make it as easy as possible for them to give you a review. You might also want to use some of them in Promo Code give-aways as rewards for contests, or to have popular sites Tweet the Codes out, or to give them out in the Touch Arcade forums, etc.

Don’t Jump The Gun

When you’re new, you might think “I’d better send a Promo Code with my initial E-Mail to a Reviewer because I’m lucky to get their attention for even a second, I want to make things as easy as possible because they probably won’t bother E-Mailing me back to request a Code and then wait for me to send them one, they have so many other games they could be reviewing who probably sent Promo Codes right away”. This is a quick way to lose a bunch of Promo Codes or have them end up in a void where you have no idea if they’re being redeemed or not.

Instead throw a note in the E-Mail saying Promo Codes are available upon request or however you want to word it. Most E-Mails you send out to Reviewers will get zero response so if you’re attaching Promo Codes right away they’re just sitting in someone’s Inbox going unused. I’ve found that the Reviewers that want to review your game will contact you back and request Codes. Some places even warn on their Contact Page “Please don’t send us Promo Codes in your contact E-Mail, we’ll request them if we want them”. I’m pretty sure a solid 30 of my Promo Codes expired unused because I had the mentality described above.

Promo Codes Can’t Be Reviewed

Recently Apple changed things so that a redeemed Promo Code can’t be used to leave a review on the App Store. So if someone grabs your game for free, they can’t leave you a review. This makes it even more important to focus on giving these Codes to the Press who won’t be able to leave an App Store review, but CAN write reviews for their actual websites.

Expiration Date

Promo Codes expire 4 weeks after you request them, so you know what’s NOT a smart idea? Requesting a ton of them on Day 1, which is what I did. By the time any Press started getting back to me, and by the time I had found different avenues to reach the Press and found new ways to use Promo Codes, the big chunk of the ones I requested on Day 1 were about to expire. So then I was stuck sending out Promo Codes that would probably expire before the person got a chance to check the game out. It was just a big mess all around.

Used And Abused?

The other unfortunate thing about Promo Codes is that you can’t tell which Codes have been used. If you give someone a Promo Code, you will never know if they used it or if it’s sitting there and still available.

Workarounds

I use AppFigures to keep track of my stats (it’s only $5/month, and the service is awesome and gives you all sorts of stats and graphs). One useful thing it keeps track of is that you can see on any given day how many purchases of your game were via Promo Codes. This is slightly useful because if you’ve only given out a few Promo Codes, going by any E-Mail responses you get and the “what countries were your sales in today” stat in AppFigures you can kind of narrow down which Promo Codes were used…it’s still a lot of guesswork, but it’s about the best you can do.

In thread posts on Touch Arcade, people tend to add “Please post which Promo Code you used” and people will do that, so the Developer can keep track of which Codes are still useable. I didn’t think of it at the time, but you could probably do this when you send the Codes to Reviewers. It’s still an annoying situation, though…if someone decides not to E-Mail you back to let you know they used the Promo Code and you send it to someone else thinking it’ll still work, now that big-name site you managed to get the attention of for a split second because the planets aligned just right, is going “eh, Promo Code didn’t work, next game!” It’s like going to job interviews not knowing if you’re going to have a suit on or be standing in your underwear until you walk through the door haha

Gifting

If you DO run out of Promo Codes, a super ghetto hail-mary solution could be to Gift the game to the Reviewer or whoever. The problem is you can only Gift to someone in your own country, so as a Canadian if an American site wanted a Promo Code and I was out, I’d have to get a friend in America to Gift the game to them. I haven’t done this yet, but hey, we’re thinkin’ outside the box here!

How To Get More?

I’m still on my first batch, but it looks like when you update your game you get another 50 Codes. So it might be worth just doing a minor update with a few bug fixes to get the Codes, but then you’re going through the whole Apple approval process again and it’s a hassle. It used to be that when you updated you basically lost all the reviews you had for your previous version, but just taking a glance at some Apps on the App Store it looks like that’s no longer the case…it’ll just say “(v1.3)” beside the reviews so people know it’s for a previous version.

Banner Ads

“Have business reasons and make business decisions.” That’s something my business coaches drilled into our class. It’s fine to do stuff that seems outside the norm or that other people warn you isn’t a good idea, as long as you have business reasons for doing it. Marketing is the fastest way to drain your money because you can throw it all away randomly picking areas to spend it on and not seeing any results.

Where To Find Ad Space?

Most sites will have an “Advertise With Us” link at the top or bottom of the site where they have some information on spaces and prices, or an E-Mail address you can shoot an E-Mail to requesting that information. I found that a lot of sites sell advertising space through BuySellAds.com…it’s a great service, you get stats and charts and everything. You can even filter the search to just Apple related sites.

Research

I use Alexa and SiteTrail to check the stats of sites, mainly looking for how much traffic they get, what part of the world it’s from, page-views per month, that kind of thing. I’ll also check out the site on both my desktop and iPhone to see where and how the ads are displayed, and I’ll look at what kind of site they are, what their demographic of users is, how often they update, etc. BuySellAds shows how many Impressions a site gets per month, and the Click-thru rates and stuff. Honestly, a lot of it is mumbo jumbo to me but I’ve learned a few things:

Impressions Does Not Equal Clicks

Just because a site is listed as having 5,000,000 Impressions doesn’t mean your banner is going to get more than a few Clicks. If you have to choose between a site about furniture design with 5,000,000 Impressions a month or a site about iPhone games with 1,000 Impressions a month, go with the 1,000 one because those are the people who are actually going to buy your game. If you have to choose between a site with 5,000,000 Impressions but your banner is at the bottom in a rotating banner spot (so your ad is randomly chosen from a group of other ads to be shown in that spot) or a site with 1,000 Impressions but your banner is at the top of the page and doesn’t rotate, go with the 1,000 one. Impressions just means the number of times the banner is loaded, so while it’s being loaded in that bottom rotating banner spot, that doesn’t mean it’s being seen by the user.

Cost

You can get banner ads up for as low as $10 per month at some places. It can also go high, like costing around $300. I’ve found that the best way to judge how good an ad is going to be is to go by the price instead of the Impressions. If there are two spaces and one gets 5,000,000 Impressions and the other gets 1,000 Impressions, but the 5,000,000 one costs $10/mo and the 1,000 one costs $300/mo, odds are the person running the site has determined through their own stat measuring that the $300 one is worth the money in comparison.

Pay Per Click

I honestly didn’t mess with this much because it looks dumb to me. Basically the jist seems to be that you pay X amount of money per Click on your banner. So it’s usually listed as $X per 1,000 Impressions or Clicks. But I don’t see the point to this, because an Impression or Click doesn’t automatically mean a sale. So you could have 5,000,000 Impressions and not a single sale, except that at $1 per 1,000 Impressions you’re out $5,000. If you’re a huge company with tons of money marketing a game like Angry Birds, maybe that’s where it’s worth it, but man, right now with limited funds I’d rather take the $X per month solid number so I can plan out my budgeting and stuff. With that $5,000 I could have a bunch of $300 banner ads all over the place. I’m not really “in the know” when it comes to Internet marketing so there might be a reason behind this concept or an optimal time to use it, but from where I’m sitting as an Indie with not much money, I’m staying far away from this whole concept.

Ad Design

If you can do an animated ad, do an animated ad. They catch the eye more than a static ad. If you don’t have any art skills, hit up a microjob site like UpHype or Fiverr and you can probably get some done up for like $5. I did the art for my game pretty large when I originally drew it, and shrunk it down to fit on the iPhone screen, so throwing together banners is pretty easy. I grab some art and toss it into a layout and I’m done. You’ll find pretty much every site has different sizes and shapes for banners, so be prepared to make horizontal skinny banners, vertical fat banners, square banners, you name it.

Track Your Expectations

Don’t just buy ad space and then ignore it, or casually glance at the stats. When you buy ad space (which you bought because you researched the site and made a business decision to advertise there, right?) write down what exactly you’re expecting as a result of that ad space. Stuff like “20 new Twitter Followers”, “50 more hits to my website a day”, “10 new sales of my game in Italy”, etc. Whatever’s appropriate. Then track what the actual outcome was. If you bought $100 for a month worth of ad space, and your goal from that was 100 new sales that month, and you made 5 sales, you have to consider that either that ad space isn’t something you want to renew, or that you might have to change up your ad design for that space, etc. Basically something isn’t working the way you expected, so don’t pour more money into it until you figure out what isn’t working and why it isn’t working and how to try fixing it.

Don’t Get Hooked

We were warned about this in the business course I took: Remember that while your job as someone marketing your game is to market your game, people selling advertising space have a job too – to sell you advertising space. So you’ll run into situations where you buy some ad space, it doesn’t really do anything, but the person tells you “You have to give it a little time, sign up for another month or two and you’ll definitely see results, that’s just how marketing works”. And it’s not necessarily untrue, but this goes back to making business decisions. Do YOU think it’s a good idea? Do you have any reason at all to expect things to turn around with that ad space? If you do, awesome, that’s fine. The key factor is that if you decide to stick with it long-term, don’t do it because you feel guilted or pressured into it, but because you have business reasons to stick with it.

Touch Arcade

I want to talk about Touch Arcade because everyone knows they’re basically the top dog popularity-wise of iPhone game stuff so I would imagine a lot of iOS Developers are curious about TA. TA is expensive compared to some sites, but they have the traffic and targeted demographic to justify it and I’ve had nothing but a great experience working with them so far. They answered my questions promptly, sent me the information I needed, helped me schedule my ads for the specific time I want, and for the exclusive spots they allow things like rotating through or scheduling different banners, animated banners, etc.

I’ve actually purchased an exclusive ad space for mid-September, a banner in the top of the side column for $600 a week, for two weeks. Steep for an Indie, hey? I don’t actually KNOW what this will do, but let’s look at my business reasons for spending this $1200:

1) They have a massive amount of traffic.

2) That traffic is my exact target demographic.

3) The spot is exclusive so I know my banner will be shown 24/7.

4) The spot is in a prominent location so I know it’ll be seen.

5) The above points are always true all year round, but this is the most important point: I scheduled my banner for September 12th…what’s also happening around September 12th? Everyone is going back to school. What happens for the first month of every school-year? Students are still coming off summer and adjusting to being in a boring classroom, teachers are just starting the curriculum so they aren’t assigning any massive homework and there aren’t any tests to study for, so you’ve basically got a ton of my exact target demographic held hostage for 8 hours a day fiddling with their phones bored out of their minds. Odds are they’ll be txting and gaming on their phones like crazy. On top of that, everyone being in the same class, school, etc., is prime Word-Of-Mouth advertising time since it’s as simple as whispering to eachother “psst dude check out this game” or seeing eachother playing it, etc.

6) With all of that going on, I’m going to probably drop the price to $0.99 for the first week as a “back to school sale” which should drum a little publicity my way when sites are announcing the games on sale for back to school.

7) I might even throw in some kind of high score contest just to encourage people to play.

8）I’ll hopefully have the HD version of Elusive Ninja done in time for this, so I’ll be able to advertise both the current version and the HD version together, and announcing the HD version will let me cross-promote the current version.

So those are my main reasons for doing this. Now it may not do anything at all, I may have just thrown away $1200, I won’t know until it all plays out…BUT, in terms of the prime time, prime strategy, prime location, etc. to BE spending $1200 in advertising, this is about as optimal as you can get so I’m comfortable with the decision I’ve made. I could spend the exact same amount on the same ad space right now, but I wouldn’t have as many business reasons to do it now (school year starting, HD version done, etc.).

I’m expecting to pull a minimum of 1200 sales from those two weeks because right now I’m just happy if my game covers its own development and marketing costs since I’m looking at this as a learning experience. And I don’t think that’s an unreasonable number of sales, going by the stats of the site. If my sales stay terrible, then I’ll look at how I did things and try to figure out what went wrong. If my sales do well, I’ll look for why exactly they did well and try to repeat that success in the future…that could involve buying more ad space on Touch Arcade or expanding on a marketing campaign or running more contests etc., I’ll have to figure it out when the time comes and I have data to make my business decisions with.

Marketing is ALWAYS going to be a crap-shoot to some extent…that’s just the nature of trying to tap into the psyche of mass crowds of people. But when you know you have solid reasons for what you’re doing it’s a lot less stressful and confusing and doesn’t weigh on your mind 24/7 and that peace of mind can be worth a lot in terms of allowing you to focus on your next project and not second-guess the decision you made or panic day-to-day over the money involved. I’ll be covering this more in Article IV of this series which covers the psychological side of marketing as an Indie.

Reviews

Reviews are the big one. Everyone knows they’re important, and a few solid reviews from the right sites will skyrocket you into fame and fortune…in theory. What doesn’t get as much mention is the sketchy side of game reviews that you’ll run into as an iPhone Developer.

Keep in mind that I’m not endorsing any “pay for review” or “pay for download” or “incentive download” systems. I’m also not saying Reviewers don’t deserve a financial compensation for their time and work. I’m just explaining what these systems are, how they work, and what you can expect to be approached with, as a new Developer so that you can make informed decisions. The final decision to use or not use these services is ultimately your own to make, but you should keep in mind that Apple is against people cheating in their App Store so while paying for reviews is no big deal, you could find your App has been rejected or banned if you do something like paying for downloads.

Paying For Reviews?

I suspect that when the iPhone was new, Reviewers were eager to review games and it was exciting just to be a part of the whole new App Store craze so reviewing a sweet new game brought a bunch of attention to your review website…but as time has gone on, things have sort of flip-flopped to a point where Reviewers know that reviews can be the difference between a game collecting dust in obscurity or being thrust into the limelight. From that flip-flopped perspective a review is valuable, and as a logical conclusion of that there are now a LOT of Reviewers charging money for reviews.

On the fishy side, you’ll get contacted by people with sketchy sounding E-Mail accounts saying “Me & my friends will give u 5-Star reviews on the App Store 4 cheap let me know if u want 2 know mor” I’m exaggerating a bit, but only a bit. I don’t see a reason these wouldn’t be legit, there’s not really potential for a big rip-off here…it’s some kid who realized he could make a few quick bucks by contacting small new Developers (odds are he’s not sending that E-Mail to Rovio or Capcom) and it only takes a minute to write an App Store review.

But if you’re going to buy App Store reviews, you might as well go with a little more above-the-table service. Like you can find people who will give you 5-Star reviews for $5 – $10 on UpHype and Fiverr as a microjob and doing it via those websites let’s you cancel the contract or leave a bad review of their service if they try to rip you off. Likewise, you can use a more professional promotional agency site like ComboApp which offers services like “10 App Store Reviews by Independent Reviewers”.

Guarantees

Usually these “buy App Store reviews” services come with guarantees like “all reviews will be 4 or 5 stars, if the Reviewer gives the game less than 4 stars, we ask them to instead submit their constructive criticism and feedback to the Developer so the Developer can make the necessary changes to bring their App up to a 4 or 5 star rating.” If you’re going to go this route, then this is actually a pretty good guarantee to look for…why pay for reviews that might be bad? You’re already crossing into an area some people would consider sketchy, so you might as well get your money’s worth.

Journalistic Integrity

Keep in mind that there ARE Reviewers out there who don’t ask for money, and oddly enough from what I’ve seen it looks like it tends to be the big sites that don’t ask for money and the little sites that do. So don’t freak out and assume every good review you read about a game was bought by the Developer. Also, some Reviewers that charge promise to legitimately review the App, good or bad, and look at the payment as just paying for their time…they don’t guarantee 5-Star reviews or anything (though they may give them). I’m not trying to paint Reviewers as a whole as some unscrupulous lot.

In fact, I don’t really have a problem with Reviewers asking for money, so I’m not casting any judgements here…writing a decent review takes time and there are hundreds of new Apps out on the App Store every day and I’m sure they get sent dozens of E-Mails a day asking for reviews, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Reviewers to want some compensation for their time and work. I mean, we’re game Developers and the gameDev industry is notorious for people doing unpaid extra work…you can’t really have a problem with that and then turn around and say “But a Reviewer should come home from their day job and put in a few hours that night to write a review for me for free!”

So this section isn’t to whine or complain about how the current review structure works, it’s just to say “Here’s what you should expect to run into as a Developer” because a lot of it caught me by surprise and as a Developer you should be aware of the pros and cons.

App Store Reviews

People want what other people want. This gets into some psychology stuff, but basically we want what everyone else wants. That’s why we read reviews of things before we buy or watch them. That’s why the App Store has a Top 10 list and a lot of the Apps IN the Top 10 list stay there forever. That’s why people buy 5-star reviews for their Apps. That’s why the McDonalds sign says over a billion jillion people served. That’s why celebrities get paid to endorse products. That’s why movies quote “Ebert gives it two thumbs up!” in their trailers. There’s exceptions to this of course, but in general we like to go into things knowing that other people have gone into them already and approve of them because it makes us feel safer with our decision, especially when it involves money.

Now picture this: You’re surfing the App Store and you come across an App that looks decent. It’s nothing incredible, but it seems like it might be fun. But it has literally NO reviews, ratings, etc. It’s like no one has ever downloaded it. Underneath that you see another App that looks about the same quality, but it’s got 10 5-star reviews raving about how awesome it is. Which one are you probably going to feel more comfortable spending your money on?

The same concept can apply to a Facebook Fan-Page. Buy a couple hundred Fans for your Fan-Page for $5 off a microjob site and now your Fan-Page looks popular to people passing through, instead of super ghetto. Personally, I don’t care much about my Facebook Fan-Page so I don’t feel bad about buying some Fans for it because I’ll pretty much never use it for any real purpose haha But be careful because you can get into a slippery moral slope here.

Jumpstarting Your Rating

App Store reviews are probably the most important reviews of all because they affect your game’s App Store rating, and since the App Store is heavily “impulse buy” based, the stuff on your actual App Store page is going to play the most influential part in people’s decision to buy your game or not. Get your friends and family to review your game when it first goes up…yeah, everyone knows the first handful of reviews are obviously the Developer’s friends and family, but everyone does it and it affects your rating (if you have 10 5-Star reviews from your friends and someone throws up a 1-Star review your game will still look decent VS having no friends review it and someone throwing up a 1-Star review). This isn’t necessarily deceitful, your friends and family probably DO like your game, but like I say EVERYONE does it so you might as well not handicap yourself right off the bat.

Buying Downloads

Here’s another fun category. First up, Apple has apparently cracked down on these types of services but for the sake of completeness and since some of the sketchier services might ignore the Apple warnings and pitch their services to you, I’m going to describe them here…plus the concept of “paying for installs” comes up again later in more acceptable forms.

The jist is that you pay $X per download. So say your game is on the App Store for $0.99. You could sign up for a service and say you’ll pay $3 per download. What happens then is a bunch of Gamers registered with the service see that if they download your game they’ll make $3. The end result is you’re paying a ton of people to download your game. This bumps your App Store ranking, which puts you higher in the list on the App Store, which lets more random normal customers see your game, and can help you boost up into the higher rankings. I know of at least one large professional game development company who paid $2000+ to one of these services (their game ended up in the top 10 for a few weeks).

Logically, I figure the key time to use a service like this would be to supplement a big boost of exposure. So you release a new Update, or you get mentioned on a major site, etc. and your sales go up, that would be when you’d want to boost them even higher, VS using a service like this when you have consistently low sales. It’s sort of like throwing sticks on a small flame to turn it into a roaring bonfire VS throwing them on when there’s no initial flame yet.

“Incentive-based”

This is basically a more round-about version of buying downloads. The jist is that instead of exchanging actual real-world cash, Gamers who download your game earn virtual currency (“Install Elusive Ninja and earn 25 BananaPoints!”) that they can spend in other games registered with the service, or on services and products their website offers.

Morality and Ethics

There’s two perspectives to look at this from: The perspective of the game industry types (Developers, Reviewers, etc.) and the perspective of the Gamers buying and playing the games.

For the game industry types, paying for boosting your ranks and reviews can be appealing if you have the money. You can justify it all sorts of ways like “It’s just giving me a fair chance because there are too many crappy Apps on the App Store and my game is good but it’s lost in the shuffle so I’m just getting it its deserved foothold in the App Store ranks!” And the “guaranteed 5-Star” Reviewers can justify it with “The Reviewers get paid for their time and the Developer either gets valuable feedback from their target demographic about their game, or they get a 4-5-Star rating on the App Store so it’s win/win for everyone involved!” and I’m not saying those aren’t valid justifications…it all comes down to what you’re comfortable with.

One downside to consider as a Developer is that it’ll be a lot harder to keep track of your success when you’re supplementing it with paid-for success. Sure you have 50 5-Star reviews, but were 40 of those paid for? Sure your game made it into the Top 10, but did it really deserve to get there? And if the game is no good and it just drops right back down off the charts after you paid to boost it up, did you really gain anything besides half a day in the Top 50? If quick money is the bottom line (and that’s fine, I’m not judging), these probably aren’t questions that concern you. But a lot of iPhone Developers are small one or two man studios where the Developers just love making games and want to build a reputation, and those are the people that should think about these kinds of questions before they go this route.

On the flip side are the Gamers who buy and play the games. Downloading a 5-Star game only to find out the 5-Star reviews were all bogus is not only going to make a Gamer feel ripped off, but it’s going to make them more likely to leave an even lower star rating than they would have left if everything was on the up-and-up. It becomes harder to trust reviews when you know someone paid money for it. It also casts shadows over the success of some games, where the fact that services like this even exist can make Gamers go “Why is this crappy calculator App in the Top 20?? They probably bought their way into it!” when that may or may not actually be the case.

The catch to bring us full-circle on this topic is that at least they SAW the game, and they might not have seen it if you were at the bottom of the ranks in obscurity. Plus spending a day in the Top 10 might pay off what it cost to boost it up there.

Personally, I haven’t paid for any reviews for Elusive Ninja yet. I just don’t feel like I need to, I think my game is pretty solid and I’m willing to chance it. Plus I’d rather put my money into other forms of marketing. And I like to track my own success (even if there isn’t much, that tells me I have stuff to work on and kinks to iron out), so skewing the results doesn’t do me much good. Also I’d rather spend money developing my next game than buying reviews and sales for this game since this is only my first release.

But at the end of the day, this all comes down to personal choice on your part as a Developer. You’re going to get E-Mails approaching you with offers for these kinds of services once you get your game up on the App Store and pop up on everyone’s radar. So decide how you’re going to handle things, and if you DO decide to go the route of paying for reviews, downloads, etc. do yourself a favor and set “What do I expect as a result from this?” goals and keep track of whether those goals were achieved or not so you don’t dump all your money into services that don’t even actually help you out.

Apple’s Efforts

I’d just like to take a moment to mention that I think Apple has done a good job in trying to snuff this kind of “tilt the pinball machine” App Store rigging out as much as possible. Cracking down on the buying downloads services, not allowing Promo Code redeemers to review the game, showing you daily stats instead of up to the second stats (so if you get a huge boost you can’t tell until the next day, which makes it harder to time when to boost the system), changing the way ranks are calculated so it’s not just based on number of downloads but also based on playtime, etc. I think these are all ways Apple is trying to level the playing-field of the App Store so that Developers all have a fair chance.

I’m sure there are still ways to improve things, but kudos to Apple for trying, since on their end it really doesn’t matter, they’d make money no matter how fair or unfair the ranking system is but they’re trying to even things out for us Developers. Also, if you choose to try one of these “buying reviews” services and Apple bans your App, you’re not in any position to complain. You should know that Apple is against you trying to cheat the App Store.

Website Reviews

These are often hailed as the holy grail for getting noticed. Elusive Ninja has been reviewed by a couple big sites, a couple tiny sites, and hasn’t made it onto the super big sites (Touch Arcade, Gamespot, etc.). So here are my experiences so far:

An Explosion, Then Silence

Getting reviewed by a larger site creates a big spike in your stats. It’s not just that the site itself is popular and all its users hear about your game, but because of how connected the Internet is now a review on a large site will get automatically reposted to a ton of other sites, Twitter feeds, etc. I have a column on my TweetDeck that searches for “elusive ninja” so whenever those words are mentioned in a Tweet, it pops up on my radar. When I got reviewed by tipb.com there were suddenly dozens of Tweets and Retweets popping up and all day long I got to watch that column fill up and was super excited. Someone told me the review got “syndicated”, which as far as I cared to figure out basically means “posted friggin’ EVERYWHERE”. My sales jumped to an “astronomical” 12-15 sales for about three days (July 5th in the Sales Chart in Article I – Social Marketing), which was a big step up from the 0 – 2 sales a day I was getting before. Visions of skyrocketing upward into millionaire-status and buying a golden speedboat danced through my mind.

A few days later I was back to 0 – 2 sales a day and all the Tweets mentioning the words “elusive ninja” had stopped. This is a pattern that happens repeatedly in App Store related stuff. Whether it’s your first day sales, attention from a review, contest promotion, Update releases, controversy, etc. The basic pattern is a sudden spike in sales that quickly vanishes if it’s not nourished with more spikes, sometimes leaving you at a better day-to-day number than before the spike but sometimes not by much. I think it’s best to strategize around this pattern and prepare yourself for it to drop instead of psyching yourself up with visions of golden speedboats (I’ll talk about this more in Article IV – Psychology).

Tiny Sites

As a Gamer and a guy who’s run tiny sites in the past, I love them. But stats-wise, these tend to not really do anything, honestly. Like, it’s awesome to have a review of your game out there, any mention is good mention when you’re building a name and brand and a lot of tiny site Reviewers are cool people who just love to talk about games and you can make some good friends out of it. But realistically in the day-to-day sales stats, a review on a low-traffic website doesn’t have any impact. Down the road when you DO drum up publicity for your game and people do some Google searches for reviews, those’ll be handy if they’re positive reviews, but they generally won’t cause massive exposure on their own.

In terms of paying for reviews, if the site is offering to review your game for $30 – $80, do a little research like I outlined in the Banner Ads section and find out what that site’s traffic is like. How much “clout” does a review with them actually hold? If the site isn’t a huge one, it probably isn’t worth the money. If you pay $100 for a review and it really only bumps your sales up by 3 or 4 sales a day for a couple days, was that really worth it? Again, keep track of your results, especially if you invest money.

Super Combos

Because of the spike-based nature of reviews, it’s better to have a bunch of reviews hit the net in a short period of time VS a good review popping up here and there. The App Store rankings are heavily influenced by mass amounts of attention in a short time, which result in getting more attention, which results in getting even more attention, etc. as you climb the charts. In Article V – Optimal Marketing Plan I’ll talk more about this with relation to reviews.

Sending Promo Codes

As I mentioned in the Promo Codes section, don’t send Promo Codes unless the Reviewer asks for them or you’re risking just throwing them away and they’re a limited resource. And keep in mind that even if you DO send Promo Codes to someone who requests them, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll review your game (I lost a few that way). I even had a little bait ‘n switch where someone requested some Promo Codes, then after I sent them they gave their “Cool thanks, so have you considered purchasing ad space on our site…?” where they didn’t flat out SAY “if you want this review to happen, buy some ad space” but that was the feeling I was left with from that interaction. The lesson here is just to go in understanding that you’re not going to get as many reviews as you might hope for, thus my warning to be frugal with your Promo Codes instead of throwing them around all willy-nilly.

Skip The Personalized E-Mails

This next part might sound kind of bitter, but I swear it’s not meant to be haha Basically when you’re new, and you have no contacts in the Press at all, and don’t know much about marketing services or have money to spend, you’re going to probably default to thinking “I’ll just E-Mail a bunch of the sites that come up when I Google for iPhone game reviews, and I’ll find out the name of the Editors and write a really personalized E-Mail that shows I’ve read their stuff and include my Press Kit and a Promo Code and offer to help in any way to make this review happen, etc.”

Don’t waste your time! I heard back from maybe 2 or 3 sites out of personally E-Mailing a solid 30 of them, and have read similar if not worse stats from other Developers. I spent a long time writing and sending out those E-Mails and it’s no beef against the Reviewer…they can’t respond to all their E-Mails because they get so many every day and a lot of games get lost in the shuffle or aren’t good enough or high-profile enough to warrant doing a review. Hell, they might just not like my game and not want to bother doing up a bad review, and that’s cool too. It’s totally understandable, but knowing this, consider that if you’re going to get the same amount of response from a cut & pasted E-Mail that you will from a customized one, you might as well cut & paste and use the saved time for something more productive.

Down the road you’ll know more people in the Press and have more of a presence, and personalized E-Mails, especially to Reviewers who’ve reviewed your other games, will be worth the extra effort because your name and reputation will hold more weight. Imagine a random new Developer E-Mailing Hideo Kojima saying he likes Metal Gear Solid…then imagine Hideo Kojima E-Mailing a random new Developer saying he likes their game. Which person is going to be more excited at getting the personalized E-Mail?

Different Sites, Different Forms

So you’ve decided to do all these E-Mails yourself, and you’re going to save time by just cutting & pasting a form E-Mail to all the sites. Super! Except you start looking for E-Mail addresses and find some sites have forms to fill out instead of E-Mail addresses. And one site’s form is structured in Such And Such A Way, while another site’s form is structured in Some Other Way. Suddenly what you thought would be a half hour of shooting out E-Mails has turned into a few days worth of filling out various forms and following different submission guidelines.

This can be a huge pain in the butt and even after a week of doing this you’ll probably only have submitted to under 100 sites. So how can we make this more efficient?

Review Request Submission Services

I found a few services that, for a fee, will send out your review request to a bunch of different review sites. The one that sounded the best to me was iSpreadNews. It’s got pretty low prices compared to other sites, and you can customize what exactly you want them to do. Also their response time and customer service were great. I suggest reading their FAQ because they make some good points in there, especially in the “Do you have plans to expand to the US as part of your submission services?” section. Their submission system is also pretty awesome. I discovered them after I had already E-Mailed a bunch of sites by hand, and found that their features like the “1000 char version of your description”, “100 char version of your description”, etc. forms addressed the common differences I ran into when I was submitting by hand.

I went with the $149 “Western Europe” package (303 sites in 9 languages). I felt like I didn’t need “All” because I’m angry at China for pirating my game. haha, no, just kidding. But I figure the 5 review sites in Arabic and the 1 Icelandic site, etc. were probably okay to leave out to save a few bucks since I don’t imagine there’s a huge market of iPhone Gamers in some of these places. The top places are in the “Western Europe” package and that jives with the “number of users” stats research I had to do for my business course back before I started Bulletproof Outlaws. I submitted my request on July 6th, and I attribute the not-instant-decline of my sales after July 6th to this…plus over the next week I was receiving E-Mails from review sites (around 10 total) asking for Promo Codes and such when before that I wasn’t getting any so I know they did actually send out E-Mails. I just wish I had found this service sooner.

I look at it like whether I submitted through the service or whether I submitted by hand, I’d probably get about the same amount of review requests out of it…and I’d rather drop some money and then not have to worry about it anymore and focus on other stuff (like other marketing or designing my next game) than spend a week+ of my time and sanity doing it all by hand. Plus I figure a professional service that focuses on doing this has better contacts and relationships with the sites they’re contacting than I do at this point. Like if I were a Reviewer I’d probably pay more attention to a review request submitted by a professional service than by cooldude69@hotmail.com haha

The Absurdity Of It All

I’d just like to take a second to point out how silly this all is because what I’m describing isn’t even paying for reviews…it’s PAYING for the chance TO PAY for reviews haha Pretty absurd concept when you think about it, but that’s where the industry is at right now and all we can really do is figure out the best way to work efficiently within this absurd system.

Building Relationships

It’s important to build relationships with Reviewers and the Press in general. I’ll talk about how to do this more in Article V – Psychology, but I think that the personalized E-Mails are more beneficial down the road when you have a little publicity and a game or two under your belt and you’ve had a few conversations with various Reviewers and Editors. Those relationships will also start to build themselves naturally over time and as you gain experience and your name becomes more well-known. But at the start when you don’t have any relationships at all, you might as well use these distribution services because nobody knows you from a hole in the wall anyway and isn’t expecting more.

Think of it like the feeling you’d get receiving a generic company-wide Christmas card from the boss of a company you just started working at VS down the road when you’ve been to the boss’ house for dinner a few times and the next year he sends you a personalized Christmas card. You didn’t really expect a personalized one the first year, but it’d seem cold if you got a generic one after you two built more of a relationship.

Tracking Reviews

I got these tactics from a marketing document by Mike Amerson of WET Productions (Developer of My Virtual Girlfriend and My Virtual Boyfriend). I set up a Google Alert for “elusive ninja” and “bulletproof outlaws”. If a new review goes up, Google will shoot me an E-Mail saying “hey, there’s some new sites with these keywords you specified on them, check it out” and I can see when I get a new review or mention of my stuff. This has been pretty cool because I get to keep tabs on how wide word-of-mouth is spreading, and I can go to these sites and thank the Reviewers for checking out my game and answer comments and questions. It’s great for building up relationships.

Another tactic is to set up Google Alerts for games similar to your game. If you make a game about fishing, and you know there are a few other fishing games out there, you might want to set Alerts for the titles of those games because sometimes the sites that reviewed those games will be interested in yours since it’s similar. You may see another fishing game reviewed on some fishing enthusiast website you didn’t know existed but has a bit following, and the Alert brings it to your attention so you can E-Mail them and send them your game to check out. If you’re too lazy to set up Alerts, you can just do Google searches every week and just specify to search by “Past Week” or “Past 24 Hours” etc.

Bookmarking Reviews

I bookmark all the reviews I get. It makes grabbing quotes and links a lot faster than having to Google them out every time. I use the quotes on my App Store blurb and if I made another trailer I’d use them in that. It also gives me quick access to a list of people I might want to contact directly if I came out with an Update or sequel for the game…or if they dig Bulletproof Outlaws in general, I’d contact them directly to let them know about my next project or send them exclusive content.

Marketing Agencies

I covered this a bit in the Reviews section, but there are a number of services out there to handle some of the common marketing needs a game Developer has. Some of them are pretty cryptic as to what exactly they offer and use a bunch of buzz-words and don’t list what exactly their prices are…they’ll “create a holistic target-specific synergistic marketing plan customized to your needs”. Hell if I know what that’s supposed to mean! I didn’t bother contacting any of these companies because I like efficient straight-to-the-point sites.

A site like ComboApp is more up my alley. This lists flat-out a bunch of different services they offer, describes in detail what you can expect for a result, and lists the price. I dig this setup as a Developer…I’d love to have a customized synergistic marketing plan and all, but the reality is I have X amount of dollars, so tell me flat out what can I get for that?

Going through some of the services in their list that I’ve found are commonly offered by marketing agencies, here are the things I take into consideration just glancing at the descriptions and comparing prices and experiences with other similar services:

Comparing Prices

The App Release combo package sounds like a good deal just going by their other services. You’re getting a Press Release written ($183), 10+ App Store reviews ($98), and get submitted to 50+ review websites ($427) for $499. But if you wrote your own Press Release, and hit a site like UpHype or Fiverr for App Store reviews, you could just get the 50+ review request submissions for $427 and save yourself $60. And even then you could use iSpreadNews to submit review requests to 300+ sites for $149, as mentioned earlier. So then it comes down to figuring out if ComboApps is submitting to any better sites than iSpreadNews would, but since these services don’t post up their contact lists (understandably), we can only guess. ComboApps may focus more on North American sites, but if most North American sites expect money for their reviews, you’re back to that absurd “paying a service for a chance to pay for a review” situation.

I’m not saying it’s not worth it, I haven’t used ComboApp and they look professional and are popular and everything and a branded Press Release from a popular site probably holds more weight with Editors than a self-submitted Press Release through a free PR submission service, but these are the kinds of questions you want to think about as an Indie Developer with a limited marketing budget. This comes back to the “make Business Decisions” concept. It’s okay to spend money, as long as you do your research and have Business Reasons for spending that money, and you set goals and track the results of spending that money to make future decisions.

Twitter Mentions

I’ve found that Twitter is generally a flash of exposure. Getting a single mention on someone’s 30,000 Follower Twitter is alright, but often the big sites put out so many Tweets that no one really pays much attention to what they’re Tweeting and your mention gets lost in the shuffle. And then it’s gone within the hour. Something like a Facebook mention stays around for a couple days, and a blog entry or article gets attention for like a week. So if you pay for a Twitter mention from someone, don’t get massive hopes up…if 80% of those 30,0000 Twitter Followers don’t happen to be checking their Twitter feed at that exact moment, they’ll probably never see your mention. How useful would a Twitter post to 30,000 people at 3am on a Tuesday really be? Or a Twitter post at 9am when everyone has 50 new Tweets to go through having just started their day? Or at 2pm when everyone’s busy working and not checking their Twitter feeds?

Guaranteed Major Reviews

This is one I would read closely for detail or ask for more information on, but I could see this being decent. Odds are they’re just contacting the paid review sites and paying them to review your game, and you might save some money if you do that yourself, but hey, it’s time and work off your hands. I’d say the only reviews worth paying for are the ones by major sites with tons of traffic…but even then, it’s a big chunk of money so if you’re going to invest that, keep track of your stats and determine if it was worth it for next time. And share your findings with the rest of us.

Sales/Download Generation

This is basically what I described above with buying downloads, except this sounds more similar to Admob and Flurry App Circle (which I’ll talk about in a moment) where you’re not paying the people who download your game, you’re paying for a higher priority of your game’s name or banner being displayed in their marketing system. So say there’s a website with a banner spot these guys own, if you pay $1 per download your banner comes up 0.1% of the time, but if you pay $10 per download it comes up 50% of the time. Over time you’re likely to end up with a bunch of sales or downloads out of it, but financially you’re probably losing money. Do the math before you try something like this.

Admob

I didn’t see much point to using Admob as an Indie Dev with limited money. Basically you put some money in, state how much you’re willing to pay per banner click (this is your “bid”), and the amount that you’re willing to pay determines how likely your banner is to show up in that Admob pop-up lots of Apps use. I put in $50, set my bid to the lowest possible (4 cents per click) just to see what would happen. Within a day I had my 1,250 Clicks (1,250 x $0.04 = $50) and 238,000+ Impressions (how many times the banner was displayed). Awesome.

…Except Clicks aren’t the same as downloads and there was zero increase in sales that day. So it seems like you’re basically paying for people to load your App Store page. If you’ve got a ton of money to burn, this might be a good way to use it, you can definitely get people to your game’s page, but if you have limited funds there’s just not much guarantee that this’ll pan out into sales to be spending your money on it. Granted my App Store description might just be terrible and someone with a better one might see results, but going by other people’s results that I’ve read, I’m skeptical.

I’d say save your $50 and skip trying Admob if you’re a small dev. I can’t imagine what the results would be if you dumped in like $5,000, but I’m sure not going to be the one to test that out, losing $50 was enough for me haha

If the main problem with Admob is that Clicks don’t necessarily equal sales, then what about a service that only takes money from you each time you get an actual guaranteed sale? That brings us to:

Flurry App Circle

Reading up on Flurry App Circle, I was digging the concept more than Admob. It’s the same idea, you put some money in (though you have to put like $250 minimum in, instead of $50) and set your bid (the higher your bid, the more likely your ad is shown). The difference is that App Circle only takes that bid out of your money per actual sale of your game. They determine actual sales based on something like if the user buys your game within a day of that user seeing the App Circle ad it counts as a sale as a result of that ad. Needless to say, this is a lot more reassuring. You could put $500,000 in there and if your game doesn’t sell any copies, that money stays un-touched.

Another safe way to play this is that if your game is on the App Store for $1.99, and Apple’s cut is 30% leaving you with like $1.40 per sale, and you set your bid to $1.35, you’re still netting a $0.05 profit on each sale. So in theory, you could dump in $500,000 and even if all of that goes, you’ve netted a 5 cent profit on every sale so when you get your money from Apple and balance it out with what you deposited into Flurry, you won’t actually have lost any money…that’s a pretty fool-proof system. The problem, of course, is that $1.35 is super low on the bidding scale. The average bid is $1.50 and the highest bids exceed $4.00. As of this writing, the “Flurry recommendation engine first generates ideal application recommendations to be displayed to users, bidding is then used to determine the order in which applications will be shown.” So if you’re only bidding $1.35, you’re probably not going to be shown that often. But if you’re not losing money on each sale, who cares?

One important thing I want to mention is that you can set a Daily Budget limit, which if you put any money in, you better make sure you’ve got this section filled out. I set mine to the full $250 to see what would happen and didn’t have any problems, but you don’t want to run into a situation where you fluke out and get 50,000 sales but you didn’t set a Daily Budget and end up having to owe that money. From what I’ve read, it looks like you can contact Flurry if you run into that situation and they’re pretty cool about it, but don’t be dumb, protect yourself just to be safe!

So I threw in $250 for Elusive Ninja, with a bid of $1.35 per install ($1.99 on the App Store, so a 5 cent profit with each install). Over the past month or so I’ve had 52,000+ Impressions and 6,499 Clicks, and 6 total installs via App Flurry and because I’m only paying per install instead of per Click my $250 has only dropped 6 sales worth (and Apple will be giving me that money back with a 5 cent profit when they pay out).

The end verdict on this one is that there’s no real down-side to using App Circle if you set a Daily Budget and make sure your bid is low enough to make sure you’re still making a few cents profit on each sale…but don’t expect much from it if you’re using that strategy. If you bump your bid up to like $4.00+ I’m sure your sales will shoot up fast, but if you have a $0.99 game you’ll be losing $3 per install…if you have a ton of money to spend on marketing and you’re trying to boost your sales to pull off a Super Combo, this could help you climb the charts which would hopefully pay itself off, but if you’re a poor Indie this might not be an optimal marketing avenue.

If I had a bunch of money to burn and caught a big bump in sales from some event, and I was trying to boost it up further with a Super Combo strategy and it came down to choosing between App Circle and Admob, I’d go with App Circle because you’re only paying for legitimate installs.

The Almighty Apple Feature

Everyone knows this is the big one. It’s a magical wonderful mysterious instant sales boost that propels you into fame & fortune (for a few days at least), and nobody really knows what the criteria for being Featured is or how it’s determined which App will get the golden ticket. The unfortunate news is that I don’t know how Apple’s Feature system works either, so if you’re reading this hoping to find out how to get Featured, I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you a few things related to it, based on what I’ve researched:

What MIGHT Affect It

This is based on reading about the experiences of people who’ve been Featured, and some basic logic. The jist seems to be that Apple tends to Feature games that make their system look good. Whether it’s that you use a bunch of the device’s features (Game Center, multiplayer, accelerometer, etc.), or that you’re showing off phenomenal graphics (Infinity Blade anyone?), or that you’re doing something totally new with your game design or control scheme that no one has done before (Pocket God, etc.).

On top of that, it seems like a large number of sales in a short period of time gets Apple’s attention. If a game is catching on with the masses, Apple is likely to show it off. It’s possible that a lot of 5-Star reviews may get a game to show up on Apple’s radar, but I couldn’t begin to guess how many you’d need or what ratio of good to bad reviews you’d need. There’s also knowing someone at Apple or getting a specific Apple employee’s attention directly, but if you can do that you’re probably not reading this article.

You can find a lot of people’s tips and advice on how to get Featured by doing a simple Google search. There’s all sorts of theories on it that go into way more detail, like creating niche Apps, releasing them on specific days of the week, etc. So just as a final note: E-Mailing Apple directly and asking to be Featured, or reminding them of how awesome your game is doesn’t seem to do anything. I don’t know if it hurts, but it definitely doesn’t seem to influence them positively, going by what I’ve read from Developers who’ve tried it.

New & Noteworthy

When your game first goes live, you’ll automatically get mentioned in the New & Noteworthy section so for a day you get to feel awesome and get a chance for your game to fluke out and catch on before it gets pushed down the charts by all the other New & Noteworthy games. This is a big part of why Developers try to focus their marketing and sales on Day 1, you’ve automatically been given a slight foothold on a silver platter by default that you’ll probably never get that easily again so that’s the time you want people checking out your game.

Prepare In Advance

From what I’ve read, when Apple IS planning to Feature you it can be pretty out of the blue and mysterious. You basically get an E-Mail from Apple saying “Send us a bunch of art at such and such sizes.” and you’re not sure what exactly is going on. But you send what they request off to them and next thing you know, bam, you’re Featured and your sales are spiking like crazy and you sail off into the sunset on your golden speedboat.

…actually, Apple asking for more artwork is NOT a guarantee you’ll actually get Featured, as a few super-disappointed Devs have found out the hard way (ouch!! What a kick in the nuts hey). But either way, it’s good to have this stuff ready to go. Check the iTunes Connect Developer Guide (the “Promotional Artwork” section specifically) for what sort of stuff you should have ready to go.

Plan a Super Combo

So you’ve just been Featured by Apple. All you do now is sit back and watch the money roll in and look up which model of golden speedboat you want to buy, right? Well, you CAN do that, but like I stated earlier, everything in the App Store tends to follow the same pattern of a sudden spike followed by a steep drop-off and back into nothingness. A Feature isn’t necessarily any different aside from being bigger in proportion. Sure, if you get Featured and it dies off you’re probably going to still be doing better on a day-to-day basis than you were before the Feature, but when Rovio, Chillingo, Halfbrick, etc. get Featured do you think they just sit back and relax? Or do they do stuff to help boost their game even further up the charts?

Whether it’s buying a visual revamp of the Touch Arcade website’s background, using a marketing agency to spread massive word-of-mouth, Launching Press Releases announcing the Feature, holding contests for prizes, creating merchandise, adding updates, etc. try to have a general plan in mind for what you’ll do if your game gets Featured. You’ll really only have anywhere from a couple days to a week max to put a plan into action before the magic of the Feature wears off like the Invincibility Star in Mario and you’re back to running away from Goombas…so a little planning ahead of time could be the difference between the Feature boosting your rank to 60 on the charts and then you drop back down to 150 after a week, or the Feature boosting your rank to 60 on the charts and your Super Combo secures you a place in the Top 20 for a couple months.

Crowdfunding

This is a relatively new concept the Internet has created. The jist is that you put up a page announcing you need money for your project, and thousands of people interested in it all donate a few bucks (and often get something from the Developer in return, whether it’s their name in the game or a free copy of the game when it’s done, etc.). The person posting the project ends up with the funding they need, and everyone is only out a small amount of money. It’s a fascinating concept and I might dabble in it myself if I get financially tight and can’t fund a project with my own money.

Here’s a blog with a list of 9 crowdfunding websites. Be sure to do your research before you sign up with any of them.

Kickstarter

This seems to be the most popular service for crowdfunding right now. The FAQ on the Kickstarter website explains everything pretty clearly, so I won’t re-hash it all. Here’s a link to Robots Love Ice Cream’s Kickstarter page that you can use for an example of how to present your project, rewards you can offer, etc. This one made the rounds on Twitter and got some blog mentions and has successfully achieved its $18,000 funding.

CONCLUSION

And with that we conclude the main ways to blow all our rent money on advertising haha They say you have to spend money to make money. Huge corporations like Pepsi, Nike, etc. invest a ton of money into their marketing every year, not even to get instant results but just to keep their brand in the public eye. As Indie Devs we generally don’t have a ton of money, and when we DO make money, we’re eager to hold onto it with an iron grip or invest it into the development of the next game etc., instead of investing some of it right back into marketing to keep feeding the fire. The main thing is just to make sure you do your research and track your results. Have definite goals and if you’re not achieving them, fiddle with your formula. There’s no shame in making mistakes, unless a little research could have prevented them.

Coming up: Article III – Game Related & Maintenance, where I’ll cover game related marketing like what to put in a Press Kit, writing and sending out Press Releases, the benefits of keeping a development blog, and some guidelines for maintaining all the marketing I’ve discussed, like keeping your social media presence up, and handling and responding to negative reviews of your game!（Source：gamasutra）