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。

本文是第三部分内容：资料及维护篇

网站

显然，你需要为游戏找一个合适的网站，幸运的是你无需为此大费周章。最近很多游戏开发者在Wordpress网站上都拥有一个网页，或者拥有一个单页网站用于宣传他们的游戏。像苹果的“Available On The App Store”图像就让用户能够快速地发现游戏的存在。在网站上提供一些游戏相关图片，预告片，以及营销广告和宣传资料链接，让那些想要帮助你宣传游戏或者评价游戏的人能够更便捷地了解你的游戏。花点钱去注册一个类似于“http://www.thegame.com/”的域名，让用户能够直接访问你的游戏网站，使那些专业人士，德高望重人士或者普通玩家能更加重视你的游戏。

App Store描述

有许多网站可以帮助你编写App Store描述，也有一些仅是提供给你一些诀窍。花一些时间上谷歌搜索一些诀窍，自己编写App Store的描述，可以因此省去一些多余的费用。你可以按照以下的结构进行编写：

-前两句引人注目（当用户刚进入iTunes的游戏App Store时，他们只能看到关于游戏描述的首两句话，其它内容只有点击进入才能看到）

-快速描述或者总结概念，情节或目标等等（有趣的宣传推广方式）

-引用接收到的评价或夸奖（人们总是喜欢尝试别人赞许的事物）

-更深入的功能表（列出更多能够突出你游戏特色的细节）

-联系资料（游戏的网站，Twitter链接，常见问题链接等）

我的App Store中关于《Elusive Ninja》的描述违背了上述的一些观点，销量并不好，所以千万不要参考《Elusive Ninja》的描述，也许我只是想通过这款游戏进行测试，看看是否摆脱了这些标准我们也能创造出好的App Store描述，但是现实却是残酷的，而我也遭到低销售量的惨痛代价。所以“照我说的做吧”！

App Store截图

你可以张贴出5张截图，所以好好利用这个机会吧。最初我只想着张贴原始截图，但是来自游戏开发商Ravenous Games的Derek却使用了一个模版把我的截图变得更加生动。我喜欢他所创造的这种样式，所以决定如此张贴我的截图。在我的宣传资料袋（Press kit）里还有好多未加工的原始截图，但是在App Store中却是一些经过处理的截图，以此更好地吸引玩家的注意。我并不是“截图中的小截图”的死忠粉丝，因为我认为在购买一款游戏之前都希望能够清楚地看到游戏的画面效果，但是我认为《Elusive Ninja》的画面效果非常清晰，即使原始截图被压缩后也不会影响其效果。我不知道这种转化好不好，也许人们更喜欢未加工的原始截图，但是我喜欢图像表现出来的奇特感，所以我选择使用后者。

同时也需要记住，很多评论者并不是根据App Store上的截图做出评论，所以他们并不希望看到这些精心加工的截图以及上面附带的营销内容。而且评论者也不善于应对这些华丽的截图，因为这些营销广告会让他们感觉自己也是在为游戏做宣传。所以请理解他们更喜欢原始截图的想法，最好能将游戏网站的logo和标题文本嵌入截图中。如果你正在制作华丽的截图，确保能同时提供你的Press kit的链接地址，以此满足那些喜欢原始截图的人的需要。

预告片

如今你需要一个预告片。每个人都想要了解游戏的运行情况。但是你必须记住，不能在预告片里泄漏太多信息。最好让你的预告片尽可能的简短，以此才能吸引玩家的好奇，过长的预告片只会让玩家感到厌烦。我曾经看过许多关于益智游戏以及简单的动作类游戏的预告片，很郁闷的是如此简单的游戏却有长达5-10分钟的预告。如果游戏理念很简单，尽可能地把预告片的时间压缩在30-60秒之内。玩家们想通过预告片进一步了解游戏，掌握游戏中的特殊技巧和功能，但是如果预告片不能如他们所愿，将会让他们对游戏失去兴趣。

在你快完成游戏设计之前尝试着去制作你的预告片。你想要在游戏真正发行之前便开始进行宣传，而带有游戏设置介绍内容的预告片能够帮助你做到这点，你也会因此获得一些反馈，而根据这些反馈对游戏做出适当调整，从而让它能以更好的状态出现在市面上。

DIY预告片

不幸的是，苹果并未真正提供制作游戏预告片的简易工具。这点让我很惊讶.你也许会觉得这个工具应该是在游戏被安装的时候录制游戏预告片的简单设备，但是没有！你只能通过苹果模拟器让游戏运行然后通过桌面录制设备来完成预告片的录制。对于iPhone游戏来说这并不是一件坏事，因为它们不需要使用疯狂的控制器和电话功能，而对于iPad来说就不同了，iPad模拟器慢到让人抓狂，我甚至不能想象用它来记录影片会是什么场景。

我想尝试SimCap（游戏邦注：这是一个新的应用，可帮助捕捉桌面上的视频显示），这是专门用来记录模拟器的一种新型应用。SimCap的最大优点便是它带有SoundFlower（游戏邦注：虚拟的音频数据传输软件）能够帮助记录音频。从根本上说，SoundFlower能够让音频能够与视频同步出现。其实这个过程很困难，我自己都不是很理解这一机制，但是根据教程我却能够轻易且完美地实现这一步骤。

我使用影视特效去制作我的预告片，而你也可以使用iMovie（苹果电脑编写的视频剪辑软件）， Adobe Premier（视频编辑软件）或者 Adobe Premier（微软开发的一款简易非线形编辑软件）等软件进行操作。你也可以去谷歌上搜索一些有用的程序，付费或者免费获得它们。截取游戏中一些有趣的片段，做一些稍许的改动，添加一些文本以描述游戏的功能，如果你不能抓取游戏的音频，就用一些吸引人的音乐替代作为游戏的背景乐，然后上传这个视频到YouTube即可。

外包预告片

像oDesk和Elance等自由网站上有许多人在提供预告片编辑的服务。你必须投入80-300美元不等的费用去让别人帮你制作预告片，但是如果你没有任何艺术细胞或者不想为了制作视频而做深入研究，那么这种外包方式将能帮你省下不少钱和时间。虽然在一些微任务网站上，如UpHype和Fiverr也有一些人也在提供预告片编辑服务，而且要价只要5-10美元，但是我却怀疑这种价格到底能有怎样的服务质量，所以我对这些网站不抱太大的期望。

Press Kit

这是很多独立游戏开发者并未察觉到的一大策略。当一个评论者想要评论你的游戏时，他们同时也想在文章上张贴截图或者一些游戏图像，或者他们的网站上有一些特定的设计模版，让他们能够按照这一模版进行评论，而这时候他们就更需要标题截屏，游戏图像或者游戏玩法的截屏等等。但是除此之外，我发现迄今为止很多评论类文章都是简单地截取自你的游戏描述中，不过你也不要抱怨了，谁让你自己暴露了那些信息呢！关键是我们必须知道很多评论者不管在什么时候都掌握了很多资讯，特别是关于iPhone的相关信息，因为很多新开发者在制作新游戏的时候每天都会与这些评论者进行交流，所以你应该让他们能够尽可能简单地对你的游戏做出评论。

里面有什么内容？

我的《Elusive Ninja》的宣传资料袋里好像装了太多东西了，但是我认为多总比少好。

它里面包括：

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\BPO_logos\

这里包含各种版本/大小的BPO（游戏邦注：工作外包的单人独立游戏工作室）logo。有横的，竖的，黑的，白的，全彩的，以及透明背景的PNG格式。如此齐全的选择让人们能够挑选最适合自己布局的logo。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\游戏_图像\

这里有来自真实游戏中的各种图像。曾经我为了适应大屏幕的iPad而调整了较大的游戏图像，而这些图像可以轻易地被拼凑在一起，我抓取了《Elusive Ninja》的一些游戏界面，点缀图像，以及标题logo，而将它们集中地放在这里。如果我从游戏中获得了概念艺术，角色设计等内容，我也会将它们归进来的。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\图标\

当你最后提交游戏到App Store中时，你将选择一系列大小不同的图标，从最小的57×57到最大的512×512。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\新闻稿\

对于《Elusive Ninja》，到目前为止我拥有一篇新闻稿，如果我有机会举办编写更多新闻稿的话（如游戏更新或交叉促销时），我将把相关资料添加近来。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\屏幕截图_精选\

这些是App Store中我的屏幕截图的精选版本，包括一些修饰和营销广告。对于App Store来说，这些精选很有利，因为能够帮助它们吸引到更多用户的注意，但是同时你也需要注意，评论者并不喜欢使用这些精选版本，或者说不会使用它们，因为如果使用这些带有营销广告的截图，那么这些评论者看起来就像是在为游戏做广告，如此看来我们便能理解为何他们更喜欢原始截图了，因为他们可以自由地在上面张贴自己的网站logo等等内容。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\屏幕截图_原始\

请记住这些可是原始的截图。虽然精选截图只有5个“名额”，但是你却能随意安置20个任意的原始截图。我认为可以选择多种不同的截图，以便使评论者不用使用相同的截图。从游戏中抓取截图是一件很痛苦的事，所以为了能让评论者更容易对游戏做出评论，你需要事先截去一些游戏图像。

另一个好处便是你可以自行选择置于宣传袋中的截图，你可以确保20张截图都是合适的，而不是其他人随机截取的图像，因为那些图像有可能会出现一些效果低劣的情况，如你的主角被挡住了等等。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\AppStore简介

对于这一点我只是放置了我所写的App Store相关描述。我用不同格式保存了这一描述：.TXT， .DOC和.ODT，因为有些网站支持粗体，有些却支持斜体等，当然了也有只允许使用原始文本的网站。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\概况介绍.PDF

这是一个很大的PDF格式文件（需要你花点时间将其压缩为2 meg的文件，而不是巨大的20 meg或者丑陋的400k压缩文件），你可以将一些合适的文本形式保存下来，让人们可以点击获得它并在上面进行剪贴或者点击相关链接等等。我几乎把《邪恶联盟》的布局以及一些相关的概况介绍都复制下来了。说实在的，我并不能肯定这么做是否有意义，如果人们正眼看待并使用这些文件那答案就是肯定的了，而且这些文件用于游戏中的图像和截图中，并不需要耗费我们太长的时间去整理组合，看起来较为专业，所以我很乐意使用它们。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\概况介绍.PNG

如果人们想要把概况介绍张贴在自己的网站上，那么这种压缩版本便最为适合。我随意地往宣传资料袋里塞了好多东西，因为这是我第一次进行这项工作，我不知道哪些资料有用哪些无用，抱着宁愿多放也不想遗漏的理念。

\《Elusive Ninja》_宣传资料袋\《隐蔽忍者》_宣传资料袋.ZIP

出于方便而将上述文件转化成ZIP文件格式。我尝试着将最大的文件也保持在10 meg左右。因为我认为人们肯定不喜欢太大的宣传资料袋文件，没有人会去下载50 meg的资料袋吧，除非他真心喜欢像《光晕》这类型的游戏。除了将宣传资料袋附加在电子邮件上，我还特制作了一个相互连接的短网址。我很担心人们会不会不相信短文件链接（特别是随机生成的URL文件），所以我想同时涵括2种链接，就像“这是原始文件，这是方便的压缩文件！”

独家内容

有一些网站表示想了解我今后游戏的一些独家内容。我并不想这么做，除非真的有一些新闻媒体对我的游戏很感兴趣。对于下一款游戏，我可能会添加一些不一样的东西，包括幕后的一些波澜和竞争或者用户所感兴趣的一些新鲜事物。拥有独家内容的网站能够让你的内容得到关注，而你也会因为它们的突出而备受瞩目，这是一种双赢局面。

新闻稿

新闻稿能够让外界知道你正在做些什么。我们的商业顾问建议我们能够尽可能地写好新闻稿。实际上，因为你可以使用很多免费的新闻稿编写服务，所以这么做对你来说并没有太大的损失。

你可以打开我的博客目录，那里有我不久前体验过的不同服务以及体验后的结果。回过头来看，的确，拥有更多的新闻稿也总比没有的好，因为在新闻稿公布后，你的公司，游戏名字将被更多媒体所熟知，他们也会更加愿意选择你的游戏或者将你的新闻稿作为头条新闻进行刊登（比起他们从未听说过的公司来说这种情况好太多了）。你也会因此收到一些连线请求。就像在我发表了第一篇新闻稿后，很多之前不知道我们公司的媒体便主动要求采访我。

编写新闻稿

我选择自己编写新闻稿，因为我发现网络上到处都是“如何写好新闻稿”的文章。在谷歌上进行搜索，那里有很多编写新闻稿的细节内容，如如何编排文章，应该提及什么或者不应该说到什么等等。

外包新闻稿

你可以雇佣其他人帮你编写新闻稿，很多营销商和自由作家都提供这种服务。但是我认为花100美元或者更多钱去雇佣其他人帮你描述你的产品，或者帮你写发表文章真的是件很愚蠢的事，因为比起其他人，你更了解自己想要表达什么，特别是当你需要频繁发布新闻稿的时候。但是如果你不擅长写作，或者英语并非你的第一语言，那么这一做法就很有价值了。

提交新闻稿

当你向不同网站提交你的新闻稿时你需要耗上一点时间，因为每个网站对于文章的格式，长度以及各部分的划分都有不同要求，如果你是自己编写新闻稿的，那么你只需要花上一些时间直接提交新闻稿即可。但是如果你是雇佣其他人帮你编写，那么有可能你需要重新拆分文章或者将其进行改写，以便适应不同格式要求的网站。

你也可以雇佣一些人帮你提交新闻稿，我之前并未这么做过，但是我想下次尝试看看能否因此省下一些不必要的麻烦。你可以向一些收费网站提交新闻稿，但是如果你资金紧张的话当然也可以选择一些免费的网站进行张贴。

排行榜

如果你的游戏是以社区交流为基础或者带有竞争性，那么你可以考虑发行游戏排行榜。奖励那些位于排行榜前列的玩家，推动玩家的游戏竞争，或者在博客上公布获胜者等等。

周边产品

不要在这上面投入太多钱。如果你的游戏很受欢迎位于排行榜的前十名，那么你可以放心地花钱进行推广（首先进行市场调查），但是如果你的游戏并没有太大的名气，那么也不会有人去关心你的推广活动的。但是如果你有了空闲时间，并且有了“闲情逸致”，那么你可以考虑将一些内容拼凑在一起创造一个类似于“咖啡新闻”的免费网站。你可以将游戏中的一些图像墙纸拼凑在一起。游戏公司The Behemoth便尝试着制作出他们游戏角色的雕塑/玩具。游戏开发者更关心他们首几款游戏的成败而不是推销，但是如果他们能够免费且更简单，快速地进行这项工作，那么推销对于他们来说也是很有帮助的。我将《Elusive Ninja》的墙纸拼凑在一起，因为我只是简单地使用游戏中的一些图像进行拼凑所以很快便完成了这项工作，但是我知道除了我现实中没有人会真正去使用这些图片的。

维护

那么，你现在已经获得很多与你游戏相关的东西了。Twitter，Facebook帐号，广告，评论，博客等等。但是还没有结束！一旦你获得了这些东西，你就更需要去维护他们的稳定，并保持信息的更新。让我们快速浏览一些有帮助的内容：

旗帜广告

随时观察你的旗帜广告，并判断哪一些广告是真正有成效的，而非只是解析你的App Store页面或者只是表面广告。如果你的广告并未达到预期效果，那么今后几个月时间内不要去更新它了，把钱投资在其它地方或者其它类型的市场营销中。如果你是小型独立游戏开发者，那么你便需要投入更多地时间于此，因为你缺少大量的投资资金。而如果你来自一个拥有大把营销资金的大公司，那么你便不需要时时刻刻盯着这些广告了，因为你的金钱可以帮助你达到一些可能的目标。

Twitter/Facebook

在这些网站上随时保持更新！特别是Twitter。而Facebook你倒不需要管得太勤，你可以只是那里回复一些关于公告或者与你有关的评论。Twitter现在很庞大，很多人每天都在使用它，所以你也需要在这里有自己的立足之地。我曾经试过几周时间不上网，但是因此却错过了很多实时更新的内容，错过许多转发别人有趣内容的机会，错过很多有趣的交谈以及很多游戏开发行业中的新动态等。

我在iPhone和笔记本电脑上安装了社交阅读器，使我能够在外出，搭车或者上厕所的时候也能刷新内容，同时我也保持这些网站在电脑后台的运行，以便我在工作的时候也能收到新Tweet的弹出窗口。

论坛发帖

我开始使用火狐浏览器和LastPass（在线密码管理器和页面过滤器），它们都很方便。我几乎把所有帐号和密码都保存在LastPass上以便我能够自动登录，当我在论坛发表帖子的时候我也可以将其记录在我们的书签上。所以我可以随时点击“打开所有的标签”从而看到我所有帖子，并自动登录让我能够第一时间了解是否有新的回复，如果有回复的话我便可以登录上去做出回应了。这真的是一个很有效率的工具。

评论

当你收到新评论时，记住先感谢评论者，不论他是通过Twitter还是电子邮件，或者直接在你的文章下面做评论。这么做一方面是出于礼貌，另一方面还能够帮助你与评论者建立良好的关系。

评论者需要花费时间去为你的游戏做出评论，你也能因此而受益，而你只需要花费几分钟时间就可以发表感谢的语言。

如果你的网站设有评论区，并且有人在上面发表观点或者提问问题，那么你应该对此做出正面且中肯的回答。这是帮助你与玩家建立其良好关系的重要方法。

我注意到有些人喜欢匿名发表一些严厉的评论，但是当开发者出现在评论上时，所有人的语调就瞬间变柔和了。当然了，他们并不好突然巴结你，而且他们对你的游戏给出负面评价也是正常的，因为每个人都有自己的观点，但是他们却会因此扭转了整体的气氛：

评论者1：“这款游戏真失败！”

评论者2：“看起来很放荡！”

评论者3：“简直是浪费钱！”

开发者：“大家好！我是这款游戏的开发者。我很好奇你们对这款游戏的哪一方面感到不满意，如果不介意的话能否跟我细说？如此我也许能够在做出修改，或者至少在我下一款游戏中更加慎重考虑这些观点。

评论者2：“我不买这款游戏是因为它应该卖0.99美元而非4.99美元”

评论者3：“1个小时之内我就能轻松地完成这款游戏”

评论者1：“（罗列出两大段批评这款游戏的方方面面）”

开发者：“非常感谢你们。我也一直很担心这款游戏是否太过简单了，但是作为游戏制作者，我们一直在接触游戏，所以真的很难对此做出明确的判断。我将考虑添加一些较难的关卡，以便让这款游戏对得起这个价格。但愿我有能力让这款游戏免费出售，但是我却不得不因此为自己买单。:)”

说实在地，让每个人都喜欢你的游戏确实很困难，但是如果能够友好对待玩家并让他们知道你正认真阅读他们的评价，便能因此减少一些不必要的负面评价，而因此能让你的帖子看起来更亲近，并给读者留下好印象，从而帮助你与玩家建立起良好的关系，有时候还会为你争取到更多有意义的反馈。

预告片

如果你的游戏中有一些新事物出现（如新的地图，新的角色以及新的结局等），那么你可以将这些新事物整合成一个新的游戏预告片。如果你的游戏是拥有很多主要角色的角色扮演游戏，或者带有多个核心机制的益智类游戏，那么你的预告片可以着重描绘每一个角色或者每一个游戏机制（Capcom便为旗下游戏《街头霸王》制作了这样的预告片）。

新闻稿

在谷歌上搜索你的新闻稿中的关键词并看看他们会出现在哪里。因为你并不知道读者会被你的哪篇新闻稿所吸引，所以尽可能多地编写你的新闻稿吧，只要你自己编写并提交给那些免费的发布网站，那么就不需要多花钱了。赶紧试试吧！

Press Kit

有需要的话随时更新你的Press Kit。如果你需要更新一些游戏图像，你可以将一些截图放到这个资料袋中。

博客

定期写博客。我们都未完美地做到这一点，所以你也不要自责了。我曾经为了让自己看起来更有责任感而坚持100多天每天更新，但是有时候我也会遗漏掉或者每天更新四五次以弥补一些空白。其实你的博客不需要长篇大幅，只要让读者知道你仍然在坚持守护这个博客便可。说实话，我现在看起来有点虚伪了，因为我在写这篇文章的时候已经有超过2周没更新博客了。当我关注于这个长篇营销文章时，除了日常的一些琐碎我确实没什么好写的内容了。当然了，当我完成这篇文章后我将再次回到博客中进行更新，但是我应该不可能再坚持每天一篇的信念了吧。

你可以在Digg（以科技为主的新闻站点）或Twitter等平台发表“文章”。你并不知道什么内容才能吸引读者的兴趣。我曾经发表过一篇关于制作雨景效果的文章，有人把他张贴在Hackernews（游戏邦注：一家关于计算机黑客和创业公司的社会化新闻网站）便开始有许多人围绕这一话题展开讨论，而我则因此获得了大量的网站流量以及忠实粉丝。而如果我没提交这篇文章，读者也不会看到它们。

确保你的网站允许玩家做出评论和反馈。可能刚开始你只能收到1，2条评论，甚至你的很多文章在一开始并没有任何评论，但是随着时间的过去评论便会越来越多了。同时你还必须对评论者做出回应，因为如果他们花时间对你的文章做出评论，那么就意味着他们将与你的游戏发展共同前进，而以后你也能继续听取他们更多的反馈。这就是我所说的“结交新朋友”，所以千万不要羞于表现自我。

竞赛活动

当你有时间的时候可以尝试着规划游戏竞赛活动。反复进行游戏竞赛并没有什么错（就像每周高分竞赛一样）。一段时间过后你也许能想出新的奖励或者挑战观点。如果你将要开发一款新游戏，那么如何做才能帮助你的新游戏，甚至是老游戏吸引更多注意？让玩家在你的一款老游戏中进行竞赛，赢的人便能够获得新游戏的优惠码了。

The Behemoth发表Twitter称只要玩家下载其旗下《城堡毁灭者》中的Pink Knight角色更新，他们便向“Keep A Breast Foundation”捐出1美元，以支持抵抗乳腺癌的活动。这种做法不仅让人对其感到钦佩和敬仰，同时也为他们的游戏吸引到更多的关注。The Behemoth真的是一家优秀的游戏开发公司，如此高明的市场营销理念和社区营造手段值得我们学习。

推广

如果你想要进行产品推广，那么你还可以继续选择免费的“咖啡新闻”推销模式，不时地将你的新设计拼凑在一起。你也可以通过颁发竞赛奖励而进行游戏推广。

另外一种方法便是举办竞赛让别人帮你设计推广模式。就像墙纸设计竞赛或者T恤设计竞赛等。有一些很厉害的艺术家喜欢做这些工作，因为借此他们可以表现自己的才能并消磨不用开工的休闲时间。

App Store描述

当你添加了新的功能时必须同步更新相关描述，你还可以从评论中找到一些简短但却正面的观点加进去，并确保附上该评论的出处网址，出处的名声越大对你越有帮助。就像在电影中，结尾是“Roger Ebert”（游戏邦注：全美最富盛名的影评人）肯定比“我的妈妈”更加有说服力吧！

辅助工具

TweetDeck-我喜欢这个客户端。不只是因为它看起来很灵活，而且因为它的手机版本适用于智能手机，并且能让你自行安排发布Tweet的时间。比如我凌晨5点才上床睡觉，那么我可以设定一条在早上10点才能发出去的Tweet，因为那时候最多人在线。

AppFigures-这个应用跟踪网站提供了一种很不错的服务。虽然它需要每个月收取5美元的费用，但是却很值得。因为你可以在此获得大量数据，图表，你可以核对不同App Store中的所有与你相关的评论等等。同时你也可以让它每天早上给你发电子邮件，告知你前天的销售情况。

Flurry（移动分析公司）-该公司能帮助你追踪相关数据，包括玩家的游戏时间以及游戏频率等。就像我有一个事件跟踪机制来追踪用户点击“获得更多游戏”区域的行为，这样我就可以知道这个按钮有多少人点击了。

AppMetrics（iPhone）-我之前在使用免费应用程序AppStat Lite，通过这个软件我可以随时核对我的Flurry数据变化，但是在不久前我换成了AppMetrics。这个软件也是免费的，也能够帮你追踪Flurry数据，你可以了解到有多少新用户等等。虽然这与实际销售不同（盗版问题可能对此产生影响），但是你却可以因此获得一些有用信息。

bit.ly（网址缩略服务服务商）-我在bit.ly申请了一个帐户，因此我能自己定制URL短网址了。除了bit.ly/aBCdeF，你还可以输入bit.ly/elusiveninja_trailer找到自己的这款游戏。

Google Analytics -就像其他人一样，我使用这个谷歌分析工具去记录我的博客的点击率。还记不记得早前当人们的网站上还没有太多访客的时候，将访客数记录在网页底部的情况吗？看起来我真的是老了呢！

Analytic（iPhone）-当我外出时我使用iPhone上的这个软件观察网站的点击率。

Paypal-我并不是很喜欢Paypal，因为它需要我们存钱进去，但是我却发现几乎所有广告宣传，微工作以及自由网站都需要我们使用Paypal。但是现在，在Paypal页面的下方有一个选项“没有Paypal帐户？那么可以使用你的存折或者信用卡进行支付”，以此让用户无需向Paypal帐户中存钱便能够通过信用卡进行支付了。多么方便！

OpenOffice-这款软件是免费的而且很棒。我正是使用这个软件编写这篇文章，我还使用它制作我的市场营销成本和结果的电子数据表。我总是强调应该随时追踪这些数据，所以现在你更应该好好熟悉电子制表程序的相关内容！

总结

至此我们便结束了对于游戏市场营销相关维护的讨论。上述的这些内容能够帮助你节省更多时间。过段时间我想雇佣一些人帮我做这些工作。我认为一旦你有额外的经费，那么投资在全职的“市场营销人员”身上是有价值的，因为节省这些时间也是非常重要的。因为如果你的网络内容枯竭了，人们将会慢慢远离你。虽然你也可以卷土重来，但是如果现在能够维护好这些东西，建立并保持稳定的社区状况，对于独立游戏开发者来说真的很重要。除非你制作出一款抢手游戏并炒热它，那么你便可以随心所欲了，你既可以找个地方隐居起来也可以随时出来露个面，因为不管你去哪里，你的大热游戏都会牢牢占据着每个新闻网站的头条位置。

在阐述关于优化市场营销计划之前，我将在随后文章谈谈独立游戏开发者在投资于营销中有何想法，因为我认为在执行一个外部计划的同时也应该拥有一个良好的心态。将有大把大把的钱围绕着你转，你将看到你的游戏潮起潮落，你还需要应对App Store中的一些非法剽窃行为等等，如果你没有做好准备，这些因素都将会给你致命的一击，而我希望通过在接下来的心理分析内容中帮助你塑造出一个更有效率的健康心态！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie Game Marketing: ARTICLE III ? Game Related & Maintenance

by Jeff Hangartner

ARTICLE III – Game Related & Maintenance

GAME RELATED

Website

You need a website for your game, obviously. The good news is it doesn’t have to be anything epic. These days a lot of game Developers simply have WordPress blogs with a page for their game, or a simple one-page website for their game. Make sure there’s a link to your game’s App Store page in an obvious location on your site. Use the little “Available On The App Store” image Apple gives you, people recognize that quickly. Have some screenshots up, your trailer, some marketing blurb, and a link to a Press Kit for people who want to do articles or reviews of your game.

Pay a few bucks to register a domain name like http://www.thegame.com/ that redirects to your game’s website so that you can seem all professional and awesome and people take you more seriously when you link your stuff.

App Store Description

There are a bunch of sites that offer the service of writing an App Store description for your game, but there are also a bunch of sites that offer tips on what you should put in your App Store description. Spend a couple hours Googling for tips and writing your own App Store description up and save yourself the fee someone else would charge. Most of them tend to follow a common structure:

- Catchy first two lines (when the user first loads the game’s App Store page in iTunes, only the first few lines of the description are shown till the user clicks a button to show the rest)

- Quick description or summary of the concept, plot, objective, etc. (exciting marketing blurb)

- Quotes from reviews or awards received (people want what other people approve of)

- More in-depth feature list (more detail on what makes your game unique)

- Contact info (the game’s website, Twitter link, FAQ link, etc.)

My App Store description for Elusive Ninja strays a bit from this and I have like no sales, so don’t use Elusive Ninja’s description as a guide haha I’m messing around testing different stuff out with this project to see what I can and can’t get away with and where I can break out of the standard formula, but it’s probably at the cost of some sales…so like the saying goes “do as I say, not as I do”.

App Store Screenshots

You get 5 screenshots, so use ‘em all up. Originally I was going to just post raw screenshots, but Derek of Ravenous Games whipped up a template to use to make my screenshots look more fancy. I dug the look of it, so I decided to run with it. My Press Kit still has a bunch of raw screenshots for reviews and such, but your App Store screenshots should catch people’s eye. Normally I’m not a big fan of the “tiny screenshot within a screenshot” thing because I want to see the game’s art clearly before I buy it, but I figured the art in Elusive Ninja is large enough that everything is still clear even with the raw screenshot shrunk down a bit. I don’t know if this is a good move or not, people might like plain raw screenshots more, but I like the look of the fancy ones so I’m going with them for now.

Something to keep in mind is that some Reviewers just grab the screenshots for their Reviews off the App Store and might not want to use fancy ones with marketing text on them. Or they might not be ABLE to use them, because if they have marketing blurbs on them and they’re in a review it may look like the Reviewers are the ones that said “Epic Ninja Action!” and such…so understandably they’d probably rather have raw screenshots they can use and stamp their website’s logos or caption text on.

So if you’re doing fancy screenshots, make sure you have a link to your Press Kit with raw screenshots in your App Store description.

Trailer

You need a trailer these days. Everyone wants to see a game in action. Keep in mind though, that you don’t want to show too much in your trailer. Better that your trailer is too short and has people curious about your game, than too long and has people bored of your game. I’ve seen a lot of trailers where people just record themselves playing their game for 5 – 10 minutes when the game is a puzzle game or simple action game. If your game’s concept is simple, keep your trailer to 30 – 60 seconds or people will watch your trailer and learn how the game plays and what to expect, and see most of the power-ups or special features, and really there’s nothing left for them to bother buying the game to discover.

Try to get the trailer going as soon as you have nearly-finished visuals going. You want to be building up hype before the game is actually Launched, and a trailer with some cool gameplay footage can help do that, and might get you some feedback that you can use to tweak the game before it Launches.

Do-It-Yourself Trailer

Unfortunately, I was surprised to find that Apple doesn’t really provide tools for making trailers easily. You’d think there’d just be a “record the device when it’s plugged in” button but nope! It looks like the only way to really collect game footage is to run the game in the simulator and record the desktop with some kind of desktop recording program. This isn’t bad for iPhone games that don’t use crazy controls or phone features, but the iPad simulator is horribly slow and I can’t imagine recording footage off it.

I decided to go with SimCap, which is built specifically for recording from the Simulator (ie – you don’t have to crop the final footage or anything). The main benefit to using SimCap however, is that it combines with SoundFlower to record the audio. Basically SoundFlower re-routes your Mac’s audio into SimCap so it gets recorded along with the video. It’s a little cumbersome and I don’t entirely understand the mechanics myself, but all I know is the tutorial was super easy to follow, it was super quick to set up, and it worked flawlessly so I highly recommend it.

I used After Effects to arrange my trailer, but you can use iMovie, Adobe Premier, or Windows Movie Maker, etc. Google around and find a program you dig that you can afford or that’s free. Snip out chunks of exciting game footage, throw some transitions in, some text overlays describing the game’s features, add some catchy music in the background if you weren’t able to record the game’s audio as you played, upload the whole thing to YouTube and you’re good to go.

Outsourced Trailers

A lot of people on freelance sites like oDesk and Elance offer trailer-editing services. You’re probably looking at dropping anywhere from $80 – $300 to have someone else make your trailer, but if you’re not artistically inclined or don’t want to dive into the wonderful world of video editing yourself, it might be worth saving yourself a bunch of time and hassle. A few people on microjob sites like UpHype and Fiverr offer trailer-editing services but I’d be pretty skeptical about what kind of quality you’re going to get for $5 – $10 so don’t set your expectations too high there haha

Press Kit

This is something a lot of Indies don’t think to make. When a Reviewer wants to write about your game, they often want to include some screenshots, or some game art to spruce up their article, or their website has a specific design template it follows for reviews and it specifically needs a title screen shot, a piece of art, and a gameplay shot, etc. On top of all that, honestly from what I’ve seen so far, a lot of reviews and articles are just cut & pasted text out of your game’s description…but hey, no complaints, exposure is exposure! The key thing to understand is that a lot of Reviewers have a ton of stuff on their plates on any given day, especially Reviewers that cover iPhone news because there are so many new Developers with new games contacting them every day…so you want to make it as easy as possible for them to review your game.

What’s in it?

My Elusive Ninja Press Kit is probably a little excessive in places, but I figure better to have too much than too little. It contains:

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\BPO_Logos\

This contains various versions/sizes of the Bulletproof Outlaws logo. Some are horizontal, some are vertical, some are black and white, some are full color, some are

PNGs with transparent backgrounds. Main thing is just to have a variety of stuff so people can use whatever fits best on their layout.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Game_Art\

This has various art from the actual game. Since I did the original art large to fit big iPad screens, this was easy to throw together…I just grabbed some sprites of the ninja and throwing-stars and junk and the title logo and threw them in here. If I had concept art, character designs, etc. from the game, I’d put those in here too.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Icons\

When you submit your final game to the App Store you have a handful of icons for it, from tiny 57×57 ones to large 512×512 ones…so I just threw those in here.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Press Release\

Elusive Ninja only has one Press Release so far, but if I make some more (for updates or cross-promotions) I’ll add them to this.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Screenshots_Fancy\

These are the fancy App Store versions of my screenshots, with borders and marketing blurbs on them. These are great for the App Store because they look good and catch the eye, but you should keep in mind that Reviewers might not want to use them, or might not be able to use them, because if they have marketing blurbs on them and they’re in a review it may look like the Reviewers are the ones that said “Epic Ninja Action!” and such…so understandably they’d probably rather have raw screenshots they can use and stamp their website’s logos on and such.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Screenshots_Raw\

So with that in mind, these are raw screenshots. There’s only 5 fancy ones, but a solid 20 random raw ones. I figure it’s good to have a variety so that reviews won’t all use the same screenshots. It’s a pain to grab screenshots from a game so in the vein of making reviewing your game as easy as possible for the Reviewers, grab a bunch of screenshots in advance.

The other benefit to including these is that YOU can choose which screenshots are in this Press Kit, so you can make sure that all 20 shots are cool looking scenes from the game instead of someone else just randomly capturing the screen and ending up using a screenshot where your main character is obstructed or there’s some graphical glitch.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\AppStoreWriteup.TXT

For this I just grabbed the App Store description I wrote. I saved it out in a few different versions: .TXT, .DOC, and .ODT (OpenOffice) because I figure some sites allow bolding, italics, etc. and some just use raw text only.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Factsheet.PDF

This is a big .PDF file (took a while to fiddle with the compression settings to get it down to around 2 megs instead of a ridiculous 20 megs or a super compressed ugly 400k .PDF), saved out with selectable text so a person can just click-drag on it and cut & paste the text off it or click the links. I pretty much copied the layout of League of Evil and a couple other Factsheets in terms of what info to throw on there. I honestly couldn’t say if this was worth the effort in terms of if anyone actually looks at or uses this, but since it’s using in-game art and screenshots it didn’t take very long to throw together and it makes things feel more professional to me so I’m glad I made it.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\Factsheet.PNG

This is just a shrunk down version of the Factsheet in-case someone wanted to post it on their site. I threw a bit of random stuff into the Press Kit that I have no idea if someone would use, because it’s my first one and I’d rather err on the side of too much stuff than too little.

\ElusiveNinja_PressKit\ElusiveNinja_PressKit.ZIP

This is a .ZIP of all the above stuff for convenience. I tried to keep it around 10 megs max. I figure if you know you’re downloading a Press Kit, you’re not going to be mind-blown by it being large but no one wants to download like a 50 meg kit unless it’s for like, Halo. Instead of attaching this kit to E-Mails I just made a

customized bit.ly link to link directly to it (bit.ly/elusiveninja_presskit goes to the directory of raw files and bit.ly/elusiveninja_press links to the .ZIP file

directly). I was worried that people might not trust bit.ly links so much (especially the ones with randomly generated URLs) so I tended to include both links just to be like “Here’s the raw files and here’s a conveniently zipped up version!”

Exclusive Content

A couple sites mentioned that they’re interested in exclusive content for my future projects. This is something I didn’t think to do, and might not be possible until you have a few Press connections who are actually interested in your stuff. But for the next game I’ll probably whip up some exclusive stuff, whether it’s behind-the-scenes sneak peaks or contests or what-have-you. The website with the exclusive content gets attention from your stuff, and you get attention for being Featured by them, it’s a win-win situation.

Press Release

A Press Release is important for getting word out about what you’re doing. Our business coach recommended putting out a Press Release for pretty much ANYTHING.

Realistically, there’s no downside to it since you can use a bunch of free Press Release services. Check out my blog entry where I was experimenting with different services a while back and the results. Looking back, it’s probably better to have too many Press Releases than not enough…at the end of the day, it means your company and game’s name will keep crossing people’s news feeds and that might make them more likely to pick up and publish your Press Release when you have actual big news, VS a company they’ve never heard of before. It also hooks you up with some totally random connections…I got a couple interview requests from people who would otherwise have no idea I existed, off my first Press Release.

Writing A Press Release

I write my own Press Releases because there are a ton of “how to write a good Press Release” articles all over the Internet.  Hit Google up for some because they go into a lot of detail about what should be in a Press Release, what order things should be in, what to make sure to mention or what to leave out, etc.

Outsourcing A Press Release

You can hire someone else to do your Press Release for you, most marketing agencies offer this, as well as tons of freelancers. Personally, I think it’s silly to spend $100+ for someone else to write you a page worth of text about your own product or announcement since you’re the one that’s going to know the most about what you want to announce. Especially if you’re going to put out Press Releases frequently. But if you’re not a very good writer, or if English isn’t your first language, outsourcing the Press Release might be worth the money.

Submitting A Press Release

A Press Release can take a while to submit to a ton of different sites because each site has a different form and different length requirements or ways to divide up the sections of the Press Release, so if you’re doing it yourself expect it to take a good chunk of the day just to submit the thing. And if you hire someone else to write it for you, expect to have to break it apart or re-word chunks of it to fit in the various “100 characters MAX” boxes on some of the sites.

You can hire a service to submit your Press Release for you, which I haven’t tried yet but I think I might try next time, just to save myself some hassle and to see what the results are. You can also submit your Press Release to sites that charge a fee for accepting and posting them, but if you’re tight for money you really can get a pretty wide spread for your Press Release off just the free sites.

Leaderboards

Consider publishing your Leaderboard if you have a game that’s heavily community-based or competitive. Rewarding people at the top of the Leaderboard, holding contests, announcing winners on your blog, etc.

Merchandising

Don’t spend a lot (or ANY) money on this.  If your game hits huge and gets into the Top 10, it might be worth spending some money on it (do your research first!) but if your game isn’t super-popular then no one probably cares about merchandise for it.  But if you have some downtime and you’re feeling artsy-fartsy, consider throwing together some stuff and create a free CafePress store. Put some wallpapers together with in-game art. The guys at The Behemoth make little statues/toys of their characters. Odds are for your first few games no one is really going to care about merchandise, but if it’s quick to throw together and free, and creating it doesn’t take long, it doesn’t hurt to have it available.  I threw some Elusive Ninja wallpapers together for fun, but they were quick to do since I just used in-game art and realistically I know probably no one will use them but me haha

MAINTENANCE

So now you’ve got a ton of stuff out there related to your game. Twitter and Facebook accounts, banners, reviews, a blog, etc. It doesn’t end there! Once you’ve made this stuff you need to maintain it to keep your web presence solid and the information up to date. So let’s do a quick run-through of everything that needs to be maintained and some efficient ways to do that:

Banner Ads

Keep track of the results of your banner ads and try to find ways to determine which ones are bringing in actual sales, not just views of your App Store page or Impressions of the banner. If a banner isn’t reaching the goal you set for it, don’t bother renewing it and giving it a few more months, try putting that money into a banner elsewhere or some other type of marketing. If you’re a small Indie, this is the time to be experimenting because your money is limited. When you’re a big company with tons of marketing funds you can leave a bunch of stale banners that barely do anything all over the Internet, but right now you need your money bringing in the best possible results.

Twitter/Facebook

Stay on top of these! Especially Twitter. Facebook you can kind of let slide aside from responding to comments on announcements or what-have-you. But Twitter is huge right now, everyone is using it all day every day, so you want to make sure you have a presence on there. I’ve slipped a few times and been off-grid for a couple weeks and you miss a lot of what’s going on, a lot of chances to Retweet other people, a lot of conversations to participate in and get exposure from, a lot of news about what’s happening in the game development industry, etc.

I installed Tweetdeck on my iPhone and laptop so I can check it on my iPhone when I’m out and about with some downtime like riding the bus or taking a poo, and I leave it running in the background on my laptop so I can have it pop up new Tweets as I work.

Forum Threads

I started using FireFox and the LastPass add-on and it’s pretty convenient. I basically made all my accounts, saved the passwords to LastPass so I could auto-login, then whenever I made a thread I bookmarked it to a Threads section in my Bookmarks. Now I can regularly click “Open All in Tabs” and all my threads will pop up and log in for me so I can tab through them quickly to see if there are any new replies and if so I’m all logged in to respond. This is pretty efficient all-around.

Reviews

When you stumble across new reviews (or articles), take a moment to thank the Reviewer, whether it’s by Twitter, E-Mail, or leaving a comment at the end of the review.

This is partly just polite, but it’s also something that helps build good relationships with the Press. They’re taking time to review your game, which helps you out, and it only takes a minute to shoot a quick thank-you message out.

If there’s a comment section and other people have posted opinions or asked questions etc., pop in and answer the positive and neutral comments. This is part of building relationships with the Gamers that have bought or may buy your game.

I’ve noticed that people can leave some pretty harsh comments when they feel like they’re anonymous, but when when the Developer makes an appearance in the comments everyone tones it down a bit. They don’t suddenly start sucking up or anything, and if they have a negative opinion of your game that’s totally okay, everyone has their opinion…but it tends to change the vibe:

randomguy1: “this game sucks ass”

randomguy2: “looks gay”

randomguy3: “waste of money”

Developer: “hey all, I’m the dev who made this game! Just curious what parts of the game you guys don’t like if you don’t mind giving some details? I might be able to fix some stuff for an update, or at least take the feedback into consideration for our next game!”

randomguy2: “didnt buy it cuz it should be 99 not 4.99”

randomguy3: “too easy finished it in an hour”

randomguy1: “(big huge 2 paragraph critique of every aspect of the game)”

Developer: “cool, thanks guys. I was actually worried about it being too easy, but it’s hard to tell when you’re the one making the game ’cause you get used to playing it. I’ll look into releasing a set of harder levels, that might help justify the price a bit more too. Wish I could just give the game away for free, but I gotta’ pay the bills. ”

It’s not going to magically make everyone like your game or anything, but being friendly and letting people know you’re reading what they write can help reduce the big doggy-piling negativity that tends to happen in these situations. It makes the thread look less hostile to other people who read it which leaves a better impression, and it helps build a relationship with Gamers…and occasionally it can result in some useful feedback!

I’ll get more in-depth about this in Article IV – Psychology.

Trailer

If you have a new event to announce that creates new visuals in the game (new map pack, new characters, new endings), you should throw together a new trailer showing that stuff off. If you have a large game, like say, an RPG with multiple main characters, or a puzzle game with multiple big core mechanics, you could have a trailer highlighting each character or mechanic (Capcom does this kind of thing with their Street Fighter games).

Press Release

Do an occasional Google search for key phrases from your Press Release, just to see where they end up. And write a bunch of Press Releases…as long as you’re writing and submitting them yourself to free distribution services, you’re not spending money, so go for it. You never know which of your Press Releases is going to catch someone’s eye and land you mention on a website.

Press Kit

Update this if it needs it. Like if you put out an update with some new art in-game, throw some of that, or some screenshots of it, into your Press Kit.

Blogging

Do it regularly. We ALL slip at this, so don’t beat yourself up if you miss a few updates. As a way to keep myself accountable I tried updating daily for over 100 days, but I still had points where I missed a few days and had to play catch-up posting 4 or 5 updates on one day. You don’t need to do huge epic updates, it’s more just to let people know you’re still plugging away. I’m being a little hypocritical on this because as I write this I haven’t updated my blog in like 2+ weeks. It’s because I’m just focusing on writing these marketing articles and there’s not really anything to write about aside from “wrote more stuff today”. Soon as I finish this it’ll be back to regular updates, though I probably won’t shoot for daily this time.

Digg, Tweet, etc. your posts if you do something “article”-ish. You never know what’s going to pique someone’s interest. I had a post that was about making rain effects and someone posted it to Hackernews and it happened to start a little discussion on there that got me a ton of website traffic and a handful of regular Followers. If it hadn’t been submitted, they’d never have seen it.

Be sure to allows comments and feedback on your site. For the first while (LONG while) you’re not going to get more than a comment or two here and there with most of your posts having 0 comments, but over time that’ll build up. Be sure to respond to the people who DO comment, because if they took the time to comment on your post, they’re probably going to be someone who’s going to follow your progress pretty closely and you’ll likely be hearing from them again. This is that “making new friends” thing I talked about, don’t be shy!

Contests

Run these whenever you get some downtime and can manage them. There’s nothing wrong with running the same contest over and over (like a weekly high score contest).

Over time you’ll come up with new ideas for prizes or challenges and can slip those in there. And if you’re about to Launch a new game, what’s a good idea to boost attention for that game and your old games? Hold a contest for one of your older games where the prize is a Promo Code for your new game!

As I type this, The Behemoth just Tweeted that for every download of their free Pink Knight character in Castle Crashers, they’ll donate $1 to the Keep A Breast Foundation to help fight breast cancer. Not only is that totally admirable and awesome of them as genuinely good people, it’s also going to bring their game a bunch of attention. The Behemoth is really a prime gameDev company to study for marketing and community building.

Merchandising

If you decide to make some merchandise, which again you can do for free with something like a CafePress store, throw together new designs every now and then. This kind of stuff is good for giving out as contest rewards.

Another thing to consider is holding contests to have other people design merchandise. Like a wallpaper design contest or a T-Shirt design contest. There are some phenomenal artists out there who love doing that kind of thing, just as a chance to show off their skills or to kill some downtime.

App Store Description

Update this whenever you add new features in updates, and add short but positive quotes from new reviews you find. Be sure to include what site the quote came from, because the bigger name the site, the better. A movie review quote that ends in “– Roger Ebert” holds more weight than one that ends in “– My Mom” haha

RESOURCES

TweetDeck – I love TweetDeck.  Not just because it looks slick, but it’s got mobile versions for smartphones and a Scheduling option for your Tweets.  So after a late night of working where I’m going to sleep at 5am, I can Schedule a Tweet with an announcement for 10am when I’m fast asleep and everyone else is using Twitter.

AppFigures – This service is great. It’s $5/month, but totally worth paying for. You get a ton of data, charts, you can check out all your reviews in all the different App Stores, etc. And you can have it E-Mail you every morning to let you know what your sales were the day before.

Flurry – Throw this in your game to keep track of stats, from playtime and frequency of play to custom events. Like I have an event flag trigger every time someone visits the Get More Games section so I can tell how many people use that button.

AppMetrics (iPhone) – I was using a free App called AppStat Lite to check my Flurry stats on the go, but just switched to AppMetrics the other day. It’s also free and also loads your Flurry stats, so through the day you can check out how many New Users you have and stuff…it’s not the same as actual sales (since the mass amounts of piracy going on screws with the stats), but it gives you something to look at haha

bit.ly – I made an account at bit.ly so I could customize the URLs I shorten. So instead of bit.ly/aBCdeF my Elusive Ninja trailer can be found at bit.ly/elusiveninja_trailer which looks more pro.

Google Analytics – Much like everyone else in the universe, I use this to keep track of hits on my blog. Remember back when people’s websites had little “number of visitors” counters at the bottom of their sites to keep track of that? ahh, I’m gettin’ old.

Analytic(iPhone) – I use this free App to check my site hits on my iPhone when I’m on the go.

Paypal – I’m not a huge fan of using Paypal because it takes a while to deposit money into it, but all the banner advertising and microjob and freelance sites seem to require using Paypal. I found out that now you can click a “Don’t have a PayPal account? Pay with your debit or credit card as a PayPal guest” option at the bottom of the Paypal login you get redirected to and just pay directly with your credit card instead of having to have funds in your Paypal account. Much more convenient!

OpenOffice – It’s free and awesome. I’m writing this doc in it, and I use it for all my spreadsheet stuff to keep track of my marketing costs and results and all that. I’ve been stressing keeping track of all this stuff, so now’s the time for you to get familiar with a spreadsheet program!

CONCLUSION

Thus ends our look at game related marketing and maintenance. This stuff can be pretty time consuming when you’re doing everything by yourself. Ideally down the road I’d like to hire someone to do a lot of this stuff for me. I think a full-time “Marketing Guy” is a good investment once you have the money for it because while this is time consuming it’s all very important. As soon as you let your web presence die off, people start to move on. You can make a comeback, but it’s a lot easier to just pop in now and then and maintain things, and it helps build and keep a loyal community which is vital as an Indie developer these days! …until you pop out a massive hit game and make it big at which point you can then just randomly vanish whenever you want and become a hermit making random appearances here and there and still ending up on the front page of every news site.

Next up is Article IV – Psychology. Before I get into the Optimal Marketing Plan of Article V, I want to sidetrack and talk about the psychological side of being an Indie Developer spending money on marketing because I think it’s important to have a strong internal mindset as well as an outer plan to follow. You’ll be pushing large amounts of money around, watching your stats rise and fall, dealing with App Store piracy…there’s a lot that will blindside you if you aren’t prepared for it so I’m hoping the Psychology article will help Indies handle that stuff in a healthy, productive way!（source:gamasutra）