Hey! I recently released my first game to the AppStore called Rolly!
Now, its been online for a good 24 hours (came on last night at like 8 ). I checked my stats the next day on iTunesConnect and saw 11 downloads even-though if you search for “Rolly” right now, nothing comes up (apple has to update their search server?). But anyway, I posted the link all over the Unity forums and got 11 downloads yesterday…not bad for only the Unity forums! (thanks a lot guys!)
So, being that the only way to access my app is through the link I have provided, I thought it would be a perfect time to do an advertising test. I created an account at AdMob.com (I don’t feel like explaining it so go check it out urselves) and put an ad out for my app at $0.10 a click. Added $50 to my account this morning and it was gone like that!!!
So, tomorrow morning, it’ll be interesting what kind of numbers I get for today’s sales being that the only way to even know about Rolly at this point is through the posts on this forum, and the ads I put out…
UPDATE:
I just checked the AdMob “Statistics Page” and for $50, I got 40,127 IMPRESSIONS on websites and App’s…that’s surprising especially since it was only a matter of hours!
Impressions=how many times the Ad was put on a web-page or application (for all who didn’t know)
You’ll burn through money pretty quickly paying for impressions. Who know what sites that ad was displayed on. I’ll doubt you’ll see much of a bump from it.
Now, just to clear things up, AdMob ONLY advertises on Mobile Devices and I choose the option to only advertise on iPhones and iPods over Wi-Fi on a PAY PER CLICK BASIS not pay per impression which is what many people seem to be thinking…
keep in mind that Rolly sells for $1.99 and apple takes 30%…and apple says that these numbers do NOT reflect actual sales…so I opened up the raw text file and tried to decipher it…turns out some sh!*head paid for it once and downloaded it 16 times!!!
Come on apple! 16 TIMES?!?!?! I know that if you loose your hard drive or something, you should be able to download it again for free, BUT 16 TIMES?!?!?!? That’s half my sales!
(but that’s pretty good for still not being able to search and find “Rolly” on the AppStore)
In the end, AdMob was NOT worth it…i think i’m gonna take your guys advice and spend a little more money at TouchArcade or MacRumors…
I had heard that if someone clicks the buy button, but backs off, it counts. I don’t know how true that is. However, on the sales report, it shows an estimated $ amount. I’ve seen times where it showed less value that the # of downloads. So for tracking purposes, I’d think it’s best to look at the value, rather than sheer downloads.
It’s somewhat of a mystery… but in the end, my rough estimate has always been right around what the financials have been.
Did a basic search online…turns out there are sites where if you join for a monthly fee, someone gives you an apple id that is shared among a group of people. They pay for an application once using the monthly fee amongst themselves and download it as many times as they want…its pretty smart but apple should enforce stricter rules or monitor this better…16 TIMES!!! Come on apple, this is your money that’s being lost too!
and no, only complete downloads count…but still, if something doesn’t work, would you re-try it 15 more times?
On the financial reports, each line of the spreadsheet (except for the first line) represents one SALE then there are more columns with the vendor id, etc. then, the # of times downloaded. Therefore, if there’s a number 16 on one line, that means that there were 16 downloads for that ONE SALE.
Nope, each line represents an app and region, so if the units column says 16, that means you have made 16 sales of that app in that region. Total up all your units for that day and you will get your total sales.
Hmm…i didn’t know that…thanks for informing me…so anyway, I thought I recognized your name from somewhere…you’re the guy who does the snowboarding game! Congrads!
Being successful with your game and all, do you personally have any tips for promoting your app other than posting it all over forums?
EDIT:
Oh, I could have just looked in your signature the whole time! DUH!
conair360 - It is important to note that one of the major things that ezone did to make Crazy Snowboard successful was to improve and polish it. It is now more popular because it is a better game, not because he found someway to advertise it.
I bought you game. Worry about adding new levels like you promised, better artwork and more game play.
Its funny you say that…uploading v1.1.0 to iTunesConnect right now…added a turret gun and a bomb dropper…six more levels and a new texture along with performance enhancements and a new gui skin…and a “Bullet Time” feature
have fun with it and thanks for your purchase!
@ ezone…still, I’d like to know if you used advertising services like AdWords or AdMob and if you had success with them, what tips you would give. Thanks!
And most of these sites haven’t published any review for it yet…
The biggest thing we have going for us is that (right now) we are the only snowboarding game app in the store, and snowboarding is smack in the middle of the iphone demographic sweet spot. So I think most of our sales are generated from people doing a search for snowboard from their iphone or itunes.
If you are looking for a marketing silver bullet then do everything you can to get apple to feature your app in the app store. We haven’t been featured yet, but that is where all our marketing efforts are going.
