Best ways to generate more downloads in itunes?

reginald.bernardin

hello everyone

I have been constantly wondering how to generate hundreds of downloads in itunes for my app. I currently have my app available for both itunes and google play for time now. I generate way more organic downloads from google play recently ( like 70 or 100 so). But in itunes i barely generate like 20 to 30 downloads ( and that's with advertising). So what are the best ways to generated itunes downloads to be in the HUNDREDS and maybe even 1,000s. Please can someone tell me the best tips.

p.s I did and the internet marketing too, twitter,facebook,youtube, blogs. But the only thing that works is paying to advertise.

KevinCross

These are some of the stuff I will be looking at for my next, based on reading a couple of things here and there:

* Attractive / Engaging screenshots and icon in the App Store.
* Promoting all my apps from within all my apps i.e. a more apps scene.
* Keyword research (although I think I've done ok with my last game). You get a 100 characters so use as many as you can.
* Video trailers and demos shared on other video based sites, not just YouTube.
* Regular updates so that I can keep spamming social networks with new news
* Improve my site SEO so that I can pull people in from Google searches (I hate doing this part, always have).
* Create an electronic press kit (EPK) which I can share with review sites, blogs and fans.
* May even consider looking at free app a day type services, depending on their fees and results.

reginald.bernardin

hey kevin thanks for the info, So with all those things do you get hundreds and mabye even thousands of downloads. Because i did 90% of what you did (presskit,updates,videotrailers, etc..) and still i don't get in the hundreds. I think keywords may help, but it doesn't get that many downloads.

jamie_c

Those are all great suggestions but keep in mind there is never any guaranteed way to get 100's or 1000's of downloads. Just have to keep trying and keep up with it, marketing is not a one time deal.

KevinCross

I've barely scraped a 100 downloads total with my last game so I'm not able to give any advice, I was just listing out the things I will try with my next based on things I've read recently, just in case there was any there that you or others hadn't thought of.

Can you not redo your trailer and make it funny somehow to increase the chance it would be shared and go viral? Or throw in a couple of kittens? People love kittens

reginald.bernardin

I could, i was thinking about it. But I think keywords maybe a good factor. Some indie game developer said he put certain keywords and he got thousands of downloads. also do you think your rank goes up in itunes if you get many good reviews. I have like 4 and 1/2 star average rating. Does getting more reviews bring your rank up?

KevinCross

From my understanding, downloads increases the ranks, not ratings. It could be a factor of the two, as I guess a million downloads all rated 1 star probably wouldn't rank too well but a million downloads with a mix bag of ratings or next to no ratings would probably rank quite well. This is purely my opinion/impression.

Asobu_Games

Your keywords and App title are the only ways people will naturally find your game through searching the App Store, so these are crucial, especially if you don't have the big marketing budget to drive traffic. The other stuff (nice icon,screenshots etc) is important to turn views into downloads but these are no good if no one sees your game to begin with. In my last update I improved my title/keywords and instantly jumped from ~20 a day to 60 or 70 a day. It's not thousands but still a big improvement at over 300%.

A few tips:
- Sneak a few extra keywords into the title. Add a hyphen and subheading for more keywords eg 'blackjack' could be 'Blackjack - Vegas Casino' to sneak in 2 extra words. These count as regular keywords.
- Do your research and add localizations with translated keywords. My best downloads are in Asian countries (Japan,China,Taiwan etc) since localizing. If you can't afford full translations just use English for the description (default anyway) and just translate keywords and maybe title.
- Choose keywords that will have decent search traffic but low competition. Don't try to compete on words like slots, arcade, puzzle, angry birds etc unless you already are ranked high with heaps of downloads. Otherwise you will get swamped by a million other competing apps. Better to be the top result for a less popular word than on the 8th page for a popular word where no one will see you.

Asobu_Games

As for social media etc, I've seen lots of people say stuff like 'I tried twitter and it didn't work, etc. These things take a long time and lots of effort to build up. Just stick with it.

That goes for making games and marketing them in general. There is no magic way to make a huge overnight hit. Just keep working hard to constantly improve all aspects of your games and researching new and better marketing techniques. Rovio made 50 non-hit games before Angry Birds or so the story goes. Good luck!

reginald.bernardin

Thanks Asobu your a big help. I will try and play with my key words and title. I am currently experimenting with this site called app store rankings (or sensor tower i think they changed the name). But it helped me alot, words that. But my question also Asobu is that if you get many high star reviews your rank goes up also? is this true cause i am currently receiving good reviews?

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Selling games is a very competitive business. It can take years to build a brand and audience, there are no overnight successes. What you're experiencing is very common. This is why most people on here make one or two games and give up.

reginald.bernardin

I never give up..

Asobu_Games

I just signed up to AppCodes.com which seems to be a good keyword research tool. It's $15 a month but you could always cancel after a month if you didn't like it. Basically you put in a search term and it tells you how many apps will show up for that search to give you an idea of the competition (if it's less than 50, otherwise it says 50+) It also shows how your app ranks for that term if you already use those keywords, and a rating of how popular the term is with users. It gives you a good idea which of your keywords are working for you and which are just wasted.

Another keyword tip is that Apple automatically includes SOME (but not all) plurals. For example I know if you use the keyword 'slot' you also get 'slots'. You can save a character by dropping the 's' and save 5 if you had previously been using both words. Basically you should the singular word, search the store to see if you come up for the plural, and if you don't you might want to add it for the next update.

One more tip, Apple might silently cancel one of your words if it is misleading, or a copyright problem etc. They wont necessarily tell you. So if you take a risk and do try to use 'Clash,Clans' or 'Candy,Crush' etc as your keywords, make sure you go back and check if they have allowed those words by searching for your app using them. If they have blocked them then you are just wasting characters so should change them in the next update. Btw I don't recommend using those high competition words, just saying its wise to check if you feel like some of your words might be considered questionable.

Asobu_Games

As for how rankings affect where you show up for a search term, I don't think anyone really knows Apple's mysterious algorithm, but I've heard that it mostly based on downloads, though ratings may also play a role. I've even heard that they track stuff like frequency and duration of play sessions but I don't know anything about that.

Either way, even if they don't count towards search, good ratings will help with downloads as people will be more likely to download your app once they discover it if it has good ratings. I've heard that bad ratings do more harm in this regard than no ratings at all which makes sense.

BoomshackBarry

You've posted some really useful stuff in this thread @Asobu_Games, thanks it's much appreciated!

Asobu_Games

Thanks @BoomshackBarry! I have been looking into this topic a lot lately and was actually thinking of doing a blog post on the subject

BoomshackBarry

Great idea, stuff like this is really useful to know. I've got your blog firmly in my bookmarks bar so I'll be keeping an eye open for it

iamcartez

Great advice man. Others need to see this and not give up.

reginald.bernardin

yep thanks asobu games. I'm glad i put this post up, it opens up opportunities for other indie gamers.

reginald.bernardin

Hey guys also there another key word search site called sensor tower. they have a 14 day trial, but make sure they don't charge your card after 14 days they will kindly refund it back to you. and there's app annie too.

Team6Labs

Sensor Tower is a good place to start. Check out our services http://www.AppReviver.com if you want to get some more downloads. Only $99.

zypp1

I think rovio had something like 27 games out before angry birds

just keep trying.

Also I've found that with time my skills in gs programming and art skills have dramatically increased over the years, and each game you build lends a base to add on for all new games you make.

typing "angry birds" in keywords can't harm lol <--dont do it--

wpaten

Something else that we do is sending our app out for review to different sites. We were getting no sales from Sweden and then immediately after a review we started receiving about 5-10 sales per day just from there. So we started doing that to as many places as we could. Our Paid sales went up 45% from just that alone.

Team6Labs

@wpaten Sending your app out to different review sites is almost a waste of time unless you have connections to someone on the inside. Review sites get so many request that most are ignored.

wpaten

@Team6Labs I guess it depends on which category of game you are creating for. If you are making just a straight up Endless Runner game, then yes, the app store is getting inundated with that kind of stuff, and it might make it hard to get reviewed by a site like 148apps.com (probably impossible). Our niche is the Education Market, aimed at kids 2-5 years of age. With that in mind, our reviews have not needed an inside source.

When we send out our stuff for reviews, we go through the same wait cycle that i assume everyone goes through (1-3 months wait time). But once reviewed, we see a distinctive increase in sales to corroborate with those reviews.

This has been our experience anyways. But the initial question was how to generate more downloads. That's why I threw in my cents on that. Good reviews from review sites, pale in comparison to something that was mentioned earlier in this thread. Keywords. App Title Wording and keywords are the most important things to focus on for the iOS market, in my opinion.

w87900

I'm sure all above mentioned ways will gradually increase the number of downloads of your app. A friend of mine once said he had switched his app to freemium during a weekend and although he first had lost on the potential revenue it helped to spread the word about his game and generated more downloads later.. Maybe you would wanna try that as well. Good luck!

Thunder_Child

I recently read on Apple's site that they only show up to 6000 apps in the search...so with 6000 apps already there...my app will never be seen unless searched by tags. This does sucketh a great deal. I look everyday and my app has never shiwn up under even "new releases". Any tricks to get even "seen" ?

tenrdrmer

The new releases are listed alphabetically. So unless your in the first part of the alphabet you are listed way way down the new release list

Dues

So every new game we release should begin with the letter A.