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How (not) to sell your iOS app

stoicjesterstudios.com

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Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#71

Post by megablast »

greengarstudios wrote: post #30

I'm an independent iOS developer. My paid apps have sold over 100,000 copies at 99¢ or higher. In total, my iOS apps (including free apps) have been downloaded over 7 million times. I took a look at your app in the App Store. Here's your problem: your icon. The icon is the most prominent thing the user sees when first looking at your app in the App Store. Change your icon, and you'll get more downloads. Trust me :-)…

Going to be harsh here:

The Icon is bad, the copy is bad, and the name is bad. A factory? I have trouble associating factory with anything fun. Call is something like Ball Crusher, sounds more fun.

This is my stupid opinion, and I could be wrong, but try to make the copy more fun, leave the technical explanation to later. Most people only read the first few lines anyway. Get a simple icon, don't try to convey too much info. Just have a colorful ball on a nice background.

Oh, and thanks for putting yourself out there for criticism, is help you and us all. There are some great ideas in the thread, and the game looks like fun.

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#72

Post by geuis »

DrJokepu wrote: post #51
geuis wrote: post #18

Here's my experience with a Hangover 2 app I released 1 month before the movie came out. (it was taken down after Warner Bros sent Apple a C&D.) 1) Reviews are the most important things when you sell an app. I made the app free for the first week or so until I had about 10 5 star reviews. DO NOT use scammy tactics for fake reviews. Make sure your app is well polished for what it does. If it's not, don't put it in the…

> Here's my experience with a Hangover 2 app I released 1 month before the movie came out. (it was taken down after Warner Bros sent Apple a C&D.) Ouch. You're lucky they weren't total dicks and didn't sue you for damages. You have to be very careful with copyright / trademark infringement, especially if it's a clear case like this and you're clearly making a profit on it.

Yeah I was worried for a minute. When I wrote the app I was taking a calculated risk because there have been a number of Hangover apps in the store for a long time. I figured the chances were good that no one would complain. 1 week before the movie release, there were several Hangover 2 apps in addition to mine. They all disappeared at the same time, yet apps for the first movie still are around now.

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#73

Post by allenbrunson »

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

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

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

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

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#74

Post by ja2ke »

thestoicjester wrote: post #48
alanfalcon wrote: post #43

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

It's horrible to think back and remember that I went out of my way to go for a "gritty" look, way back before I was even considering thinking about the marketing angle. There's one lesson well learned. I'm definitely going to take this advice to heart. Thanks!

I don't think the gritty/old timey look is bad, but I think you could push it further to sell it as such. I think you could go a long way by adding SOME saturation back into the world, and tinting things a bit sepia for an aged look. I'd still leave the bullseyes full saturation, though, as they really do pop right now. If you want to keep things feeling deliberately old timey and worn, adding a little bit of aged film overlay would go a long way (some decent examples of this type of aging, though fully black and white instead of just partially desaturated, can be seen in the games PB Winterbottom or Limbo).

Out of curiosity, what led to the bullseyes being spherical instead of cylindrical?

-- PB Winterbottom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMZyAsVlMoU#t=1m10s

Limbo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCA79zPaQe0#t=30s

===

Edit: I got distracted for a bit but here's a moderately quick mockup of some of those ideas:

http://www.meltwizard.com/stuff/factory.png

You could make people "feel" the gyroscopic movement even more by having the UI's movement be slightly delayed from the player movement, like it's following behind on a rubber band (see: first person games which have helmet art, like Metroid Prime on the gamecube). You wouldn't want to make it too crazy since it has to be usable, but adding a little feeling of sway to the surrounding chrome, tied to gyroscope moves, would probably go a long way towards making it feel less mechanical and more fluid.

Sorry for the armchair art direction by the way. If I am accidentally coming across as an asshole, please know that it is not intentional! I like the concept for the game AND for the visual direction and it made me interested enough to crack open Photoshop and start playing around. I don't know if my ideas are particularly noteworthy or if they actually manage to improve anything, but it's what came to mind when looking at the game. Hopefully no offense is taken!

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#75

Post by delackner »

stuartjmoore wrote: post #6

The biggest change I've ever seen is when I changed one name from "* Lite" to "Free *". Went from about 100 to 1,000. Regardless, I stopped promoting my best selling apps and they sell exactly as many copies.

Even switching to free is not enough to gain serious worldwide exposure. It helps, but there's also an element of chance and just getting it in front of the right people.

My current app hit #1 in a fairly major category (music) quite easily when we switched to free, but in the rest of the world it barely cracked into the top 50 before immediately sinking again, mostly because no one knows it exists. Still trying.

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#76

Post by Sacrificiality »

jholloway wrote: post #59

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

Hmm, I don't agree. The game I made for myself is great, I love it. Likewise for a few people here, one guy likes multiplayer trivia games, etc.

So, while it may not be a charts buster, I enjoy my game, and it's one of three that I play (the other two: Arkanoid-style game, and a free card game).

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#78

Post by [deleted] »

ja2ke wrote: post #74
thestoicjester wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's horrible to think back and remember that I went out of my way to go for a "gritty" look, way back before I was even considering thinking about the marketing angle. There's one lesson well learned. I'm definitely going to take this advice to heart. Thanks!

I don't think the gritty/old timey look is bad, but I think you could push it further to sell it as such. I think you could go a long way by adding SOME saturation back into the world, and tinting things a bit sepia for an aged look. I'd still leave the bullseyes full saturation, though, as they really do pop right now. If you want to keep things feeling deliberately old timey and worn, adding a little bit of aged fi…

[deleted]

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#79

Post by quux »

stuartjmoore wrote: post #42
thestoicjester wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's looking like a lot of people agree with you that the icon needs work. You've been contacted. I'm definitely not in love with it, but it's better than the other ideas I had. The problem I was having was trying to depict the in-game action in such a small space. 3D stuff just seems to get cluttered or lost. Anybody have any suggestions?

An angled disc-bullseye exploding into pieces? The actual depiction won't be as important as the graphical touches. Right now, your non-3D graphics are a little amateur. Also, can you make the balls a little more spherical? They're the main focus of the game and the background kind of overshadows them. Actually, why are they spheres and not discs? Discs would look better (more traditional) and add difficulty when the…

Or even better, use spheres on some levels and discs on others (where it makes sense.) definitely crank up the poly count on the spheres and anything else.

Here's a free idea. Let the user use any photo as the texture for the targets. User just got dumped? Let him select a photo of his ex from his photo library and blow her visage to smithereens!

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#80

Post by comex »

geuis wrote: post #18

Here's my experience with a Hangover 2 app I released 1 month before the movie came out. (it was taken down after Warner Bros sent Apple a C&D.) 1) Reviews are the most important things when you sell an app. I made the app free for the first week or so until I had about 10 5 star reviews. DO NOT use scammy tactics for fake reviews. Make sure your app is well polished for what it does. If it's not, don't put it in the…

> They will leave 1 star reviews because they hear no sound. Their mute is on. Don't get upset about these people.

Is it possible to detect whether mute is on and show a small alert?

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