Is the publicity side of app development really this sleazy?

I've been slogging through the Alexa list trying to get my app reviewed. I understand that I am one of thousands per week, but every place I have submitted has asked for $100-$150 in exchange for a review, and offer special visibility options based on the outcome. It doesn't feel like journalism, not even blogosphere pseudo-journalism. It just feels sleazy and depressing.

Are there any sites you have come across that aren't just veiled advertising sites?

 

Absolutely! Mine. Just submit your game along with a $99 deposit on my internationally syndicated games reviewing website (not a blog at all) and I'll be sure to give you a fair review and coverage on a site that attracts millions of bytes of data traffic.

 

Nice Well, thanks for letting me rant.

 

Like every booming industry, apps have attracted all manner of parasites. Obviously you should never pay for a review, anyone asking for a fee for such "services" is just scamming you.

 

Naturally, but DAMN, the real sites are sparse!!!

 

I would rather pay the $150 to buy a dozen 200-word "articles" about the game that I then own the copyright on and could seed to various directories myself.

 

Marketing is a tough cookie to crack. It requires contacts, the right sort of personality that's capable of selling products, and a degree of patience and observation. There are thousands of books on the right way to market. But for sure there are legitimate sites out there. But you can help yourself too if you've the time to put the effort in, if you can get enough people interested on various forums, just networking and talking with other folks then word of mouth will do the rest, but it's a arduous job if it's not your thing by nature.

 

If you want to buy ad space it costs alot more than that at least on the big sites like toucharcade (the top banner spot is something like 1500 a week). Which is alot for an indie but not for a big company

 

Justin - can you elaborate about this type of marketing? Where can I spend $150 to get some articles published?

 

I'd give that $150 a try too, any extra info, Justin? (if it's actually worth it!)

 

Three piece jigsaw puzzle pieces are bought by doting parents because they think their child will be interested in playing with it.

What happens is that the child ignores the actual "puzzle" because it isn't one.

Nobody ever found a three piece jigsaw puzzle all that interesting to solve, not even a three-year old.


You aren't paying to get the small articles published. You are paying to get them written. The small articles will (most likely) require a quick edit because the speaker is usually not a native English speaker and you got them on the cheap. $10 to $20 per article is a fair price to pay a non-professional writer. Find someone on Rentacoder or iFreelance (oh yeah, that's one of the websites I helped build, it makes about $60,000/month in subscription fees.) Ask for samples. Agree on a fixed price. Pay per milestone or for the complete number of pieces. Avoid Unity forums when looking for a writer. Go where the writers are, not where the users are.

You can also get a couple of short articles created in other languages if you feel comfortable about that because, believe it or not, there are websites where the predominant language is not English and those people may just be interested in playing your FPS game. I would suggest to just stick with English if this is your first few times having copy written by someone else that isn't a professional writer that charges you a dollar or two a word.

Once written, as you own the copyright, you can put them where ever you feel is a suitable outlet. Guest blog posts, guest reviews, and so on. You will need to do your own research on what is the best places to put them.

The posts are not meant to gather direct sales, though they may. The posts are created to raise your Google-chi to a higher level so that when people are searching for "zombie MMO FPS" it is your game that moves up the Google search results, or the website linked to in your article moves up the Google results or the app store page in your Google results moves up.

Your product, your game, is a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. The actual product itself, the piece of software you have laboured over for six straight months, is one tiny little corner piece, one of your anchor pieces.

But there are 4,999 other jigsaw pieces that need to be put in place for you to make a big impact and recoup your investment and make a profit.

A dozen short blog posts or reviews scattered across the internet is another single jigsaw puzzle piece, and certainly not a corner piece. Your app store page is another jigsaw puzzle piece. Your forum signature on every forum you are a member of. Your email signature. The business card you handed to someone at a conference with a personal note on the back. Your press releases. Your website. The comment you left on a blog. Your twitter stream. Your Facebook fan page. Your Facebook personal page. Your family who go around telling people you've made a game. The t-shirt you are wearing at a day at the park. Your bumper sticker. The journalist you are friends with.

These are all puzzle pieces. You want to build the biggest puzzle you can with as many pieces in it as you can find.
You never know if you are making a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle or a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle when you do your marketing.

"How much marketing is enough marketing? One more update. One more press release. One more tweet. One more review. Always one more."

There is never enough marketing, you can never overdo the marketing.

Only experience can tell you if you should be building a 500 piece puzzle or a 5,000 piece puzzle. You never know what the final picture will be, but from experience you have an idea of what it should look like.

It has been worth it on some things. Not everything benefits from it. It depends on who your selling to. Our current product requires very long, thoughtful articles about using ultrasound in emergency medicine, written by learned medical professionals aimed at other learned medical professionals and medical department administrators, in scholarly publications and in-flight magazines.

 

Why not then start a coop of app publishers, say 100 or so to spread the work?

1. To have an app reviewed the developer must review 25 apps in the wait queue on your site (say Indy500.co / MobCell.co / IndyCell.com / IndyCell500.com or whatever you want to name it)...

2. How to pay for this / revenue: only via google / bing money via 'adwords' or 'adsense' or whatever it's called?

Big game companies won't do such review work and so your review site should develop into a good review site for indy / small apps companies.

And if a big game company did want to pay for a review make the cost big league expensive, say $50,000 to pay the full time salary you'd need as an editor / reviewer / administrator (because I don't know how much adwords and such will bring you even on a popular site ).

I plan on publishing an app this month so I volunteer to be one of your 1st reviewers.

And honestly, this site is liable to be a more popular than any of our apps (or those 'warez' type review sites hitting you up for cash)...

Ciao

also avoid 'warez' site look and feel...

 

I worked in an Internet sweat shop (some would call it a digital ad firm... tomayto-tomahto) for ten years, and yes advertising is the very definition of sleazy.

 

On my side all review request sent to "FREE" review website result to an email with their price to create a review.

so..... so.... argh....

I am sure that most of the review website will do a FREE review on a million hit seller to increase the popularity on their website.
What do you think about it guys?

 

Thanks Justin, food for thought. 4,999 pieces of food to be exact.

 

I don't know about these review sites. Have you ever looked at one before you wanted your own app reviewed? Or in purchasing an app? Did you even know of any of these sites before looking to promote your own app? After you knew about these sites did you actually go through and read the many reviews they had written up? Have you even read through the entire thread on this site of people announcing their apps?

 

I have talked to many, many, many people over the years and they usually have just a single pieces of the jigsaw puzzle: "I've got my game done! But nobody is buying it! Why won't they buy it?"

I have talked to many, many people over the years and they sometimes have another piece of the jigsaw puzzle: "I have my game on my company website, but nobody goes there. Nobody is buying it still! Why won't they buy it?"

I have talked to many people over the years and they sometimes have another piece of the jigsaw puzzle: "I sent out copies for review, but nobody reviewed it! Nobody is buying it at all! Why won't they buy it?"

I have talked to quite a few people over the years and they sometimes have another piece of the jigsaw puzzle: "I put a link to my game in my email signature! But nobody reads my emails! Nobody is buying it at all! Why won't they buy it?"

I have talked to several people over the years and they sometimes have another piece of the jigsaw puzzle: "I gave some copies to my friends! But they didn't play it! Nobody is buying it at all! Why won't they buy it?"

I have talked to only a few people over the years and they sometimes have another piece of the jigsaw puzzle: "I set up a dedicated website for my game but nobody ever visits there! Nobody is buying it at all! Why won't they buy it?"

I have talked to a couple of people over the years and they sometimes have another piece of the jigsaw puzzle: "I created a press release for my game, but nobody read it! Nobody is buying my game! Why won't they buy it?"

I have rarely talked to people over the years that have more than a dozen pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

What is the lesson?

Repetition is the lesson.

Do it.

Do it again.
Do it again.
Do it again.
Do it again.
Do it again.
Do it again.
Do it again.

 

On the other hand, consider...

A few hundred dollars is an awesome price for getting your game advertised in front of 50,000 or so people. Try getting any other type of significant advertising for $500.

(I still think it's sleazy, but you gotta play the game in order for other people to buy your game.)

 

...and this is why I hit this forum everyday!

Thanks all for the great post. Justin, please say something stupid so I can be sure you're human

Seriously, great posts. I'm just at the stage where I'm testing my game on the iOS. I've knowingly ignored this aspect of the process. I know I should have started it long ago, but there are only so many hours in a day and frankly the marketing side of things frightens me.

My plan is to get the game release ready, accepted, but not published and then focus on marketing. I was actually thinking of developing a free game and then using it as a wedge to drive traffic to my site and hopefully sales. I don't like lite versions, but I know many have had success with them.

Anyway, thanks for giving me more to consider.

 

I say and post stupid stuff every day!

Without using Google to figure out what this is and what it does, tell me, is this scary?

Unintelligible?

Impenetrable?

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.         lda     Ticks     ;4
3.          clc               ;2   6
4.          sed               ;2   8
5.          adc     #$53      ;2  10
6.          sta     Ticks     ;4  14
7.          lda     Ticks+1   ;4  18
8.          adc     #0        ;2  20
9.          sta     Ticks+1   ;4  24
10.          lda     Ticks+2   ;4  28
11.          adc     #0        ;2  30
12.          sta     Ticks+2   ;4  34
13.          lda     Ticks+3   ;4  38
14.          adc     #0        ;2  40
15.          sta     Ticks+3   ;4  44
16.          cld               ;2  46
17.          bit     Flag      ;4  50
18.          bpl     Main      ;3  53
19.           lda     #0        ;2
20.          sta     Flag      ;4   6
21.          lda     Ticks     ;4  10
22.          clc               ;2  12
23.          sed               ;2  14
24.          adc     #$95      ;2  16
25.          sta     Ticks     ;4  20
26.          lda     Ticks+1   ;4  24
27.          adc     #0        ;2  26
28.          sta     Ticks+1   ;4  30
29.          lda     Ticks+2   ;4  34
30.          adc     #0        ;2  36
31.          sta     Ticks+2   ;4  40
32.          lda     Ticks+3   ;4  44
33.          adc     #0        ;2  46
34.          sta     Ticks+3   ;4  50
35.          cld               ;2  52
36.          lda     Timer     ;4  56
37.          cmp     #<Refresh ;2  58
38.          bne     Main      ;3  61 + 34 (from NMI ISR) = 95
39.          lda     Timer+1   ; 4
40.          cmp     #>Refresh ; 2
41.          bne     Main      ; 3
42.  

It's 6502 assembly language for an 8-bit CPU.

No, there aren't enough hours in the day. No, nobody knows "what to do next." It takes many years, and several mentors, and lots of reading and doing, to build up a tool box of techniques and tools and the knowledge of how to use each one, and the limitations, but once you have it, marketing, advertising -- which I only know a small bit about -- business, project management, and so on are no longer frightening.

Off-topic subject but whenever I give a career guidance class we will talk about what it's like to work in games, or movies, or at a media agency but I always give the same two pieces of advice, whether it be to programmers or artists or business majors, the advice you can find on another post elsewhere on these forums:
1. Learn to write a memo.
2. Learn to speak.

Every other thing you do in your life and your career and your success will stem from those two things. Including the advertising and marketing of your game.

 

I like your posts Justin, and want to subscribe to your newsletter.

Great conversation here. After those initial first few days, we started to uncover some more legit sites - the thing is, the legit ones take a day or two to get back to you - the parasites swarm the instant you appear on the scene.

Something to think about!

 

I couldn't agree more with Justin. Although I'm just a fledgling developer myself, his words cannot ring more true in any type of business environment, especially in the climate of the marketplace today.

Being able to proliferate your message in the most concise and understandable way is key to any type of success these days. There's a reason why execs that are popular in the media have a way with words: words sell. More so sell your words, and not only your game, and you can sell it. Relying on some bum review site that simply just gives you a hit share on their traffic is worthless unless they make it count.

 

Explains why anyone can't figure out the meaning to the lyrics of the most popular songs too!

 

It's not key to artistic success (at least, most varieties ).

 

i always look forward to posts by justin lloyd... he always has something insightful to say