Promotion experience in Russian AppStore

    imageMany can make a good application for the iPhone or iPad. But not everyone manages to make money on this. I will not boast - but I get both. I would like to share some subtleties of the kitchen with the habratchital community.
    Under the cut some statistics and experience in posting reviews and banner advertising with numbers.

    I will not rant for a long time about the need to make a quality application; Do not rush to release the application without testing it as expected. All this is obvious. But there is an important nuance that many novice developers and producers (customers) do not take into account.
    Everyone knows very well that the biggest money is in the American app store segment. Well, the first thought: "I’ll break through and the loot will fall." The result is the most common mistake: everyone makes applications for the American app store. And rarely does anyone pay attention to Russian. If you look closely, he is also no longer small. There is a good saying: "It is better to be the biggest fish in the pond than the average in the big lake."
    To compete with the TOP100 players of the American app store is a very expensive pleasure. Small developers rarely can afford it. But with the Russian appstore everything is easier. Getting into the TOP100 is much easier. Of course, there is less profit. But to stay in a hundred for a long period is possible, and quite easy, but for many, decent money is already enough (If applications are kept in ten of their categories and periodically fall into the TOP200 of the Russian app store, then you can have $ 3000- $ 10,000 without much straining. developers and small friendly teams is a reasonable option).

    Consider how to do this.
    After the application is released, there are always 2 options (as in that joke): either the starting kick will be displayed in the tops or not.
    My IMHO: doing ads simultaneously with the publication of the application is not profitable.
    Firstly, if you have a high-quality application and have potential users, it is very likely that the kick-start can work, and you will get your users without any extra costs.
    Secondly, quality sites for promoting applications in the Russian segment once and for two miscalculated, so they must be protected like silver bullets.
    Thirdly, if suddenly in the beginning, in the first version, some kind of not-so-nice bug comes out and reviews appear about it, then the advertisement will become “image-based” (as advertisers call that advertisement that didn’t work, in other words did not increase sales) .
    If the starting kick worked, then this is very good, but it is not for long. In any case, there will be a recession. Whether it will be soon or not is curled from you.
    If the kick did not work, then you need to start active work.
    Below I will describe my experience in advertising and promotion with reviews and banners in the Russian segment.

    Reviews


    1. iphones.ru

    Obviously, iphones.ru is the highest rated site. Respected and self-respecting people work there. Therefore, real bullshit there and not to promote. Even for the money. I know for sure, because he himself was published there more than once - they do not take money for reviews. Therefore, only quality. If the application is interesting (if editors find it so) - they can do a review. If not very (for example, a narrow audience of the application, or just laziness) - they have the Dev Story rubric. The developers themselves can write there. The effectiveness of this review is very good. As a rule, if the application is written on iphones.ru - you can search for it in the tops. Even TOP10 (in the top ten Russian appstores, depending on the price of the application, profit from $ 800 to $ 2000). This effect lasts about 3-4 days. But then there is a lasting effect that increases average daily sales.
    Contacts: you need to interact with Arthur. Mail it is on the right of the site.

    2. planetiphone.ru

    No matter how surprising you may be, I can say with confidence that they have the second place in influence. Outside, a slightly smeared site has a huge plus - a native application for an iPhone - iPlaneta . Thanks to him, using this service, you can really bring the application to the tops in a day. The push messages that they send create a quick wave of downloads from the app, and the application takes off to the top. But the placement of the review they have paid. Somewhere from 100 to 250 dollars, depending on the subject and some other human factor.
    They also had an interesting promotion for the new year on the distribution of promotional codes - every day 10-20 codes were distributed to readers. It cost about $ 100 - it was useful and profitable.
    Update 03/30/2012:They began to bend prices, every month more and more expensive. Already almost 2 times increased. Of course it is sad.

    3. ???

    On this my search for sites for promotion ended. I mean, they do not end now, but I did not find anything else worthwhile. If anyone knows, and uses something else worthwhile - let me know, I will be grateful. Reviews of my applications have been on other sites. But they did not make much weather. Although background sales probably raised.

    Banner advertising.

    I admit honestly. I tried only iphones.ru. Banner advertising has a good effect on free applications. The increase is significant. On paid - less, but on this site, she definitely paid for herself and made a profit for me. The price of the issue is from $ 300 and above per week. Plus, although someone can say that this is a minus: a place for a banner is sold for a period, not for impressions. As a result, all visitors see it.

    And, in confirmation, several graphs with signatures. They illustrate everything very well.
    This is the sales schedule of the Speaker’s Trainer application . This is the download schedule of the Proverbs about Everything application . There was no advertising. The sales schedule of the Family Expeses application during the period when it was only in the Russian app store.
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    I want to note that all the above applications were in the top 10 of the Russian app.

    I hope the information will be useful to readers. If anyone has info on the topic, share in the comments.
    UPDATE:
    Literally an hour after the publication of this topic, my new publication on iphones.ru was published in the Dev Story section www.iphones.ru/iNotes/195256 . After 4-5 days I will update the article with additional statistics.
    UPDATE 2:
    Asked - add statistics for free. And this is the statistics of places in the appstore separately for the iPad and iPhone (as I think, if it was downloaded from a computer, I still do not understand). UPDATE 3: Interesting statistics, so that something about habr was clear. Topic topic per day seen 222,269 times.
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    The topic itself was opened 12,946 times.
    Statistics are collected from the Apache server logs, where the pictures are located.

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