An experiment to promote a game on Google Play. Part 1

Hello! In my free time, I'm an indie android game developer. I'm currently trying to promote the game on Google Play. I think there will be those who will be interested / useful in this experience. Perhaps the advice received from you will help me avoid unnecessary expenses.

* The author of the publication does not claim to be a professional in the field of promotion and development. The experiment is conducted to gain experience - positive / sad.

Why do I need it?


I have a game which, on 12/02/2017, has 727 thousand downloads and 18 thousand active installations. A game assembled on the knee in a couple of days. I do not develop the game, I can say abandoned. Despite this, she generates $ 3-6 per day. I wanted to launch the game for a foreign audience, but the specifics of the game (Guess the song by emoticons) does not allow.

It was decided to rewrite my “framework” for the quiz and, based on it, launch a new game in two languages. After analyzing the competitors, the choice fell on the movie quiz genre and the game was launched - Guess the movie from the picture. Nowadays it is very difficult to come up with a unique idea, and even more so to promote it. I took the quiz seriously, didn’t stupidly make a clone, but added its own flavor.

What does it look like:



Promotion


The game was launched on November 22. Statistics at the moment:
Installs on active devices - 1,575
Total downloads - 2,551
Total 1276 deleted.

Free ways to promote:

- Friends / Enemies - 10-20 downloads
- owned by the Group in the previous games 8k persons - 100-200 downloads
- Proper application banner at startup - unknown

traffic source according to GP:



For me, the most valuable is the clean traffic from the Play Market This means that my game was found in a search / leafing through a store. To achieve this goal, we have to use shadow promotion methods and we smoothly move on to the paid promotion method.

Paid ways to promote:

- VK group dedicated to Android games (1000r) - unknown
- Adword (2000r) - 113 installations

We should also say about Adwords . To advance through adwords, you need to be a multi-millionaire. The service eats money and issues 10-15 installations. 2000 rubles were credited, for which I received 113 installations. Also to my surprise, adwords forbade the use of the word “films” for a Russian-speaking audience. Adwords may be a good service, but I don’t know how to cook it.

Go to the side of evil


The relish - Services for races wrapping and promotion of keywords. There are about 15 top services for buying traffic. Of these services, 10 use opanso, the GP violently rubs paid reviews and ratings. At the moment, I found for myself 1 cool foreign service that sells high-quality (players really play the game) traffic at an affordable price. Russian services aroused only negative emotions in me because of the high cost, the obsession of the support service and empty promises.

On December 2, 2017, it was decided to promote the game with the keyword movie quiz in the UK. In the UK, as this country has the largest number of search queries for my keyword. To analyze the positions of the game, I use appannieand asodesk . The game is in 133 place, it is planned to spend $ 100 for 3 days.

Promotion costs are covered by the “Guess the Smile Songs” revenue for a couple of months. I will not go beyond the budget. Your advice (proven in practice) will be extremely useful. I hope the material is interesting and will prove useful to someone.

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