Are You Quick Enough? 2 in Top Ten on the App Store.

#1 Very nice Johnny Vo. Congrats on another release!

#2 Nice job, good luck with your app!

#3 Michael, Aun - Thanks!

Looks like being number ten top free overall will bring in about 70k downloads in the U.S. This was on a Tuesday. I believe on weekends the same rank should be higher downloads.

#4 Nice one Johnny! Did you use anyone in particular for the promotion?

#5 I assume you've got chartboost locked and loaded as well :)

#6 Scott -

1 day after I went free I was ranked top 160 all apps. I did not use any kind of advertising or promotion up to that point (except appadvice). After I was top 160, I used App Rewards Club and Free App A Day.

Here's what I recommend:

App Rewards Club (http://www.apprewardsclub.com/) - These guys are nice and will feature your app for free. All you have to do is share your download data with them. *update* I think they charge 200 now.

Free App A Day - Unless your app is a time management game, I cannot recommend them. The price they want is really high and you will probably not make it back.

AppAdvice - I always use these guys and I recommend them. It's free and Tyler is really helpful. Just give them an email.
Link

The game has very little ads in it, but I do give the player the option to click on chartboost and the revenue is good.

#7 Thanks Johnny, very useful.

Are you able to tell which gave the boost? App Rewards or FAAD?

#8 Scott - Unfortunately I can't tell. I wish I could.

#9 No probs Johnny, I've emailed App Rewards - I can't afford FAAD !

Good luck with the rest of the campaign - fingers crossed for the number 1 spot!

#10 BTW, Unity 4 is out today. Just thought it's interesting that we have been waiting for torque2d for so long and Unity already released another major update.

Scott, any information on your next title?

#11 Johnny, I'm currently going down the engine route + chart boost

We have a match 3 and a lines engine. The collapse engine is almost finished.

we are then just skinning each engine with a different theme - we have pumpkin (halloween) on the store at the moment.

Soccer Lines has just been released:

itunes.apple.com/us/app/soccer-lines/id564153415?mt=8

And I've got xmas match/lines and collapse in the pipeline.

For each iteration we add a new feature to the engines e.g. we just added iPhone 5 and iPad 3 support so xmas will be the first set of engines to support all the devices. We then go back and update the other titles with the changes. It's a mini production line which is working well.

All of this is driven by revenue from Chartboost. I figure its better to have 50 apps earning $2-3 a day each from ad revenue than one app (Cannibal Cookout) barely earning $5 a day.

Other engines in the pipeline:

- dash engine - like match engine but you collect stuff
- bubble engine - the classic bubble burst
- slider engine - like match but with trism like sliding

This means we have, for example:

Pumpkin Match
Pumpkin Lines
Pumpkin Collapse
Pumpkin Dash
Pumpkin Burst (bubble burst)
Pumpkin Fever (slider engine)

I dunno if it will work but I'm giving it a shot ;-)

#12 Scott - Thanks for the update.

I gotta say I really like your game plan. Creating engines and reusing them is a really good business plan. Especially if you have a great designer/programmer like you behind it.

Really good stuff, I'll check out soccer lines soon.

#13 Cheers Johnny, fast running out of ideas now for the app store :D

#14 Thanks for the info Johnny! We just finished uploading our new game Sorceria 2 to the app store, and will try out your advice once we're approved. We could use it. Right now our games are like on page pit bottom in the rankings, I seriously wonder how people manage to find our games sometime, haha. So these tips should help us immensely.

#15 Yesterday the game was at number 6 in the U.S which equaled to about 95k downloads.

#16 Nice one! Do you think this is from app rewards? I'm going to go with them - they want $200 which is very reasonable.

#17 I'm sure they helped the game rise in rank. This link gives some insightful numbers from their service.

http://blog.apprewardsclub.com/going-free-our-launch-results-and-market-observations/

#18 Cheers Johnny, an interesting read.

#19 [Johnny Vo] I download it ;-)

#20 @Johnny - am thinking about the $200 campaign with apprewards. Did you figure out in the end where most of the increased downloads came from?