Reviews and sites

[Omadan]

Anyone had any success with reviewing an app/game by the big portals? TouchArcade for example, all the games there are sure to be in the top 25 free/paid. I tried contacting them and I their e-mail appears to be broken or something. Anyone can share some good tactics in this Department. When you finish an app are you guys doing some afterwork, like contacting reviewers etc? Just would love to know what you are all doing or not doing

Thanks in advance.

[Ian Price]

I spent two weeks looking for and writing to numerous App review sites, sending promo codes for my apps - in the end only one site actually reviewed anything (and only one app), the others either stated that "They would have a look" or ignored me completely.

I can honestly say that the amount of time I spent doing all the PR (which was really fecking hard), was not worth it. If your game is good, it will do the work for you. Unless you can pay to advertise your stuff, trying to let the world know about your app is almost impossible.

But don't let me put you off - have a try; it really is a humbling experience.

[Omadan]

Yep exactly what I have experienced Ian. I have done PR to 101 review sites, most ignore you and as you said I wrote an excellent PR for nothing. Seems its bloody hard for us to get in the pipeline. Thing is you only have the first few hours for people to see your game in the App Store and chances are they wont even get it. People hardly look for games, they just browse their top 25 top 50 at times. Come on we all know that, meaning that your app will fall into the pits very soon.

Regards

[Wampus]

Yep exactly what I have experienced Ian. I have done PR to 101 review sites, most ignore you and as you said I wrote an excellent PR for nothing. Seems its bloody hard for us to get in the pipeline. Thing is you only have the first few hours for people to see your game in the App Store and chances are they wont even get it. People hardly look for games, they just browse their top 25 top 50 at times. Come on we all know that, meaning that your app will fall into the pits very soon

I think...updating your app also refreshes it in the list?

I'm sure my marketing department (i.e. my girlfriend) won't mind me passing on this idea: If an app has its best chance of exposure when first published to the app store why not make it entirely free for a short while? That way it'll get downloaded to many devices which seeds further interest. No guarantee it'll make money once you charge for it but at least it has a better chance of getting noticed.

[erico]

It is said to be wise to start marketing things as you start developing the idea, so at the end, marketing is not a new task but goes on simultaneously.

Anyway, it is hard to do it all together, and if you get any exposure, it´s unwise to drop the project.
I guess it depends on how serious you are on making one app.

most important is the relationship you build with the site owners or administrators.
don´t just send "new game" kind of stuff.
you have to put some work on building a relationship.

my thoughts though...