How much organic downloads can you get without marketing?

ar2rsawseen

Somewhere in the topics I mentioned that I am doing some experiments on what works on the mobile market and what does not work.
To accomplish that I at first needed a base line. How many downloads can you really get, without any marketing of your game. And which markets perform better under this conditions.
And the results of the first game are in.

To sum it up, here is the top of markets and natural downloads after about 30 days of being published

• Slideme - 1548
• GetJar - 866
• Vodafone - 128
• AndroidPit - 38
• Opera - 29
• TStore - 24
• Soc.io - 18
• Google - 17
• 1mobile - 11
• Insyde - 6
• Amazon - 5
• Applandic - 2
• AppsLib - 1
• Camangi - 1

More about it here:
http://waterbreadinternet.com/blog/how-much-organic-downloads-can-you-get-without-marketing

Comparing second game here:
http://waterbreadinternet.com/blog/how-many-organic-downloads--part-2

Comparing Two month data of first game:
http://waterbreadinternet.com/blog/downloads-retention-second-month

Disciple

Interesting experiment. Thanks for sharing the results, it's very informative to know where to put your game!

john26

Very interesting. It just shows a common assumption that Google Play is the best because it's the most famous is plain wrong! Google Play is only important if you have a large advertising budget. It would be interesting to look at iTunes as well, I think it is similar to Google Play (i.e. no visibility).

It's also worth noting this game is free. If it were paid I'd expect zero sales on these figures.

It's a shame really as Amazon and Google both aggressively court indie developers but then do nothing to help them get noticed. I was at an Amazon dev event recently and developing for Amazon was sold to us as an money spinner. Well 5 free downloads in the first month (probably trailing to zero soon after) is not a money spinner for anyone. And, if I understood the article, you made use of GameCircle as well right?

Also, contrary to the article, Amazon do not give free Kindles to developers. AFAIK, they never give out free stuff to devs. I specifically asked this at the Amazon event I went to. They were promoting the Fire TV but refused to give to devs even though it is only $99.

ar2rsawseen

@john26
Yes the game implemented GameCircle and I will also add it to FireTV soon
But the promotion from using GameCircle has not started yet, so we will also see if that changes anything.

About Kindle, they did gave out them, I think a year ago, you were supposed to implement Amazon ads and deliver some specific amount of request each week, and I think lots of Giderosians took advantage of this offer and received their Kindle devices

keszegh

interesting.
i would be also interested in the same experiment for a paid game.

ar2rsawseen

@keszegh most probably someday, till then I need to confirm same result with different genre games
and try to improve results with free methods

boriskey

actually I think appstore helps you first 2 weeks - at least my first app on app store was featured the first day I published it and I was getting 2,000 downloads first 2 weeks. It was free app for kids.

Google play is another story. I posted my first app 3 years ago and the market was not crowded and app was visible from day one and was very easy to find and ranked for many keywords. I was getting 300-500 downloads each day with no marketing. I did not bother about ASO back then.

This all changed now - I posted my new game last week and so far it is very bad - 10-20 downloads a day and I cannot even find my own game by keywords I am targeting. And this time I took 2 weeks just learning about ASO, keywords optimization, signed up to Searchman.com (awesome service!) after I tried 3-4 other ASO tools and I am still getting miserable downloads. No wonder because I cannot even find my game by its title!

When I asked Google about that, they told me that I need to get more downloads and reviews and when my app will start ranking on some keywords - it is a vicious cycle!

They force developers now to cheat and "buy" downloads - actually google suggested to look into admob promotions which will take all your money in no time.

As far as Amazon, I posted one of my most popular app on google play (400,000 downloads) to amazon and I got 20-30 downloads a day. and this is free app i did not really get any ads traffic as well so I pulled it from amazon. Was a waste of time.

Slideme was even worse for me..

So the lesson is with so many apps out there, creating a nice game is only a start unfortunately. Every time I open top 100 list, I see apps from corporations and big name companies and I do not even care for these apps.

Read about how flappy birds made it to the top - the guy had 100-200 downloads a day and then suddenly millions of people started to download it. Magic? not according to a lot of people on Black Hat World forum

ar2rsawseen

Many rumor that Flappy Bird made it to the top, because it was featured on PewDiePie youtube channel.

What have you heard exactly?

boriskey

I saw screenshots someone took at black hat world forum before flappy birds downloads spiked - I just looked again but cannot find that thread.

But you can get an idea here
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/04/how-96000-can-buy-you-a-top-10-ranking-in-the-u-s-app-store/

I believe this because I saw a few threads on the same forum from people asking who can provide them 10,000 downloads a day so they can get to top fast.

ar2rsawseen

BTW here is the second part (comparing second game)
http://waterbreadinternet.com/blog/how-many-organic-downloads--part-2

CitizenK

If I would ever write a book about making games, the first rule would be: ban all shades of brown and gray from any color picker you may use.

Probably the quickest and easiest way to improve download numbers.

ar2rsawseen

@CitizenK will take a note on that
Choosing colors is one of the toughest problems I face as not a designer.

ar2rsawseen

Here is the comparing of second month data:
http://waterbreadinternet.com/blog/downloads-retention-second-month

CitizenK

@CitizenK will take a note on that
Choosing colors is one of the toughest problems I face as not a designer.

Choosing colors for non-artists is actually fairly easy. Use Google to look up pictures from "Disney cartoons". Pick one colorful (without brown or gray) which you like and paste it into your favorite image editor. After that, just pick all colors from this image only and never use any other colors.

ar2rsawseen

Awesome suggestion

jdbc

Here is the comparing of second month data:
http://waterbreadinternet.com/blog/downloads-retention-second-month

What technology have you used to make your company website (waterbreadinternet)?
I want to create my own website similar yours with also my own domain.

I am also thinking about to build a web platform for sharing full game source codes between developers (Gideros game developers mainly), that's you share one good game source code and you can get a lot of new game source codes depending on the quality of your code or just one-to-one direct sharing method.

ar2rsawseen

@jdbc I had my own PHP classes glued together with CMS like engine on which I base all websites I'm working on (including gideros website too )
So no specific lib, sorry

boriskey

patiently waiting for the third month data ;;)

ar2rsawseen

@boriskey
I have more insights to share, but unfortunately every weekend was full (and couple of next ones are full too), so don't have time to write about them lately.
But I will, eventually

boriskey

great, I look forward to it!