My game, Dragon Lords, was recently featured by FreeAppMagic ( Free App Magic | MagicSolver ) and I thought I'd share how it affected my sales/rankings.
A bit of background:
Dragon Lords is a brand new game, released just over two months ago. It's my first game, so I'm guilty of a lot of beginners errors, including really bad choice of keywords, no promotion (free or otherwise) and others. Despite the early mistakes Dragon Lords consistently receives high rating from players, in US alone those two months it received almost 500 ratings with average 4.5 stars.
The game is free to play an generates revenue through IAP. Due to a low number of players and game mechanics still being developed (and specifics of the gameplay) the revenue is very unstable, it used to hold at $200+ a day, then dropped to around $100, and then even lower, which I now attribute to an element in the game which allowed to easily obtain in-game currency, which is what drives the revenue. I've fixed it now, so revenue increase caused by the promotion might be skewed by that that fact as well as multiple other factors.
In the first week since release Dragon Lords attracted just under 3k users, then gradually went down to average of 1000 downloads a week. It was hovering near the same spot in rankings, which was:
#190 in Strategy games in Australia & Canada
#210 in Strategy games in UK
#320 in Strategy games in US
Not very mind blowing results, but for the first game and zero experience I was still quite happy with them.
Right now, after 20 hours of FreeAppMagic promotion Dragon Lords is:
#1 Strategy in Frace
#5 Strategy Games in UK and Italy
(5-30) in various different countries
#31 Strategy in Canada
#38 Strategy in US & Australia
#63 All Games in UK
#67 Overall (all apps!) in France
#158 Overall in UK
#285 All Games in Canada
#330 All Games in Australia
#353 All Games in US
The promotion generated 4k new players already (since yesterday), not sure yet how much of those were directly from the FreeAppMagic and which were generated by increased rankings. When I have that information I'll share it here as well.
Revenue from the last 24 hours is over $200, so it doesn't go hand in hand with the increase of the playerbase, but again, this can be influenced by the fact that in the initial hours of the promotion the Temple was disabled (to give a clean start to a new realm). Also, the way game is designed makes players spend less money in the initial, kingdom development phase and more money when things get competitive, when Alliance wars begin (a couple of days from creating the kingdom, when player is really invested in the game), so I expect to see a significant increase during next week.
Overall I'm quite happy with how things are turning out. The discount price I got for the promotion should be compensated by the increase of revenue in the coming days and I have high hopes that ranking jump will generate increased sales for the next days/weeks.
I hope you find this info interesting! I have OpenFeint Free Game Of The Day booked for mid-November, so if you'd like a peak at those numbers as well, I'll be happy to post them.
My game, Dragon Lords, was recently featured by FreeAppMagic ( Free App Magic | MagicSolver ) and I thought I'd share how it affected my sales/rankings.
A bit of background:
Dragon Lords is a brand new game, released just over two months ago. It's my first game, so I'm guilty of a lot of beginners errors, including really bad choice of keywords, no promotion (free or otherwise) and others. Despite the early mistakes Dragon Lords consistently receives high rating from players, in US alone those two months it received almost 500 ratings with average 4.5 stars.
The game is free to play an generates revenue through IAP. Due to a low number of players and game mechanics still being developed (and specifics of the gameplay) the revenue is very unstable, it used to hold at $200+ a day, then dropped to around $100, and then even lower, which I now attribute to an element in the game which allowed to easily obtain in-game currency, which is what drives the revenue. I've fixed it now, so revenue increase caused by the promotion might be skewed by that that fact as well as multiple other factors.
In the first week since release Dragon Lords attracted just under 3k users, then gradually went down to average of 1000 downloads a week. It was hovering near the same spot in rankings, which was:
#190 in Strategy games in Australia & Canada
#210 in Strategy games in UK
#320 in Strategy games in US
Not very mind blowing results, but for the first game and zero experience I was still quite happy with them.
Right now, after 20 hours of FreeAppMagic promotion Dragon Lords is:
#1 Strategy in Frace
#5 Strategy Games in UK and Italy
(5-30) in various different countries
#31 Strategy in Canada
#38 Strategy in US & Australia
#63 All Games in UK
#67 Overall (all apps!) in France
#158 Overall in UK
#285 All Games in Canada
#330 All Games in Australia
#353 All Games in US
The promotion generated 4k new players already (since yesterday), not sure yet how much of those were directly from the FreeAppMagic and which were generated by increased rankings. When I have that information I'll share it here as well.
Revenue from the last 24 hours is over $200, so it doesn't go hand in hand with the increase of the playerbase, but again, this can be influenced by the fact that in the initial hours of the promotion the Temple was disabled (to give a clean start to a new realm). Also, the way game is designed makes players spend less money in the initial, kingdom development phase and more money when things get competitive, when Alliance wars begin (a couple of days from creating the kingdom, when player is really invested in the game), so I expect to see a significant increase during next week.
Overall I'm quite happy with how things are turning out. The discount price I got for the promotion should be compensated by the increase of revenue in the coming days and I have high hopes that ranking jump will generate increased sales for the next days/weeks.
I hope you find this info interesting! I have OpenFeint Free Game Of The Day booked for mid-November, so if you'd like a peak at those numbers as well, I'll be happy to post them.
Cool. Thanks for posting the followup. Am curious how FGOTD will be. =)
Sounds great, congratulations! And 1000 downloads a week is nothing to sneeze at!
I guess the success spoiled me a little.
Reading other developers posts I should consider myself extremely lucky to have that much success. I probably don't appreciate it enough.
Update on numbers, two days after the promotion ended I'm still 11th in Strategy games and 108th in all games in UK. I've found that the higher I went, the longer the rating stayed. In countries like US, where I didn't reach top 25 the ratings dropped much faster.
Still, on the first day after the promotion ended I got over 2k downloads (compared with 100-150 before) and today is shaping up in a similar manner, so I'm very positively surprised. Also, while revenue is not going as high as the downloads, last two days were around $500, so honestly, I can't complain.
Interesting numbers . I have never heard of FreeAppMagic though.
So you have a Freegameoftheday promotion coming, I'm sure there will be much much more downloads, did you paid a fixed price or are you working with them on a revenue share?
Interesting numbers . I have never heard of FreeAppMagic though.
So you have a Freegameoftheday promotion coming, I'm sure there will be much much more downloads, did you paid a fixed price or are you working with them on a revenue share?
FreeAppMagic is a UK company product.
I really wonder how FGOTD will do comparing to them, because FreeAppMagic is much more expensive. I'm doing fixed price of $1000 with FGOTD. I think this is their standard rate.
Wow $1000?
We got asked $1000 too, to be featured on FGOTD at first. Then we started talking with them, we booked for November and at the last time they asked us if our game included Openfeint.
Once they knew our game wasn't integrated with OF, they told us the price was now $25K!! I think they are trying to get the most money they can out of developers...
Wow $1000?
We got asked $1000 too, to be featured on FGOTD at first. Then we started talking with them, we booked for November and at the last time they asked us if our game included Openfeint.
Once they knew our game wasn't integrated with OF, they told us the price was now $25K!! I think they are trying to get the most money they can out of developers...
Ok, that makes sense.
They are supposed to call me on Monday, I told them no to Openfeint as well, so I think I know what I'll hear... Too bad. I'm not paying $25k, don't even have that kind of money yet.
Congratulations on things going really well! I had a recent experience I wanted to share with people on this site, and this doesn't go against you or your results. But for those who have a paid app and want to get some extra downloads, you might not need to go through all these paid free app of a day sites.
For my latest game Back & Forth, things were okay, but not great. I have 3 games types, one of those is a daily game but most people are playing just the single player and not many were playing the daily game yet. So to increase the number of people playing I thought I would give the game away for free and see if I could get a few more players interested.
I looked at FAAD, FreeAppMagic and others. I thought maybe if I had IAP then something like FAAD would make sense, but for $4000 (I have a universal app) I didn't know if having 60K-80K downloads would be a good help or not.
Well, I came home after work and set the app free around 7pm on Thursday. I put a timer in there to stop the free campaign Saturday night. I didn't do anything to announce it and before i knew it I was #1 in 5 countries, on numerous "all games" and "all apps" ranks, etc. I had a total of 11,653 downloads. Below shows my "free" sales that happened during that time. As you can see, it doesn't look like the downloads would have sustained themselves if I let it keep going on its own.
But now I'm glad because I have a great group of players in every mode of the game and now I'm seeing good reviews come in. So overall, for those who have a paid game it might be worth going free on your own to see what happens. Since the free day my sales are up too, which I didn't expect. I think maybe I'm getting game-center recommendations (that's my only guess??)
I would also say, keep these numbers in mind because some other sites might claim to bring in the downloads for you, but you might be getting a fair number of them on your own. But if you have IAP, maybe paying 4K for 80K downloads does make sense.
Yes, it is a really different situation when your game was originally paid as there are lots of websites tracking price drops like Appshopper. They are probably followed by lots of people so it explain the high number of downloads.
AragornSG: I'm sorry but that's probably the price they will purpose you...That's crazy going from $1k to $25k just because OF is not integrated...
They usually charge $1 per download and do UUID tracking, so you can check the value of the customers they provide. They liked the fact that "indie developer is giving big gaming companies a run for their money" (their words not mine ) and made me a one time offer. Without UUID tracking they did a flat rate of $1000.
They usually charge $1 per download and do UUID tracking, so you can check the value of the customers they provide. They liked the fact that "indie developer is giving big gaming companies a run for their money" (their words not mine ) and made me a one time offer. Without UUID tracking they did a flat rate of $1000.
Haha nice work, you game looks awesome, how well did freeappmagic work.. now that it has been a few days? Still getting improved number of d/l's?
Last edited by StillPending; 10-28-2011 at 01:23 PM.
Haha nice work, you game looks awesome, how well did freeappmagic work.. now that it has been a few days? Still getting improved number of d/l's?
Thanks man!
and hell yeah!
Dragon Lords is still 20th strategy in UK and in top 50 in dozen different countries. I think today I'm still going to break 1000 new users. Revenue is holding steady at $470-490.
Dragon Lords is still 20th strategy in UK and in top 50 in dozen different countries. I think today I'm still going to break 1000 new users. Revenue is holding steady at $470-490.
Nice man!
I am about to use FAAD for $3500 for a slot on December the 4th, start of the Xmas holidays. Fingers crossed it goes well.
But if you have IAP, maybe paying 4K for 80K downloads does make sense.
Paying $4k for 80k downloads is like hitting a goldmine for me!
Even if it was $10k it would be worth it for me. Well worth it, considering the heights Dragon Lords would be raised to.
Paying $4k for 80k downloads is like hitting a goldmine for me!
FAM promotion paid for it self in pretty much 2 days, so even if it was $10k it would be worth it for me. Well worth it, considering the heights Dragon Lords would be raised to.
That's so good! Do you think it will work paying $5000 for FAAD if my app is a paid app? I'm doing it the day after boxing day when everyone has their new devices. It's going free then back to paid a week later
That's so good! Do you think it will work paying $5000 for FAAD if my app is a paid app? I'm doing it the day after boxing day when everyone has their new devices. It's going free then back to paid a week later
Honestly, I don't have a clue. I have a fairly good grasp (I think) on how Freemium works, but zero experience with paid apps. Those two are completely different markets and strategies.
For a paid app you have to try and calculate revenue you would gain through raising the game to high rank and increasing the visibility only, which is much more difficult than what I have to do.
I just take a look at the potential number of downloads estimated for the promotion, add the overhead for staying high in the ranks for some time, take that, hit it with my IAP conversion rate and I can fairly accurately (and I stress the word fairly) tell if it's going to be worth it or not. Meaning that I wouldn't dish out $20k for 20k downloads, but getting 80k downloads for $5k is "holy crap, where do I sign!?" kind of thing.
Honestly, I don't have a clue. I have a fairly good grasp (I think) on how Freemium works, but zero experience with paid apps. Those two are completely different markets and strategies.
For a paid app you have to try and calculate revenue you would gain through raising the game to high rank and increasing the visibility only, which is much more difficult than what I have to do.
I just take a look at the potential number of downloads estimated for the promotion, add the overhead for staying high in the ranks for some time, take that, hit it with my IAP conversion rate and I can fairly accurately (and I stress the word fairly) tell if it's going to be worth it or not. Meaning that I wouldn't dish out $20k for 20k downloads, but getting 80k downloads for $5k is "holy crap, where do I sign!?" kind of thing.
Thanks for the advice. It is really hard to calculate if it would be successful going paid, free, paid. I am going to go for the $5k for 27th... two days after millions of people get itouches, iPhones and iPads for Xmas and just when they're first exploring the app store.
What's your conversion rate like, i.e. free downloads to IAP?
What's your conversion rate like, i.e. free downloads to IAP?
Due to still low number of players and me learning the trade it varies. When I launched the game it used to be around $.90 per user, then it dropped to $.25 for few weeks until I figured out why. Now it's closer to $1 again, but last promotion skewed the numbers again.
Right now, knowing my game as I know, I would feel comfortable if I met the price of the promotion with $.5 conversion. Anything higher than that would be a risk, because if you made a mistake somewhere it may quickly cross the profitability line. $1000 for 5000+ users was a no-brainer.
It is the Daily Double, and I'm now going for the 27th of December for $5000.
What is the first spot?
The main spot is the game that is featured in the middle of the top banner on their website. Each day there are three (some days even more) apps featured.
Daily Double apps are featured only one day on the first page of their website, then you have to click on Daily Double to see the list.
I'm not sure really sure if daily double apps get less or the same # of downloads than the main featured app though.
Haha nice work, you game looks awesome, how well did freeappmagic work.. now that it has been a few days? Still getting improved number of d/l's?
Another update, some interesting stuff!
A week has passed since the promotion, looks like after the initial surge of downloads and new players Dragon Lords stabilized on a new level (meaning that it stopped dropping and I've seen a first standard fluctuation increase). And it's looking AWESOME!
Average unique players per day:
before the promotion: ~1,000
after the promotion: ~3,500
Average new players per day:
before the promotion: ~150
after the promotion: ~1,100
Average revenue per day (this has seen MAJOR fluctuations so take it with a pinch of a salt):
before the promotion: $175
after the promotion: $510
So far the one problem that I'm seeing are the deadlocks on the MySQL database.
FreeAppMagic numbers
Linear Mode
