Getting one million users (or dollars) with my app!

[Archie the Unicorn]

Hey everybody!
This is my journey about a mobile game that I've made for iOS and Android.
It took a lot of time, effort and money to make it, yet...
it turned out that making the game was the easy part.

Now that I have everything ready, I need to promote the game,
get actual people to play with it... which is the hard part.

The game is a party/drinking game.
Unfortunately I can't share the name of the app or the URL here because of the admins/rules of BHW.
They would consider my topic as selling outside the marketplace and that's not allowed.
So I will not tell you which one is my app... even if it's the best party game ever.

My goal:
Within a year, I would like to get a million users (free or paying user doesn't matter)
or even better, a million dollars with the app.

Monetization plan:
The game is freemium, with premium subscription mode. Half of it is free, you have to pay for the other half (unless you invite your friends because then you can unlock the other half for free as well on Android. On iOS Apple doesn't allow giving users free stuff, so... this feature is missing from iOS.) There are no advertisements in the game and I am not planning to put any. In long term when I have enough users, I might accept branding deals, but there won't be any ads interrupting the gameplay ever.

Target audience:
English speaking young people (US,UK,AU,CA, etc.) who like to have fun, throw house parties with friends, drink, play card games, board games. These people sound like memes, dark humor, sarcasm, etc. If if I want to be even more specific, I know exactly who are my target, those people who bought or funded games like: Cards Against Humanity, Exploding Kittens, Joking Hazard, What Do You Meme, etc.

My current problem:
I have no frinkin idea how to reach out those people without spending a fortune on marketing, and since I don't have a fortune to spend, I am looking for, and trying different methods to raise awareness of the app among the target audience. If anyone has any suggestion, experience, hint/tips, I am more than happy to hear those!

What will be this journey about:
1. Sharing my experience on different platforms, with different marketing methods.
2. Sharing info about my progress, number of installs, income, etc. (if there will be any)
3. Who knows... what will life bring :-D

 

[pablitojanno]

Good luck with your journey mate!
I know, it's not easy at all to get downloads. You could try to spend some $ on niche influencers? It could go viral.

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

What happened so far:
1. I tried Producthunt, which turned out a waste of time. There is barely engagement there (at least in my niche) and without paying they don't even list your product. So... that is out.

2. I tried Indiehackers, again low engagement (at least in my niche). I have a feeling that registering on these websites is a waste of time.

3. Oh, I asked my "friends" on whatsapp to help me and share my socials and game where they can, but it turned out that these lazy m*therf*ckers are not my friends in terms of helping even a little bit. So... leverage from my contact list of about 400 people = zero.

4. I made a facebook page and facebook group where I started to share my own "home made" memes without any sales intention, but since I have zero followers and members, obviously it was not going viral.

5. I tried to boost one of my facebook posts (that was advertising the facebook group) but I had barely any engagement from the targeted group and the price was like 0.5$/engagement which was not even a group member or page like, just basically opening my post... so FB ads... waste of money so far.

6. I tried reddit as well. That was the "funniest". As I mentioned I made memes and I posted them to the relevant subreddits. Without any promotion, without url or even my instagram or anything mentioned. I was posting like daily one or even less. There was zero likes replies or engagement... so I've left reddit for like 2 weeks, and when I logged in next time, I was permbanned... for sharing my own memes... I still don't understand what did I do wrong, but nevermind. Reddit is also out.

But I have good news as well!
I had no idea (and still don't have) that how many people are paying or premium in the freemium model.
Well, so far I havebarely any installs and those are mostly my friends and my friend's friends, so this sample group is far from representative, but... about 10% of the users bought the premium subscription which is CRAZY GOOD in my opinion. I was expecting like 1 from a 1000 paying. Again... the current user sample is not accurate, but if it keeps going like this, that would be awesome.

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

Good luck with your journey mate!
I know, it's not easy at all to get downloads. You could try to spend some $ on niche influencers? It could go viral.

Yes, I am thinking about that thank you!
... however I just watched the documentary: "Fake Famous" which is about influencers...

 

[mnrfas]

have you ever tried FB ads or Google Ads?

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

Next steps:
- Trying facebook ads (again) this time not the group, but directly for the app
- As @pablitojanno suggested, reaching out to niche influencers and hoping I can afford them
- I am thinking about different strategies on twitter and instagram (meaning: spamming, following, whatever...)
- Going to youtube and twitch, streaming live (but again, for that I need followers, otherwise no one will see that)

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

have you ever tried FB ads or Google Ads?

Yes I tried facebook but it was a huge fail.
I will try again after rethinking the target audience and the purpose of the app.

I did not try google ads, but I might... I just need to get one of those half price coupons.

 

[treverminght]

Hello, can I have more information about your application?

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

Hello, can I have more information about your application?

Yes sure, except the name and the URL because I don't want to get kicked out from BHW (I already got a warning, because first I've included the url of my website in this thread.

 

[thetoothfairy]

I tried reddit as well. That was the "funniest". As I mentioned I made memes and I posted them to the relevant subreddits. Without any promotion, without url or even my instagram or anything mentioned. I was posting like daily one or even less. There was zero likes replies or engagement... so I've left reddit for like 2 weeks, and when I logged in next time, I was permbanned... for sharing my own memes... I still don't understand what did I do wrong, but nevermind. Reddit is also out.

You are a programmer. Couldn't you make a bot to auto do Reddit or Facebook spamming? I'm doing it with Selenium ( 7 accounts) they are so far so good

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

You are a programmer. Couldn't you make a bot to auto do Reddit or Facebook spamming? I'm doing it with Selenium ( 7 accounts) they are so far so good

I am not a programmer (unfortunately?) but I am a damn good project manager and graphics designer. I came up with the concept, I designed the UI and made the illustrations for the game, but for the app I hired developers. But to answer you question: YES, that is exactly that I am planing to do... I will buy a bot (I saw some ads here, I already bookmarked the jarvis or what) or if those suck, then I hire someone to make a bot for me.

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

So far what I tried on Twitter and Instagram:

I've collected (manually) 40 target prospects who follow certain things.
I've followed them and liked one of their posts hoping they follow me back...
NOPE :-D

Also, I've collected 20-20 (insta and twitter) target prospects, I followed and private messaged them with a polite message asking their help/opinion about my app, since I value their opinions as people who are in the target demografic.

From the 40 people I got 2 replies, one of them installed the app for sure, I have no ide about the others, since my app installs can come from any other channel (also from my lazy friends). Anyhow, I am not happy with the 2 from 40 response rate :-(

 

[thetoothfairy]

I am not a programmer (unfortunately?) but I am a damn good project manager and graphics designer. I came up with the concept, I designed the UI and made the illustrations for the game, but for the app I hired developers. But to answer you question: YES, that is exactly that I am planing to do... I will buy a bot (I saw some ads here, I already bookmarked the jarvis or what) or if those suck, then I hire someone to make a bot for me.

Oh. Because you said you made the game I thought you did the whole thing including the code. Well you can easily hire people here or may be on Fiverr to make a Reddit bot for you. Alternative you can mass email gaming blog/website, big or small to do a review of your game, hopefully some of them would be kind enough to do it for free.

 

[Luk3]

Find the failure, you want to monetize a drinking game under friends during worldwide covid-19 lockdown.

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

Oh. Because you said you made the game I thought you did the whole thing including the code. Well you can easily hire people here or may be on Fiverr to make a Reddit bot for you. Alternative you can mass email gaming blog/website, big or small to do a review of your game, hopefully some of them would be kind enough to do it for free.

Yeah, that's the thing, that I am not a big game developer company, neither a millionaire so I try to make it as cheap as possible (lol that is why I am here, instead or throwing 100.000 dollars marketing budget at it)

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

Find the failure, you want to monetize a drinking game under friends during worldwide covid-19 lockdown.

I started working on the game before COVID and then when the first MPV got ready the lockdown came... Damn... You ca imagine how pissed I was. Anyhow, this might even work out for me, because:

1. At the moment in many countries there are no clubs, no bars...
2. The only thing people (more or less) allowed to do is hosting house parties.
3. Here where I live, at the moment 4 people can meet... perfect for this game!

 

[Jung]

So far what I tried on Twitter and Instagram:

I've collected (manually) 40 target prospects who follow certain things.
I've followed them and liked one of their posts hoping they follow me back...
NOPE :-D

Also, I've collected 20-20 (insta and twitter) target prospects, I followed and private messaged them with a polite message asking their help/opinion about my app, since I value their opinions as people who are in the target demografic.

From the 40 people I got 2 replies, one of them installed the app for sure, I have no ide about the others, since my app installs can come from any other channel (also from my lazy friends). Anyhow, I am not happy with the 2 from 40 response rate :-(

That's a 5% "CTR", ain't too bad.
I would try:
Instagram meme pages
Instagram college/party/drunk pages (@nochaser style)
Get semi-popular TikTokers that are kind of in the niche (in terms of their following) to make a few videos using your app.

 

[Archie the Unicorn]

That's a 5% "CTR", ain't too bad.
I would try:
Instagram meme pages
Instagram college/party/drunk pages (@nochaser style)
Get semi-popular TikTokers that are kind of in the niche (in terms of their following) to make a few videos using your app.

 

[SpawneR]

Meme pages shoutouts & TikTok ads buddy!

 

[Jung]

View attachment 162271

Lmao now that's dedication to persona!
I've though of another one - YouTube meme compilation channels -
although I'm not sure how good the conversion rate would be, might be worth a try if you find a good price.
Good luck!