As I know absolutely zip all about game development, I thought I should contribute something I do know a little about rather than just be a lurker!

Just reading in this thread about getting reviews. This is a technique I use that costs 20 dollars using fiverr.com.

On fiverr.com you get what you pay for. If you supply the seller with the most basic information, you get the most basic results, so...

Find someone to write a 500+ word article about your app. Supply them with all the basic information you have so they can pad it out.

Find someone else to transcribe the article into a video review script.

Find someone to use the review script to make a review video.

Find someone to create a press release, supply them with your notes, the article and the transcript and let them sort it out into a coherent article.

You then have a pretty decent press release and review video to distribute to all the free review sites, press release sites, video sharing sites, article directories etc etc etc.

There are many such services on fiverr, some good, some dire. Use due diligence to check out their feedbacks and comments. Also, contact them before ordering the gig and ask some relevent questions. Generally, good sellers will take the time to answer your questions even before you've paid for anything.

One question I ask is if they'll do re-writes if I'm not happy with the results. Plenty of sellers will, but be very specific in what you want changing.

Also, and I hesitate to say this, and it is rather a generalisation, try and use native English writers/speakers to get more of a natural conversational style, rather than a 'stilted' perfunctory style.

Hope this helps.

Paul.

Thanks for the tips Paul

Nice one Paul. I think everyone should pay attention to this - some very sound advice here.

Paul, this is one of the most useful posts I have read this year across all the game-making boards I frequent.

THANKS

I've release three apps so far, one on iPhone, one on iPad, and one on Touchpad. So far, Touchpad has been my best market. Sales so far have not justified the time and money spent, however it is something I am trying to build on. It's a very good bunch of folks that make up the WebOS community. Shame AppGameKit does not support it.

I feel like I am in the same boat as a musician who some talent. I record (code) my material and release my indie songs (apps) in the hope that I will be discovered someday... it's a long shot but then again your chances are zero if you don't put some stuff out there. More than likely you are going to struggle and you'll have to build a thick skin for disappointment. You have to make mistakes and you have to learn from those mistakes and most importantly you have to listen to feedback both good and bad and commit yourself to learning from it and taking it to heart. In my experience, there is no free lunch in the mobile app jungle.

The biggest thing is that you have to build a following. You have to build friendships and alliances so your next app has a chance of doing a little better than the last. My Touchpad app released the 1st of December and in the first 2 weeks had about 14 sales. I listened to feedback, made improvements and my sales had tripled in the past week. You have to build momentum, if not for your current app then for your next and your next and so on. If your apps are good, people will be waiting for your next release. Also, don't fall in love with your projects... treat it like a product, not like your baby.

Angry Birds wasn't built in a day, it built up into a juggernaut over a period of time. Have confidence in what you are doing but know when to move on to the next project. Make improvements and shamelessly self-promote yourself and your products. In the beginning, nobody is going to be a bigger advocate for your stuff than you are. What nobody tells you is that after your app is finished, that's when the real work starts.

It's tough, I had a bungled iPad launch of my new game (rated 4.7/5 stars on WebOS store currently) and I felt sick to my stomach but I am going to try it again until I get it right (delayed release, app was buried back 70 pages on release day... damn sorting bug).

Nobody said this was easy and statistically you'll have to endure your fair share of failure before you finally succeed but if you give up, the only sure thing is that you will not succeed.

Keep calm and carry on.
Good luck guys.

Invaluable and sensible feedback, AM! Thanks.

What some of you will find releasing apps is that you will not cover the time in returns that you spent making the app, having negligible results, in fact you may see so little, that not only will you not get the return for your own time, you will possibly not even get back what you paid for the years apple developer fees. That's the harsh reality for a lot of people who try and dip their toes into the app marketplace, it is not for the faint hearted or the idealistic when faced with the real PRACTICALITIES of development.

and newuser, thanks for the heads up on fiverr, Ive just signed up for an account, looks great for picking up people to do little bits of work for things, there looks to be some quite talented and genuine eccentrics hanging out there, I look forward to hiring some of them.

@fallen one - The little bits in themselves don't really add up to much, most of them are basically pre-sells, but if you use a few sellers in a work flow, each of them doing a little bit, you can get some really decent results for around 20/25 dollars - waaaaay cheaper than hiring one company/person to produce 'something'.

I used the example of getting a press release and video produced, but there are tons of workflows you could set up eg: Customise an FB fan page > post content > get friends > get likes > run an xrumer campaign. etc etc.

You're so right about the eccentrics, there are some truly wacky gigs on there!

Thanks for the comments everyone. I hope I'm offering a different viewpoint for others to think about, and as I know absolutely nothing about anything in any of the other threads on this forum yet, I may as well carry on posting in this one and see what happens!

QR Codes...

You don't need to use 3rd party online services to create QR Codes, you could use this:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=250x250&cht=qr&choe=UTF-8&chl=http://your_url_of_choice_can_be_put_here.com

the 250x250 are px size and you can change them to any square size you like.

Just post that full url in your address bar and save the resulting image.

In my paticular niches, I join every forum and group related to the subject that I can find and use a qr code as an avatar. Some avatars are too small, but most are able to scan ok in any Android QR code scanner app. Linking directly to my app, or marketplace listings, or website, or whatever else I can think of. Simple and free.

A less targetted, but larger volume method is to use xrumer or similar software to set up multiple profiles on multiple forums (I'm talking hundreds or thousands), all using the QR code as an avatar. Don't link to any google, or important, web properties with this! Link them to an article, press release or video.

Another use is to save the QR Code image that I've created, stick it in my favourite image editing soft - I use fireworks - and customise all the black bits (make sure to use dark colours).

I then have an interesting looking image to submit to all the photo sharing sites, like flickr, photobucket, tweetpics, facebook and so on and so on. Even artists sites like deviant art. I max out the title, description and tags with my keywords.

A good free online service to auto submit images to multiple sites at the same time is: http://pixelpipe.com

A good free online service to manually submit images to multiple sites at the same time (unless you have an image rss feed) is http://ping.fm

Hope this helps,

Paul.