So you started as an indie developer and tried to get on top of the Apple App Store, but... You failed.

What was wrong? Hard to say. Nowdays it is pretty impossible to emerge considering the thousands of apps available. But nothing is lost. The tips below are from a developer personal experience.

If you are the next indie challenger read on:

 

BAD (What didn't worked):

1) Paying review sites, nothing in return. Good review -> No one will read it.

2) Paying for a video review/demo. Reviewers will keep it down the way, they don't have time to FIRST test your game/application in depth (Or don't care about it, you are little). Result? Money lost and bad show! You can do better. MUCH better.

3) Social media advertising. We spent some money on it. A sample? 100 Euro for 4 days on one of the coolest. Hundreds of unuseful followers. Most of them are peoples aiming only for visibility. They will 'like' you but will not share anything for you. (But if you have money this will work, maybe...)

4) Spreading PROMO codes to the BIG sites. Actually no one worked for us. Lost codes. Better to share it on Twitter or on the useful iphoneapp-promocodes.com.

5) Sending mails to the BIGs, trying to contact them and asking for a review in many ways. No results. You are little.

6) Blah blah... Nothing.

GOOD (What worked):

1) Local review sites. Not as the big ones, but will help to rank your Game/App. We got a review on one of this in the beginning and the day after was a boom. Word of mouth will do the rest. Hoping.

2) Press Release. We used prMac and was very good. And we will use it by default! Professional and very careful on what you post. (And it's cheap!)

3) Tweets! Got some good results, but you need to work hard on it. Will take time... We are still a novice on this...

4) Free App a day! We got more than 1000+ download in one day, without saying nothing about it! Just scheduled a free download! (Will work more well if your Game/App contains some social media sharing feature and it is of some interest). We did it again later and with the help of some big local blogger site was a super boom. More than 15.000 downloads in one day only. And later again, thousands and thousands. (Thinking of iAd?)

5) Update your Game/App frequently! (But include some new features and fix those annoying bugs!) If your Game/App is interesting even the peoples who downloaded it for free will update, and probably will share. (80% in the step 4 for us).

6) Patience! And don't give up! You are a drop in an ocean! Drop by drop...

It's hard, but don't give up and keep running!

 

Feel free to post comments on this or share your experience.