So Many Apps…How to Distribute Your App
Are you concerned that no one will notice your app? There are now hundreds of thousands of apps available with a varying selection, accessible on almost any platform, whether it is mobile, web, or the desktop. Is it possible for an app developer to build a sustainable business?
Popular opinion suggest that you are not alone if you share these concerns:
Apple App Store: Overpopulated with Apps Nobody Uses – Mashable
The iPhone Success Stories That Are Fueling Copycats – mocoNews
Facebook Grew To 33,000 Apps And 400,000 Registered Developers Within 14 Months – Wikipedia
Our company, W3i, was founded by developing desktop apps to meet the demands of users. Today, W3i is helping other developers distribute and generate revenue with their own desktop apps. W3i installs more than 7 million desktop apps monthly and has distributed over 250M installs to date.
To help you succeed, I wanted to share with you a few suggestions: first, research the market and consider your resources; second, review and assess marketing options; and third, document and implement a marketing plan.
First: Research the Market and Consider Your Resources
- Market Research
- Market Focused: Before you build your app, research to see how much demand there is, as well as how competitive advertising inventory is.A few tools to consider:
- Google Trends for keyword trends
- Google AdWords: Keyword Tool for advertiser competition and keyword discovery.
- Top 25 iPhone Apps
- AppData.com for Facebook app and developer leaderboard
- Wakoopa for the most popular Windows and web app
- Market Focused: Before you build your app, research to see how much demand there is, as well as how competitive advertising inventory is.A few tools to consider:
- Budget and Business Model Consideration
- How much money can you afford to spend on marketing?
- Have you explored business models to make money so that you can offset most of your user acquisition costs while you develop your primary business model(s)? You could even profit from the user acquisitions via paid promotions for your app if you have done a solid enough job with market research.Consider the following supplementary business models:
- Windows
- W3i’s Application Network – Get paid for the Windows application installations you distribute, which include software recommendations powered by W3i in your installer
- Mobile
- Google AdSense for Mobile Apps – Not just your typical text ads. Google now offers graphical ad units specifically optimized for mobile apps.
- Greystripe – Recently, they launched a guaranteed CPM program because they were confident they could out pay their competition.
- Facebook
- Virtual Currency – Sell favor points leveraging Paypal or Zong or allow your users to earn them through taking offer-based advertising from Offerpal or SuperRewards.
- Windows
Second: Review & Assess Marketing Options
- Consider alternative advertising distribution mechanisms
- Windows
- W3i’s Application Network – Access to 7M+ monthly installs. Pay only for completed installs. Target your desktop app using the user’s product interests, geography, required software, and more.
- Upload.com’s Pay Per Download – A site for desktop app developers to submit downloads and purchase advertising for CNET’s Download.com. Pay for initiated downloads with their Pay Per Download program. Download.com generates 3M downloads per day according to a sales sheet they published as of May 2008. Because of the large number of apps competing on Download.com, you may find achieving significant scale to be challenging despite the high volume of completed downloads by users.
- Widgets
- Gigya – Syndicates your widget across the web.
- ClearSpring – Syndicates your widget across the web including 50+ destinations.
- W3i – Syndicate your widget to the millions of toolbars distributed by W3i.
- Facebook
- RockYou – Advertise your Facebook app within other Facebook apps.
- Mobile
- AdMob – Similar to RockYou, only you will be advertising your mobile app within other mobile apps. AdMob refers to this as the iPhone Download Exchange.
- AdMob – Similar to RockYou, only you will be advertising your mobile app within other mobile apps. AdMob refers to this as the iPhone Download Exchange.
- Windows
- Leverage social media to acquire users without advertising costs
- Create a video demo for your product
- Publish on YouTube
-
W3i put up demos of screensaver applications and within a short period of time has now generated 88,064 viewings throughYouTube. http://www.youtube.com/user/ScreensaverCom
-
- Publish on YouTube
- Create social networking accounts for your product
- Allow your fans to help spread the word about your app and stay connected to the latest developments.
- W3i created a Facebook account for its Screensaver.com applications and within a short time has 556 fans. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Screensavercom/56705948398
- W3i created a Facebook account for its Screensaver.com applications and within a short time has 556 fans. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Screensavercom/56705948398
- W3i created a Twitter account for its Screensaver.com apps and within a short time has 154 followers. http://twitter.com/screensavercom
- Post comments at popular media outlets and include links to your app so that people interested in topics relating to your app are aware that it is available. This may also benefit your link popularity boosting your search engine rankings.
- Allow your fans to help spread the word about your app and stay connected to the latest developments.
- Create a video demo for your product
Third: Document & Implement a Marketing Plan
- Questions To Consider Answering In Your Marketing Plan
- What is my positioning to users?
- Who are my competitors? What makes them unique and valuable?
- What are the top market segments that would be interested in my app?
- What marketing strategies/tactics will I focus on for distribution?
- How will I measure the success of my application?
- What goals do I have for my application? What goals do I have with each of my marketing strategies or tactics?
- Implement The Marketing Plan
- Prioritize based on the risk and reward.
- Measure each strategy and tactic and change course as needed based on the best available facts.
I realize that distribution is a struggle for app developers and requires careful attention if one is to avoid the fate of so many quality apps that never get noticed or that are unable to generate sufficient funds to continue development.
W3i was founded in a dorm room; self-funded with no venture capital funding until after we succeeded with massive distribution many years later.
W3i has been continuously focusing on creating and distributing apps, using principles similar to those described in this post, allowing us to grow to the scale we are today. Now we are committed to helping other app developers find similar success, and hope you consider W3i for any of your app distribution, revenue, or user engagement needs. To learn more, contact W3i.
Ryan Weber, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Entrepreneur and pioneer of Internet marketing focusing on increasing revenue and distribution for digital downloads.
Find Out More on How W3i Can Grow Your Consumer App Business
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September 16th, 2009 at 8:42 am
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