The experience of launching a children’s game that has received a feature on the App Store and Google Play, with the editors App2Top.ru Sergey Kopov, who acted as an independent developer within the framework of this project, shared this.
The Learn English with Rhymes app, which is a collection of songs for children, was released on iOS at the end of August.
Sergey, who is the Head of Publishing at Herocraft, worked on it in his spare time for about six months. He explains this period by the fact that “the work was greatly smeared in time,” and “it took 2 months of pure time as a programmer.”
The project, created on Unity, cost Sergey $ 4 thousand. This amount does not take into account his own efforts, but only payments to outsourcers: $ 1.5 thousand was spent on graphics, the same amount on localization into 8 languages, the remaining $ 500 went to voice acting.
From the very beginning of the development, Kopov expected to get a feature. “For a children’s app, the platform feature is one of the few available ways to get users (the second and last way is using the brand). Therefore, we focused our efforts on getting it,” explains Sergey.
In order to increase the chance of getting it, the developer promised Apple that Learn English with Rhymes would be a temporary exclusive for the platform, localizations for the most popular languages were also made, a version for Apple TV was assembled, and “all relevant proprietary technologies were integrated.”
As a result, Apple gave the project a feature on the main page in Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, India and briefly in Canada. At the same time, localizations — based on a feature in the children’s category — were prepared for other countries: Germany, France, Italy, China and Japan. Despite the educational nature of the application, it did not get “into any of the language training collections,” Sergey complains.
The feature led to the fact that the application icon was seen 11 million times, clicked on it 200 thousand times, the number of installations was 20 thousand, and paid in the application (monetization is based on the purchase of new content) — only $ 200.
After the release on iOS, Kopov also decided to launch the project as part of open beta testing on Google Play. The decision was due to the fact that participation in the beta test on the platform gives a chance to get into the “Early Access” feature. As a result, Learn English with Rhymes on Google got into the desired selection.
The application has been in the feature since September 15 for more than three weeks. This gave 4.5 thousand downloads, while the number of active users was 2 thousand. “At the start, we received about 250 installations per day. Then they reached 350 a day,” says Sergey.
“We received $20, in terms of downloads, this is 2 times less than with App Store feature traffic. At the same time, we received 50 reviews, which is 40 times more per user than in the App Store.”
The conclusion that Kopov makes is that “the global feature of the application in the “Preliminary Versions” category does not give a lot of traffic, but these users are very willing to share feedback.”
The developer is not upset by the low income of the application at the start. Moreover, no additional progress has been made yet. Sergey is waiting for a full-fledged release on Google Play. Plus, initially the task was completely different — to create a game for your own child.
“Commercial success was not the original goal of the project. I understand perfectly well how difficult it is now to make money on a children’s educational project. The main goal was to make an application for our child, since we did not find a suitable ready-made alternative. Someone buys their child a stroller for $ 4,000, and we decided to make such a gift,” explains Kopov.