The lecture-workshop was conducted by Dmitry Zaretsky, the head of the company mobbtech.com in September 2012 in St. Petersburg. The article contains quite a lot of his quotes.

I was at this event and this day helped me personally decide what I will do for the next couple of years.
“We have collected data that inspires us,” Dmitry began the meeting with these words. Data that is not just taken from blogs, but also those on which we have already managed to get burned. Money has been spent on them, thereby we have gained tremendous experience in promoting mobile applications. What is happening in the market now?
Evidence:
– 80% of studios that make mobile applications cannot support their business at the expense of income; – 59% of applications do not pay for their development.
The remaining 40 percent of applications pay off, after which developers use the resulting profit to make applications again, of which 59% cannot reach the profitability threshold.

Thus, thousands of developers come into development because of the rather low annual cost, but a very small part of them achieve financial results. Most likely, this is caused by a low threshold for geeks, because only $ 100 is needed to have the right to program applications for Apple. Almost every student can develop apps for iOS. Hence the deplorable statistics. But along with the failures, we see quite loud successes of the mobile application market, let’s try to figure out how to make your applications profitable and how to promote an application without investing in traffic.

ASO/SEO optimization (app search optimization) – search engine optimization (SEO), we increase the searching ranks = usability

– visual optimization, we increase the external attractiveness of the application

    Be sure to devote time to the study:

  • application names;
  • keywords (services: mobiledev HQ), only in the AppStore;
  • description (only in Google Play);
  • transfer (up to 30% can increase sales);
  • icon (don’t be afraid to make several icon variants to be able to experiment with each one);
  • sreenshots (required);
  • promo video (suffice it to recall, there are a few examples from life when you and I peck at a not very high-quality film after watching only a bright and addictive trailer for it).
    List of paid services offering ASO/SEO:

  • app Promo;
  • Aombo App (top $100 — $4900);
  • Apppli;
  • PressPect;
  • SEO Girl.

Alternative app stores
iOS app stores:

  • Apple App Stores;
  • App Stores for jailbroken devices (Cydia and Lima);
  • App Stores that distribute downloadable apps that are then used offline (PremierAppShop, SexAppShop).
    Android app stores:

  • Google Play;
  • Amazon;
  • Samsung apps;
  • AppsLib;
  • Soci.i0, etc.

Social network:creation of official game pages, brand — Facebook, Twitter;

  • creating Facebook Fan Pages;
  • social integration as the main trend (FB, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare);
  • reviews/press releases.

There are two ways to send announcements to relevant resources (websites, blogs, magazines):
1. Free of charge:

  • you find the sites yourself, fill out the forms yourself and send the announcements;
  • pros: free;
  • cons: time-consuming, no coverage.
    2. Paid:

  • through special paid services (ispreadnews, prgage.com , comboapp, etc.);
  • pros: large audience coverage in a short period of time;
  • cons: paid.

Marketing movesWeekends / holidays should always be taken into account, these days account for an increase in installations by 15-20%.

this is especially important on the day of the app’s release.

PS: In the next post I will tell you what budget will be required to get into the TOP of one of the stores.