Tardy Posting!

Yes, I know, I have been quite tardy in posting updates.  It is a struggle when there is so much going on in the world, and updates funnel through slowly.

Yet - while I might not have been busy on the blog, we have been very busy behind the scenes with a great new update on its way.  The Shop has finally arrived!  I have to say, I'm kind of excited!  Now there is a reason to want to Save up your Bacon!  Yep, you can now exchange your bacon for upgrades just for your pig!

Here is a sample of the artwork that has been developed along the way:

Now your pig can be as cool as you are - lol!

We'll see what happens here, but it does change the way the game feels, and I like that.  It gives it something a bit extra.

Oh...and then there is the "Golden Pig"...but more about him later.

The journey continues...

AG

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Social Media - the smart way (automation!)

There are heaps of social media outlets for people to follow, tweet, post or publish, with comments, votes, +'s and many, many other variations.

How can I, just me, keep up with all of this?

To be perfectly honest - I don't.

But, yet, somehow, I must.

Wouldn't it be great to automatically Tweet every time you posted a blog - even it if was scheduled for late in the night?

What if you could also post to Facebook?

...the list goes on!

Enter IFTTT - "if this then that" - what a GREAT tool.  Free too, which is a surprise, it is something worth paying for.

So, the basic way it works is to allow you to set up "Recipes", or those more familiar with MS Outlook, "Rules".  But there are no fancy scripts, nothing difficult at all.  Just click on a bunch of buttons and you are done.

Trust me, this is as simple as it gets.  The people who put this together have really done a very good job.

Why not go now and give it a go http://ifttt.com/

It is easier than you think and a great way to make the Internet work for you (for once!)

And so...the journey continues!

AG

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Oooh...some more little tips that might help!

More tips after a good day investigating way to promote #savemybacon

Twitter

If you are an IndieDev, send a tweet to @AllGameBot - This bot will follow and RT.  Nice little tool actually.

Further, another tip if you have a blog like this one is to turn on Google+ comments.  It is under the Google+ item in the left menu and, if you also automatically post to Google+, you'll have a way of pulling together all your comments into one place!

Ok, so it is cheating a little, but it works.  In this strange game called Marketing, I'll take what I can get!!

The other thing worth noting is to tell people to RT.  If they don't they probably weren't going to anyway, but if they do, you might have just picked up a new RT that you might not have otherwise gotten.

That said, I have only found that this has limited success!! :)

REDDIT

The other interesting thing is Reddit.  This "subreddit" is an interesting way to join more with the online Indie community.  There are lots of good hints and tips here and I'll do what I can to test and share them!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/

One thing about reddit - you have have an account more than 1 week old or you cannot submit a new post.  You can comment to others, but not submit one of your own.

The journey continues...

AG

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An interesting Twitter tip I just learned!

Well, as I said, this blog is to track my marketing progress and it seems that there is a pretty good way to get RT (retweets).  I'm not sure about the audience just yet and whether they are valuable, or if it just more Twitter spam to enter the planet, but it is interesting nonetheless.

It seems that there are RT 'bots' out there, and if you find one that is in your sweet spot for marketing, you should use it.  For me, I have found that the following inclusion in your Tweet will get guaranteed RTs for your post.

#gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

There are a few bots out there that will take these messages and fire them out.

There has been a minor increase in traffic to this blog as a result of it.  It clearly works as a means to get a RT...but whether it 'spreads the word' in real terms is yet to be determined.

The journey continues!

AG

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Using the App Store for monitoring Apps

Like I promised, here is the App store follow up on yesterday's post.  I guess, given the extensive nature of Apps on i-devices, I was pretty keen to see what this one had to offer.

I am still disappointed.

I can only imagine that this has to do with my personal experience in using it.  Using it after the Play store just feels a little chunky and clunky.  Nonetheless, let me continue!

The opening screen has just been updated by Apple, and I have to say, I preferred it the way it was...but anyway, this is what I get to see now:

I really only use the first two buttons here, "My Apps" and "Sales and Trends".

Clicking on My Apps brings up the list of apps that you have and you can then select the one you want to know more about.

Once you have navigated your way through to your app, you are presented with the following screen:

This seems to be the only place I can get access to Review data, but still no install counts.  Clicking on Reviews will show this:

I don't know if this gets any better...but this seems pretty ordinary!

So, looking for my install count takes me back to the high-level dashboard.  From here, I now select Sales and Trends and I am presented by the following window:

So this is pretty good.  The data is similar to the Play store data. Is it useful?  I think it probably is, but haven't been able to determine how to use it effectively.

Can anyone help?  Is this really as basic as it seems?

Certainly, the data is OK, but is it enough to be useful?

Well, for me, the jury is still out.  I dislike the fact that reporting is jumping all over place, and it takes sooo many clicks to do anything.

I am not impressed with being logged out if you have been idle for a while either.  I'm just glad I saved my password :)

So, from my perspective, the Play Store, while far from perfect, was the pick for either of these Stores.  That said, if you are selling an app, see what you have is in mind.  Perhaps, based on your needs, your conclusion is very different to me with my needs.

So there you have it.  I hope you found this helpful, and by all means, please comment below!

The Journey Continues.

AG

Chartboost Chart - Week 2

Here is this week's Chartboost dashboard.  I have to confess, I am still not complete sure how to read it, but I am learning - any tips are always appreciated!

Still no new release, but some interesting movement on the charts.  The spike came after following the 'pig' people.  The trouble is, I know they didn't retweet or favourite for me, so that didn't make a lost of sense.

Interestingly, looking into it a little more, it seems that I got lucky(?) and Chartboost served up some well paying ads.  I don't really understand the trigger for it just yet.

So, stead progress, a little worse that Week 1, and a definitely downward spiral.  That said, we did get one more '5' rating on the Play Store.

The journey continues...

AG

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Making it Sticky - Part 2

You know, I was proud of the fact that we had come up with the Shop and Hose concepts.  I have to say, the High Score thing was still a bit of a surprise to me...I kinda thought that it would be easy - and it isn't that it is hard, but it is more time consuming than I expected.

The decision on the High Scores was to integrate with what the App Store and Play Store already had.  It wasn't ideal, but it was useful and I am expecting it to work pretty well - that one is sorted.

But the Shop and Hose were a great idea, just for our little pig.

The Shop - we figured in that original brainstorming, that it would allow you to do things like:

• Change the colour of the pig
• Maybe wear a Hat
• Maybe even a mustache

And that was about as far as we had gotten.

Now that we are thinking about actually coding it...well, that is a different thing.  Now we need 'real' ideas!

I called the kids together ('the brains trust') and we came up with a bunch of stuff, everything from polka-dot pigs to pigs in those googley-eyed glasses.  There was a pretty cool range of stuff that we came up with.  Thinking about it now, there is probably not enough, but we'll see what it is like when it pops out the other side!

Then the Hose.  This was a little different.  The idea is that you can buy a pack of 5 Hoses with real money, or you can save up your bacon and buy them one at a time.  The Hose will douse those deadly BBQs for a couple of seconds and let your pig survive a little longer.  Not too sure how this will play out, but I like it in concept.

So - now you know what is going to be in v2.0 (High Scores),  2.1 (Shop) and 2.2 (Hose).  I think it will help to increase the stickiness of the game.  It will give you something to strive for.

I hope you like where we are headed with this!

The journey continues!

AG

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Using Twitter - How can I make this work for me?

I had hoped to have all of these posts in chronological order, but as I started it a little late, I'm thinking that it simply won't be possible.  It is more important to me that they represent a history of what I did and when I did it.

OK, so this leads me to this post.

I have used Twitter before and I know how hard it can be to get followers.  I also realise the difference between follower quantity and follower quality.  Lots of people following me that are just following me so they can get their own count up really doesn't help me that much...but it does help a bit.  If you have a lot of followers, your account looks better...and let's face it, it is possible to get lucky from a random follower.

And of course, if you have more followers than people that you follow, your account looks like something people want to listen to.

Looking to see how to get my count up, I joined a thing called Twiends, but that is a topic for another post.

Today, with a grand total of 39 followers, I decided to do something a little different.  I searched for the term #pigs.  Wow, there are a lot of people that don't like the police on Twitter!  That said, they are obviously not my target audience.  I was looking for people that liked pigs so much they included it as a #hashtag.

I have even included a few that like to cook pigs...just to see if they liked them enough to play a game about them!! lol

Out of that brief search, I have found 12 new people to follow.  Not many, I know, but I just want to see if those few will make a difference.  Unfortunately, not many of them have many followers.  This could well be a failed experiment, but I am not going to give up just yet.

Have you used Twitter successfully before?  What techniques do you use?

Over the course of today, I will be tweeting a single tweet in their direction along with my normal tweeting.  in 8 hours, I'll do this again to get people on the other side of the planet :)

The journey continues...

AG

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In Game Advertising - Yes or No?

Before I go into detail about those two stores, Play Store and App Store, there is an important question that really needs to be asked.

Do we have in-App advertising?

In today's very consumer driven world, there is little value that is applied to innovation or investment when it comes to the mass driven app gaming market.  People have an expectation of high quality and low (free!) cost to them.  No longer do people think they should be paying for applications, everything should be free!  Well..shouldn't it?

A truly successful app can be given away for free, and the developers will still make plenty of money via a variety of mechanisms, including:

• in-App product placement advertising for other products
• in-App purchases to help progress in the game
• Website traffic advertising
• Sponsorship
• etc.

But let's face it, unless your name is Mojang or SuperCell or one of the big boys, the opportunity for revenue from these mechanisms isn't great.  If you don't have traffic, you won't make money.  If you charge for your app, there is a strong probability that you won't get much traffic.  The trouble is that you have just spent either lots of your own time or lots of your own money in order to get the app to market.

Somehow, this has to make good Commercial sense.  If it doesn't, it is an investment in time or money as a labour of love for the marketplace.  This is noble, but unless you have some money hidden somewhere, at some point this is not sustainable.

Enter in-App advertising.  This was a concept that didn't even exist only a few short years ago.  By simply showing ads to hundreds if not thousands of pair of eyes it has all of a sudden channeled an entirely new opportunity for income.

This means you can release an App for FREE and still MAKE MONEY!  Wow.  This is a model that could make everyone happy!  Awesome!

It seems like a real win-win, the best of both worlds.  The consumer literally gets something for nothing and the developer can still make it viable for them to create these free apps.

...and this mostly works well.

Unfortunately, there are still some people who will whinge and complain about seeing an ad.  They see it as invasive and "Why should I have to see ads?" and "I expect to get stuff for free".  This kind of selfish attitude really is a disappointing but very real part of the world we currently live in.

Because of these selfish people, if you choose to run ads, expect to get some 1 star ratings.  It is simply a fact of life unfortunately.

For Save My Bacon, we have decided to run a simple ad that is to appear briefly at the end of the game.  It is certainly a struggle to generate much cash in these early days, but there are some semi-promising signs.

We have decided to go with Chartboost.  It has simple integration, seems to pay OK and has a nice dashboard.  I'll be posting pics of progress, for a while at least, every week as we progress along this marketing journey.

And to start that off, here is my dashboard after 7 days.  The only marketing so far has been some simply Tweeting which I'll talk about soon.

It will improve, because it must!

Please leave me a comment on whether you agree with in-App advertising and your reasons?

Also, what advertising network do you use?

The journey continues...

AG