You've actually followed up five times? Did this ever result in a positive response? I'm past the point where I feel it's really worth the bother of reaching out to review sites. Emailing material to a "review site" is neither a guarantee that they'll do anything with it, nor a necessary step for them to decide to cover your app. As you say, the vast majority don't respond back, even with a form email. The few that do are more likely to point you towards their advertising department, hoping to get you to buy web banners. If this sounds depressing, it may help you feel better to know that review sites don't drive sales as much as most people seem to think. There are basically three tiers of websites: 1) Touch Arcade is in a class of its own, with a huge community of users. Forum threads alone are a great way, completely in your control, to increase visibility of your app. But even managing to scratch one of the fetishes of the moderators and land a coveted front page spot is no guarantee of anything more than a temporary, modest bump in your sales. 2) "2nd tier" sites like SlideToPlay, Pocket Gamer may have large number of lurkers, but the discussion forums themselves are ghost towns. Several developers that have been featured on sites like these have reported not seeing any significant effect on sales. 3) The "3rd tier" fan sites with user reviews, often on YouTube, are nice, but get even less traffic. The most important kind of "review" are user reviews in the AppStore itself. Particularly when a game has only picked up a few user reviews, every user review counts and can have a dramatic effect on your app's trajectory. The most important kinds of advertising are apple features and category rankings.
I've always thought features are generated by complex math involving more alphabets and symbols than actual numbers, but i think we can assume that the number of downloads vs time ratio plays a huge role in it? correct me if i'm wrong. I'm a new developer and this thread was well worth the read! wrt to the effectiveness of review sites, i say more exposure is always better! If i went to a popular site and saw an app, and see it again in another review site, then i would be more inclined to download it!
re: Hi guys, The above marketing document offer is no longer available, as it went through several iterations and was eventually published into to an ebook. You can find it here on Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/MgsRcl
That's specifically what I've read everywhere about dealing with media. You should know them personally to get real help. Otherwise you'll be talking to the wall. We are in the same situation right now, going to release game and I'm still curious when I should start sending out press releases. So I decided first to try several websites that offer paid reviews. And see what we can get from that. I've tried one already, $254 for article and posts in their social media. It's the biggest portal about apps and stuff in CIS countries. And we've got so far around 600-700 installs from that. But I know a guy who also bought article from them and got near 3k installs for same price + around 5k later of organic. But mostly what I've heard of fellow indie devs that such reviews bring you in total around 100 downloads. So I guess it depends, will try on our game and let you all know after, and please share more, as this is very valuable experience.
I've sent dozens of review request but got hardly any reply. Thanks for your sharing! Your experience helps a lot! Guess have to be organized next time.
Just realized that this was a years ago thread. But still find learned a lot! I'm a newbie to app marketing. Have tried sending e-mails to major sites requesting reviews. Since it was not done organized nor properly maybe, it turned negative. The only one time we got exposed freely was getting into the HOT GAMES section of TA, unexpectedly. So I'm especially fond of TA here knowing it's real a community that we can take control with ourselves, non commercially. Thanks Shakoosh Games for sharing your experience. Seems like the strategy went from organizing app release/how to ask for review request to knowing someone personally. (?? I haven't tried any paid service yet. Seems that the paid review service is the only way that might work? Out of CPI CPD ads?
