Gaining traction for a mobile app

I was looking at flurry and they have a scheme to join “app circles“.

App circles are advertising rings whereby you advertise the other apps in your ring,  and they yours.

this helps drive exposure,  and quite often these ads are driven by flurry’s analytics.

The start-ups I’ve chatted to seem to rate it,  and when this was mentioned at a conference the show hands was strong.

My point is that if you want to make money selling your app (either directly,  or via a “fremium * ” model) then you need to get yourself noticed (obviously) however in the mobile app world, the virtual monopoly of the main app stores means that if you are to get noticed you need to be in the top 25 lists for a period of time.  The app circles can help raise your game.

Cost of Acquisition:

I am told that the cost of acquiring a customer is between $1 and $4 depending on your approach and model (freemium is much less).

Other alternatives to flurry would be

http://www.adwhirl.com; http://www.inner-active.com; http://www.burstly.com  so there are choices.

Here is a graph showing the hockey stick effect of being in the top 25.  It also, by the way, highlights one of the issues one must address when designing mobile apps,  that of user’s laziness combined with an expectation of immediate, direct results.  Do not, bury important, of money making parts of your app,  raise ’em up.

So there you go,  app circles.

*and if your wondering what freemium is this is a model where you give away the app for free,  and then once the user has gone some way into it, or has some benefit from hit,  have a pay barrier to the rest, or to the best bits.  “Free” apps are downloaded many many many more times than direct paid for apps.  for more look at an olderpost on the business models for the mobile games industry.