Hi all,
This is my first post on the forum as I wanted to share my experience as a developer in marketing a mobile app for poker players. I thought maybe some of you might be interested in my findings and have some good advices for me.
First some background to the app:
The moment I started to play poker for cash, I wrote down every time how much I would spend or gain in the game. The idea to build an app came after I found all the existing apps to keep track of my poker bankroll complicated and cumbersome. I did not want to enter dates, stakes, limit types, locations, type of games and what's not. I just wanted to know how I was doing months after months. I first used an Excel spreadsheet but after 2 years of using it I got tired of it so I decided to code a mobile app and called it "My Poker Bankroll App". For casual players like me.
I wanted the app to be simple, easy to use, useful, not in the way of me playing the game and straight to the point. I just wanted to enter my buy-ins and my cash-outs in the fastest possible way and get nice statistics in return. I built it for me but thought other players might benefit from it.
It took me a good month to learn Javascript so I could build a PhoneGap app (I'm a trained developer but had not coded for 20 years) for Android and iOS.
Version 1 of the app was very basic and was available for both platforms for $0.99
Version 2 is only iOS, is free, has more features and a freemium model.
Here's what I learned:
1/ Android users don't look for apps.
Both v1 of the app were released on the same day for iOS and Android and I made no particular effort to promote one vs the other. I did no marketing except having a website, a Twitter account and a Facebook page. In the first 3 months, version 1 of the app which used to cost $0.99 got 12 Android installations (including free trials) vs 253 on iOS (including some free promo for 24h that half of them).
2/ Users search directly in the App Store.
On any given day, I have more downloads on the App Store than visitors going from my website to the App Store. It's a factor of 1 to 10.
3/ Poker news sites talk about poker bankroll management but never about the tools.
Google "poker bankroll management" and you get about 220,000 results. You will recognise most of the names if you read poker news online. I'm the last one on the 2nd page results but app website. Not bad for a one page website. It's a topic that has been talked about over and over. All the pros praise how this is the most important thing to track "Bankroll is the only thing you can control in poker" etc. You will find strategies to apply but very few talk about the tools to use. Now try Googling "poker bankroll management app" and you will get 31,000 results. I'm the 3rd result on the first page (if you are logged out of Google) after the big Apple itself.
4/ Users love simplicity and free apps.
There was no doubt in my mind that a free app would get more downloads than a paid app so I decided to make it free and added more statistics that would be available for a fee. The daily downloads increased up to a factor of 15 on certain days. Better than that, users love the simplicity of the app. 3 months after the app was launched it has a retention rate of 80%. This means 80% of the users who try the app still use it after 3 months. I thought there would be other players who would benefit from it, now it's a conviction of mine.
5/ Twitter works. Facebook, not so much. StumbleUpon costs me money.
I have 363 followers on Twitter and 37 fans on Facebook (Yooohooo!) and excluding the organic traffic from Google, Twitter is my primary source of traffic to the exception of StumbleUpon (whose users only stay for 2 seconds on average). I don't tweet that much, not even once a day. Maybe more like 3 to 4 times per week on a good week.
6/ Finding affiliates take time.
Apple has a built-in affiliation model for freemium apps so I added a page for webmasters and a reference to it on my Twitter account but unless you actively contact them, there are a few chances they will find you and we all know success is all about good traffic.
7/ The vast majority of players have no clue how they profit from poker.
Ask any player if he knows exactly how much profit he has made since he started to play live poker and either he "doesn't care" or he wish he knew. But if I show the app to that person he downloads it. Always. "Because it's free". 8 times out of 10 they still use it after 3 months and thank me. That's the best part of it.
8/ But they want to know more
I only make money when a user unlock one of the 7 graphs available. For free, he has enough to know how much he is profiting from the game and how often. If he wants to know how much he is winning per hour, how many hours he is playing, how much he wins on average, what are his best ups and downs, his longest best and worst streaks he just has to unlock them individually for $0.99 or 7 bundled for $4.99 - 3 months after switching to the freemium model, the monthly revenue from the app has increased by a factor of 10.
That's all folks! I'm not including a link to the app so I'm not accused of spamming but if you want to check it out, read the end of item 3/ again
I'm happy to answer any questions.