Kill yr ads… the don’ts of iPhone app marketing

<i>We’ve accomplished this without spending a single dime on advertising.</i><p>Interesting, taptaptap, interesting. Let's see here:<p>1) Multi-thousand dollar, multi-day giveaways and promotions that require you to follow and retweet.<p><a href="http://taptaptap.com/blog/win-the-ultimate-10000-canon-5d-" rel="nofollow">http://taptaptap.com/blog/win-the-ultimate-10000-canon-5d-</a> mark-ii-camera-rig/<p><a href="http://taptaptap.com/blog/laser-engraved-ipads/" rel="nofollow">http://taptaptap.com/blog/laser-engraved-ipads/</a><p>2) Lisa Bettany making seven appearances on This Week in Tech, and in surely all of which plugging Camera+, a channel not everybody has.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_This_WEEK_in_TECH_panelists" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_This_WEEK_in_TECH_panel...</a><p>3) Getting pulled from the App Store and subsequent free publicity, again, fairly risky and unreliable for getting covered.<p>That's some road to take not to require advertising to get the word out about your app. It's technically TRUE that you didn't buy ads, per se, but it's not like this success, especially in relation to point 1, was free, as your opening seems to imply. Put another way, your marketing expenditures aren't zero.

How do you write an entire article about iOS app advertising and not include a single word about mobile ad networks? I see discussion of banner ads on major sites, AdWords, roadblocks on various ad networks, Daring Fireball RSS, MacWorld banner ads, but nothing about AdMob or MobClix. Maybe they tried that and it didn't work also, but it would have been nice to hear some specifics. I've heard of multiple people having success using AdMob to drive downloads, and that makes more sense to me than a Daring Fireball RSS sponsorship. The channels they named seem more like places you'd use to market Mac software (something they have experience with) than places you'd go to market an iOS app. None of this is to say they don't know how to market iOS apps - they've sure sold a lot more than me. ;)

I hate to be that guy, but am I wrong in thinking that the only point made in this 2000 word article is "Don't spend money on advertising to get your iOS app to be successful"?<p>Of so, I'd like a prize for managing to deliver 150x human-readable compression :-)

That body text is borderline illegible, even rendered on a Mac. Horrible choice.

I don't understand what's insightful or new with this article. Advertising is basically an arbitrage operation. To do it right one needs to look at the conversion funnel, figure out the ARPU for different advertising channels, prune campaigns that are not effective and invest in ones that are.<p>If you are not doing that then of course you will get burned, everyone who is thinking about making an ad spend knows this or should be able to figure it out.

This argument seems odd. Targeted advertising can be really cheap. For example you write some program that can scan sheet music and convert it internally into a music representation can be advertised on the top sheet music sites and probably get a solid ROI as a result. A MacWorld ad or DaringFireball ad for that probably doesn't make any sense though.

What about us who don't sell iPhone apps and are selling just normal downloadable software? Is advertising still a viable outlet, and if not, what do you recommend?

I have a question. What's wrong with coming out with a paid app for, say $2.99 and then pay 51% to let's say TapJoy? If they don't drive someone to buy your app, you don't pay. If they do, then you get 49% - 30% = 19% of the app. Isn't this essentially risk free and improves your sales numbers?