5 lessons from a successful Indie App Santa Promotion
I made more money in a day than in the previous 6 months
I recently took part in an Indie App Santa Promotion and the results were insane. In this post I will share the sales I made, and some tips and tricks on how you can achieve the same (or even better).
First a few words about Indie App Santa. It is an app on the App Store that features apps made by Indie devs through December, January and February. In December all apps are made free, while in January and February sales of lifetime licenses are allowed. The app has become very popular recently, and indie devs all over X report huge download numbers from their promotion.
On January 13, AnyTracker was featured with a 60% sale, which is the biggest sale in the app's history. The app is a price tracker that works on any website, saving users thousands of dollars every year.
Lesson 1: Just do it
This is the first takeaway. It might sound obvious, but I was contemplating the decision myself. As it costs some money to take part (we will get back to this later), I wasn’t sure the investment would pay off. After seeing a lot of success stories on X, I decided to pull the trigger. And I am ever so happy that I did!
Of course, there are some requirements. First of all, you must be an Indie developer, so big corporations cannot take part. Secondly, you will either have to make the Lifetime version of your app completely free for a day, or you will have to discount it heavily. Subscriptions cannot be used in this promotion.
Lesson 2: How to do it
This might seem simple. You just go to the website (https://indieappsanta.com/) and fill in a form. Right? Well, it's not so easy. If you visit the website you will probably discover that it only contains a link to download the Indie Santa app. I have good news for you though, I will tell you how to take part now:
- Contact François Boulais from App Craft Studios (the team behind Indie App Santa). You can send an email to this address and say that you want to take part: francois@appcraftstudio.com
- You will then get an email back with a calendar of available dates. Once a date is selected, you need to fill in a form with details about your app: What the reduced price will be and what the promotional tweet should contain.
- Pay the fee. Yes, there is a fee. But as we will soon see, it is small compared to the potential upside. I paid €140.
Once this is done, you will get a confirmation by email and you can prepare your App Store page!
Lesson 3: Prepare your App Store page
Don't make the same mistake I did. Do this early! There are two places you can promote your in-app purchase. The first is as an App Store Promotion. By adding a 1024x1024 image you can get your in-app purchase featured when users search for your app.
The even more impactful thing you can do is to create a special event. Make sure to do this early as well, at least one week ahead of time. If not, you will end up like me with an event that is shown to no one since it hasn’t been approved by Apple's review team in time.
An In-App Event is especially powerful since it can be featured by Apple, possibly leading to millions of views of your App Store page. You will need to create two images, one horizontal and one vertical. You can easily create something fitting by using DALL-E. Here is the horizontal image from my campaign:
And of course, don't forget to prepare your sale. You can do this ahead of time, by setting a temporary price change for the desired product in App Store Connect. I would advise setting the sale to start one day before the event, and end it two days after. This way you avoid angry reviews due to Apple being slow in applying the sale (or simply due to time zones). You can always end the sale manually whenever you want.
Lesson 4: Spread the word
This is important. Indie App Santa will create a promotional post for you on X, as they did for AnyTracker:
This post will likely get a few thousand views. It is still your job to share the sale in other places, like Instagram and Reddit (as I talked about in my previous post, Reddit can be really powerful).
Lesson 5: Results
Finally, the exciting part! I will share my results from three days (including one day before and one day after the promotion), since I started the sale early and ended it late.
App Store
Sales:
- Jan 12: $364
- Jan 13: $2444
- Jan 14: $940
- Sum: $3738
Proceeds:
- Jan 12: $282
- Jan 13: $1862
- Jan 14: $750
- Sum: $2894
Not bad! This is way more than I usually make. In fact, I made more money in a day than the app has made in total in its first 6 months.
The result on the App Store rankings were dramatic as well, the app ended up as the 11th top-grossing shopping app in the US:
The sales were impressive given that not many new users downloaded the app during the promotion. This shows that the audience App Santa attracts is a highly intentional one.
Downloads:
- Jan 12: 184
- Jan 13: 846
- Jan 14: 165
- Sum: 1195
Google Play
I was smart enough to have a simultaneous sale on Google Play, since I knew the app was going to get a lot of attention. Let's take a look at those results.
Revenue:
- Jan 12: $77
- Jan 13: $872
- Jan 14: $255
- Sum $1204
As expected, this was less than on the App Store, but still pretty good!
I tend to get more downloads on Android, so keep that in mind when comparing the download numbers.
Downloads:
- Jan 12: 230
- Jan 13: 307
- Jan 14: 166
- Sum: 703
Summing it up
When I add my proceeds from the App Store and my revenue from Google Play, I end up at $4098. The promotion cost me €140, which equals $150.
In other words, the promotion had an ROI of 2632%! Crazy.
I knew it would be good, but these results blew me out of the water. To be honest I was a bit overwhelmed while the orders kept ticking in, and users kept emailing me with feature suggestions and other questions. I managed to get back to everyone, but my heart rate was racing the whole weekend. Who could imagine that earning money would be so stressful?
Even though my sales were sky-high this weekend, it will likely not lead to any form of sustained growth. All the proceeds were from Lifetime purchases, no new subscriptions were started. I was hoping to get many reviews that would help my ranking, but I only got 4 new reviews on the App Store. I can partly blame myself for that, since I only ask for a review on the 7th app launch. Asking for a review right after the purchase is likely more efficient, and this is a tactic I have seen others follow.
On the bright side, the app's social media channels grew substantially this weekend. I personally got 30 new followers on X, while the app got 50 new followers. 30 new people joined the Discord server, which I am very excited about. That's the most direct form of conversation, which everyone can benefit from.
If you enjoyed the insights I shared here, please 👏 and follow me as I share more of my indie journey. You can also connect with me on X.
And of course, make sure to download AnyTracker so you can save some money on your next purchase 😉
