Facebook vs TikTok for game promotion

As the title says, I’m pretending to promote one of my games using this social networks. What has been your experience with these sources?

From my personal limited experience in this:

  • If the people you are targeting (age, gender) like your game, addicted to your game, will play your game on daily basis (you must test with your friends and family), then it is worth publishing, because if they like it, and you like it, then others will too.

  • If the above is happening and real, then your game should never end, it has to give more and more forever, so you should never stop development and addition

  • Your best chance are publishers, and the right ones, which means you have to pay money

  • Platform chosen depends on your game, who are you targeting? gender, age, etc. some ages don’t use Facebook anymore, some prefer Instagram, some use TikTok and so on

  • Luck plays a very good role in here, but luck alone is not enough if the game is not good and addictive enough

I’m not sure if all of this makes sense but this is from my personal humble experience.

When I started with Solar2D eleven years ago, i though I will conquer the world and become a millionaire in months, then facts started punching me in the face one by one :slight_smile: and it took me a while to believe what i have written above … You never stop trying but you must not be too optimistic … Roveo company is a good example

I also have to add to what I said something very important:

My most successful app was a social app (marriage app for middle east) that had around a million users on all paly stores, with over 20 thousand Daily active users, I built it in 1 week as a joke, i did zero marketing initially, until Today I really don’t know why or how people found it, but i guess it was just blind luck caused by Google Play Store, It was getting around 350 daily installs and rose to above 500!!

It looked so funny and so bad, but when my friend who has a company with many apps saw that crazy success I moved the app to his account, we enhanced the app and the graphics, it stayed for around 5 years before my friend decided to unpublish it for some legal reasons

The app does not exist now in play stores but below is a link to it from apk websites

It will not work of course because the hosting servers are dead now

Sorry for the 3 long messages, but history brought back life to me :slight_smile:

My App was not really good in terms of a social app, No notifications, no camera, no attachments, no audio, just short limited text messages, but It turned out that people loved it because of the following reasons as I believe:

  • No Registration existed, your phone ID was your user

  • It was really discrete, no one knew who you are, we didn’t know who you are!

  • It was free, with Ads that are not annoying

  • There was a paid version that had no Ads and it shows you as a VIP member

  • We got hundreds of Thank Yous from people getting married through it

  • Some people were so addicted to it that they sent over 500 Messages a day (I really found that funny, because I couldn’t type that much daily :slight_smile: )

This story makes me happy and sad at the same time, but most importantly it makes me believe that I can single handedly make something great with Solar2D in a short time … all I need is a good idea and some luck … So I will always keep trying.

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I have enjoyed reading your story. You are right in everything you say in your first post. In particular, I really enjoy programming, it is one of my great passions, and although at the moment it is my livelihood, I also do it because I am passionate about it. I have several applications in the stores, and although there are one or two that stand out the most, I have not yet created one that is good enough for it to be enough for profit, but I keep looking for a good idea, and continue creating new apps or games. Over time, I’ve come to realize that I’ve learned a lot; my current games are better than the first ones, not only in terms of ideas but also in code.

Good luck and keep trying @kakula

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Hello I have tried tiktok ads but I prefer Google ads because viewers on tiktok seems to swap video more quickly despite it looks like more attractive.

I have done it for 1 week for +/- 97 € and fully configured with custom video but very few increase on my download.

Sincerely,
Yvan.

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