I come from a web development background, but in light of starting ‘Beebe Games’ have shifted my focus completely towards game development for mobile devices (right now iPhone, later iPhone + Android–thanks to Corona).
Because of my background, I’ve always been used to having my own .com with a nice website design, but this time, I was lacking the time to come up with a great website design for Beebe Games, and honestly didn’t have the motivation to install and set up Wordpress AGAIN, manage a .com domain name AGAIN, and just wanted to really focus on game development. I also didn’t want to outsource a website, because all of that can be a headache too.
So recently, I found a solution (that you probably already heard of, as I had in the past as well) that allowed me to get a quick, professional web presence up for Beebe Games… that’s both easy to set up and manage.
The reason why this is important is because…
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When you submit to the App Store, you’re required to provide a website in the ‘Support URL’ field.
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It gives you another angle for promoting your apps/games in the future once you website is indexed by search engines.
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You can build a MAILING LIST (for free) to help you increase your app sales in the future (more on this in a moment)
Here’s how to get your website up quickly…
Go to tumblr.com and set up a “tumblelog” … It’s like a blog but the posts are usually quick, and it’s a lot easier (and less invovled) setting up than a full-blown Wordpress blog. They also allow you to create multiple pages so it’s perfect for just posting quick updates and announcements regarding your development and apps.
Choose from one of the many themes, and customize it if you want (for instance, add your logo to help it represent you/your company better). I used a free tumblr theme and customized it to make it “fit” the style of Beebe Games. You can view mine here: http://beebegames.tumblr.com/ (opens in a new window/tab)
And that’s it… You can create a new page and title it ‘support’ and describe how people can get in touch with you and voila! You have an URL to put in the ‘Support URL’ field in the AppStore, and you also have a web presence where you can post updates about how your latest app’s development is going, when your app has been submitted, and when it is ready for sale (just an example of the types of things you can post).
To make it even easier, you can download the free Tumblr app and make posts to your blog like that.
MAILING LIST
Imagine if you created an app, whether it was free or paid and a lot of people liked it. Naturally, many of those people are going to want to see more of what you have to offer and click over to your website. If they really liked your app, they most-likely will want to know when your next title is available.
Unfortunately by the time it is released they might’ve forgotten all about you. That’s where a mailing list comes in.
Somewhere on your website, you can add what’s called an ‘Opt-in’ form where people can enter their email address and be notified of important updates (such as promotions, discounts, and announcements of new apps). You’ll need an mailing list service to do this, however, and most you have to pay monthly for… but there IS a service that’s reliable and is FREE for your first 500 subscribers (which should last you a while), and it’s called MailChimp.
I used to use them when I was doing a lot of Internet Marketing and they are easy to use, easy to “brand”, and very reliable. I’m going to be putting up a mailing list subscription up on the Beebe Games site soon, in case you were wondering where it was at.
Alright well that concludes this lengthy post… hopefully some of you get some value out of it (if you made it this far, you probably did). I know a lot of us developers recognize the need to have a web presence but don’t really want to deal with all the ‘hassle’ and end up putting it off until the last minute–which often leads to putting something of sub-par quality up there that could actually hurt your overall credibility.
Oh, and tumblr allows you to register a .com/.net/.whatever domain and attach it to your blog there if you want to take advantage of that option as well. I personally don’t mind using a subdomain at the moment as tumblr has very good reputation.
The solution I proposed should be fairly quick and easy for most people (especially those with the competency to program apps with Corona), and allow you to have a high-quality web presence without taking too much energy away from what you really want to be doing: developing AMAZING apps/games.
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