Promo Boost from Matt Martel

To say Matt Martel is a swell guy is an understatement. He is a super swell guy who does what he can to contribute to the iPhone development community, and he is somewhat a role model for me (though I doubt he knows it…yet). He started and ran a regular iPhone developer meet up group in the Boston metro area, he is willing to share his thoughts and feedback on the business of running an indie shop, and just this week he made a special offer to indie iPhone developers.

I first met Matt, and his wife Trish, in September at 360iDev Denver. Turns out Matt and Trish lived in the Boston area too. I say “lived” because they recently moved to Colorado Springs, but that’s a different story.

Matt and Trish have an indie software company called Mundue, and have published a few casual games for the iPhone and iPod touch. The most popular is reMovem, which I find to be highly addictive. Two favors of reMovem are available, a freeware ad-support version and a $1.99 paid version. The paid version comes with additional play modes which make it well worth the price.

A few days ago Matt made an offer to the indie iPhone development community that was too generous for me to pass up. He offered to include ads for apps in his popular game reMovem, the free edition. I was a little hesitant at first because I have not tried advertising Labor Mate this way before. Past experience with Google Adwords for Killink CSV Editor has turned me off of ad placement to market my products. However, I’m learning this week that might be a mistake.

In the first 24 hours the Labor Mate ad received 112 clickthroughs, and 238 total clickthroughs within the first 48 hours. Admittedly I was surprised by these numbers. First, Labor Mate is very niched app, and second, I thought “Who wants to learn more about a contraction timer while playing a game?” Boy was I wrong. 238 people found out about Labor Mate in a 48 hour time period that probably would have never known about the app. I find this to be great.

Unfortunately it’s hard for me to say if the ad has resulted in additional sells. According to Matt, “Most ads are getting an average of 1% clickthrough (CTR) which means 50-150 clicks per day. That’s really not much, and with conversion (sales) rates of 5% you might not notice any difference.” This is true. I haven’t noticed any change in the normal sales pattern for Labor Mate over the last couple of days. Still, I’m happy to know at least 238 additional people have learned about Labor Mate.

Thank you very much Matt for your generous offer to the indie iPhone development community. This little experiment has been a huge eye opener for me. Thanks for the opportunity to participate.

Now everyone go buy reMovem.