Harpagia · B2C · idle RPG game
Share big game updates on Reddit every few months, within subreddit promo rules
Each post brought a jump in new players; revenue rose from $10K to a ~$18K/month peak
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- After the first Reddit post, ongoing
- Effort
- A post every few months over about a year
In their words
This app replaced my 9-5 ($155K/year)
Gus… kind of sounds like a little bit of what you did. That's cool. Okay, let's get into the growth. I'm really excited to talk a little bit more about this. So you mentioned in your first year you spent $0 on marketing. And you also mentioned something about how Reddit has been a useful marketing tool for you. So let's get into it. What were some of the like main marketing distribution strategies you used to help you go from 0 to $10,000 a month?
KenYeah, so my main marketing strategy after the first year was posting on Reddit. Almost every single time that I've posted on there, I'd receive a significant jump in new players. While the results weren't consistent, Reddit has been my number one marketing tactic. I think one challenge, though, for Reddit is that many subreddits don't allow developers to promote their product more than once a month. Because of that, I generally only shared major updates once every few months. One thing that I found interesting was that the posts generating the most discussion often performed the best, especially the ones that received the most criticism. The very first post that I made just showed some screenshots of the game and kind of just explaining a little bit about what the game is and a few metrics about, you know, how the free-to-play it is, because a lot of people, especially in the gaming community, want to try out a game before they want to pay for the game. At the time, it was really rough around the edges when I first advertised the game, but that honestly didn't matter because it brought in so much conversation and criticism from the Reddit users that it actually helped boost my game so much. And every single one of those posts, I get a huge jump in new users again. Over time, revenue grew from around 10,000 a month to a peak of roughly 18,000 a month just posting on Reddit.
GusYeah, I think Reddit is something we've seen over and over again on Starter Story as a place where people start to get that initial traction and obviously for you it took you, a lot of these posts helped you get from that 0 to $10,000 a month. The main lesson I'm getting from this brief section is like all publicity is good publicity, and it gave you users, it gave you traction and probably, I'm assuming, it gave you some feedback that you ended …
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More from this episode
- Post screenshots of your rough game on Reddit and stress it's free to playRevenue jumped from ~$1K to ~$10K a month almost overnight, despite harsh comments
- Price in-game purchases between $4.99 and $9.99Players buy readily in that band; above $9.99 converts worse. No test numbers given
- Make the game free and sell optional extras that speed up progress~6% of downloads pay (games typically 2-5%); over $3 per active user a year
- Launch after 6 months no matter what, and let real players shape the gameFirst $10 sale within days; ~$150 in month one, ~$1,500 total by month two
- Build a tiny practice app in 6 weeks to learn launching before the real oneTaught AI-assisted building and app store approval; lessons fed the main game
- Focus on keeping players coming back before worrying about making moneyFounder credits it; no separate numbers
Tags: reddit, update-posts, cadence, subreddit-rules