How to rank your paid app in Top Paid. For free

tl;dr : I hosted the giveaway on reddit.

Google recently launched promo codes for Paid android apps and apps with In-app-purchases which allows developers to give away 500 promotional promo codes each quarter. Which means you are allowed to give away 5oo promo codes each during these months.

January-March (1st Quarter)

April-June (2nd Quarter)

July-September (3rd Quarter)

October-December (4th Quarter)

 

Creating a promo code is easy. All you have to do is

Go to Promotions in Google Play developer Console

Click on Add new promotion. 

At first I was a bit skeptical about the response I would get from Reddit but seeing the awesome response from the redditors, I gave away all the promo codes there. Giving them all away at once is the key here. It’s not a very big secret that getting downloads in a quick succession is the key to get ranked higher. Which is exactly what I applied there, I gave them all in a period of two days. The results were quite decent. The app got into #13 for Top Paid apps (ranks are different for each country) And #2 For paid apps in Music & Audio category but only for a week. I was getting hundreds of organic installs everyday after that,for one week. But if this is done with a new app , the results can be really good.. The reason is, new apps have a window of 30 days just after the launch to appear in Top New apps category. Once an app appears there, the app will get hundreds of daily downloads besides the hundreds of daily downloads it will get from getting into Top Paid apps. This will create a feedback loop for both the categories(Top Paid and Top new) and the app will probably stay in Top Paid apps  for more than a month.

Now as I told before, Google allows 500 promo codes each quarter. That means you can get 1000 in one week if you decide to spend them at the end of one Quarter and the beginning of the other Quarter. For e.g, spending 500 at the end of March(end of first quarter) and spending another 500 at the beginning of April(beginning of the second quarter). One Thousand downloads for a paid app within a week  will set you up for a good start. In August 2014 when I launched the paid version of my app, only a few hundred downloads(not via promo code, they didn’t exist then) got me into the Top New apps at some hundredth position , which got the app some decent exposure.

When I heard the news of promo codes, I rushed up and spent them all during February  and could give only 500 promo codes within  a week ( I got carried away without thinking that I could give more in week if I just wait) but I am hoping for better results from you guys. I would love it if you can share your experiences here because it will be give me an opportunity to learn.

Here were my results.

Reddit <Click Here>