Google Ad Words

Today I started the Google Ad Words ad for Monster Cache.  That means that it will be running during the comic show.  I really didn't want to do that because I wanted to be able to tell how many people signed up as a result of the comic show vs. how many sign up as a result of the Google ad.  Now it might be hard to tell them apart.  But the reason I did it now is because Google sent me an offer for a free extra $150 credit if I signed up by this weekend and then spend $50.  That seemed too good to pass up.

One thing I did to try to tell marketing efforts apart is I added a feature to accept promotional codes as the Referral Code.  Before, Referral Codes were just for other people. Now I can make one for a marketing campaign, so as long as people use the code when they register, then I'll be able to tell how they heard about the game.

The way Google Ad Words works is you "bid" on how much you will pay if someone clicks on your ad.  They give you a suggested bid based on what other advertisers are paying for the same key words, and my suggested bid was $0.85.  So that's approximately 250 clicks for $200.  Hard to imagine that we would make $200 back from 250 people, but for now its just about getting people to use it, and hopefully word will spread from there.  You can also set a max spending amount per day, and I set mine at $3, so that means it should run for at least 60 days.

I've been disappointed that nobody new has shown up on the Legends board all week.  And also paranoid that something was broken.  So 2 nights ago I asked my neighbor to sign up.  She did and caught 1 monster, so now we have 38 on the Legends board.  There are actually 138 records in the table of registered users.  So what's going on with the other 100?  Many of those are our test accounts.  But lots of people sign up and then never catch a monster.  Makes me wonder if they don't understand how to play it, that you have to actually walk to the monster.  And some people start the registration but never finish it by clicking the link in their email.  In some cases that's because they incorrectly entered their email address, like with an accidental space added.  I think I'm going to work next on a way to resend those emails if I can tell where the typo is and fix it.

Monster Cache trademark

Got a response this week from the US Patent and Trademark Office regarding my application for a Monster Cache trademark.  It was temporarily denied :-(  But it sounds like its easy to fix.

What happened was that I applied for a trademark for MonsterCache, no space.  All the time I was developing the application, I never used a space in the name.  There were a few reasons for that:

1. There's no space in geocache, which is what the name is based on
2. When I make development folders/projects on my system, I don't use spaces in file or folder names
3. There are no spaces in domain names

So to me, MonsterCache had no space. 

When Kent designed the graphics, he added a space.  I didn't have a problem with that, I didn't care much either way.  When I launched the app, I found that there were some technical advantages to having a space:

1. When "Monster Cache" is displayed under the icon on the phone, it can line break at the space instead of line breaking at some weird point near the end
2. Anyone searching in the store for Monster or Cache or "Monster Cache" will find the app if I have the space in it, but wouldn't find it with those terms otherwise

So eventually, I liked it with a space anyway.  I think that no spaces is more of a common thing for developers, but general public probably likes spaces.

Well, the USPTO did not like that I had applied for a trademark on the term MonsterCache (no space) and supplied graphical specimens that had "Monster Cache" with a space.  They denied it for now, but issued an "Office Action" that says that I can update one or the other.  Like I said, I prefer it with a space now.  AND I don't want to update all the graphics, or more specifically, have to have Kent update the graphics.  So I plan to alter the application to apply for "Monster Cache".

A funny thing I've learned about this is that apparently all the trademark applications are public information, because I've received several emails and letters from lawyers offering to help me with the application.  I got some when I first filed, and now that I have the Office Action, I got a a few more.  Two that I got for the Office Action offered to help for flat fees.  One was $175, the other $275.

Monster Cache 1.1 for Android

Today I released a new version of Monster Cache for Android.  It's version 1.1.  The main difference is that it has the high-res "2x" graphics that we made for the iPhone retina display.  There is some CSS and JavaScript code that you can use to detect the high-res display, and we learned along the way that my phone, the Samsung Galaxy S3, uses the same high-res graphics as the retina displays.  It really looks better.  And now the current iPhone and Android releases have virtually the same features.

One small thing I changed yesterday that is now in the Android version but not iPhone is the login page.  We were finding that when people first install the app and launch it, then the first thing on the page is the login form, and then they just type in their email address and password in the login form, thinking that its a registration form.  Without totally rearranging the pages to show the registration form on launch, I just moved the "New to Monster Cache?" and the "Register Here" button below it to the top of the page.  Then just below that is "Already have an account?" and then the login form.  So hopefully that will be less confusing for first time players.

I thought about submitting a new iPhone version just for that fix.  But since iPhone has to be approved, I'm afraid of a couple things.  One is that I wouldn't want to have the approval go through just before the comic show (in two weeks), find out there is a problem with the version, and then not be able to fix it before the show.  Or even worse would be if the second time they reviewed it, the reviewer noticed something they didn't like and pulled the app just before the show.  So I'll wait to do that release until a couple weeks from now.

Also added a feature to the server side this weekend to allow referral codes for different marketing campaigns.  Hoping that will help me determine which marketing things help most.  Only got one new user this week, so we're definitely ready for some more marketing.

Promotion ideas

As I mentioned, we had 21 players when iOS launched two weeks ago (we decided not to hide anyone on leader board based on activity, yet).  Kent and I sent out some emails and Matt has been telling people, and now we're up to 36.  Still not growing as fast as I'd hoped, so now we're talking about some other promotional ideas.  So far,

• I ordered 1500 color business cards from Vistaprint to hand out to people at Planet Comicon, or anytime.  They always have great deals on business cards.  We uploaded our own design, full color, front and back.  1500 was around $50 with shipping using one of their coupons.  Here it is:

• Matt has this week of for Spring Break, so he wants to put up some fliers at some game stores and other places.  So I made a basic black and white flier that I think looks okay.
• We looked into printing 8x10 card stocks pictures of monsters to sell at Planet Comicon.  They were about 50 cents each online, but it seems scary to order online without seeing finished product. And that was for a batch of 100 of same picture. Kathleen found we could get 5x7s at Kinkos for about the same price, but in smaller batches of 25 per picture, and we can see before we order.  So we'll do that and get 100 to try to sell for $5 each at show
• Also going to get a banner to hang on table at show for around $50.
• Kathleen still hasn't sent her email out to people, so that will definitely help too.
• Eventually, I will run a Google AdSense ad too.

It will be very interesting to see how each of these things does and what the # users / dollar spent will be for each one.

In App Purchase product sequencing

One last minute change I had to make right before submitting Monster Cache for review was that the In-App Purchasing products on iPhone were displaying in what seemed like a random sequence.  For iOS, you send a request to the App Store for your available products, then it returns you a list of your products.  I iterated through the list in the order it was sent, and the order was not the sequence I wanted.

What was really happening is they were sorting based on their hidden product ID.  Well, I put numbers in those representing numbers of coins, like coins50, coins100, coins500, coins1000, etc.  As many people know from sorting music tracks with numbers, they don't sort numerically, they sort alphabetically, so 100 comes before 50 because it starts with 1 which is less than 5.

Once I figured that out, I considered trying to sort the array that they returned before I iterated through it, but it wasn't just the product ID's, it was an array of objects.  That seemed like too much hassle, so I just deleted and recreated half of my in app purchasing products to give the product ID's leading 0's, like coins0050. (You can't change a product ID once it has been set, which is why I had to delete and recreate).

Launched on iPhone and iPad

Today is the day we launched on iPhone and iPad!  I just added the App Store button to our web site.

Funny story on the launch date...I thought it was going to launch yesterday.  Since Android launched on February 1st, I was hoping iOS would launch on March 1st.  iTunes connect gives you an option to set the release date, so I had set it to March 1st long ago. Well.... I forgot that when a March 1st release did not seem likely, I changed the release date to March 15th.  I didn't submit it for review until February 21st and I  didn't think it would get approved so fast.  I heard that it could take a couple weeks, and that's if they didn't ask you to fix anything.  I was especially worried that PhoneGap might be doing strange things that they wouldn't link and would ask me to fix. What actually happened is it took 6 days before they started reviewing it on the 27th, and then it was approved that same day!  All in-app purchasing items also approved!  So on March 1st when I realized that it didn't get released, I went and changed release date to March 2nd.

I made a change to the app weeks back so that the leader board only shows people who have logged on in the last 30 days. The board lost a couple inactive users this week, so its down to 19. That's our starting point for iOS launch.  We'll send out some emails, Facebook, etc. soon.  I'm optimistic that we'll get at least as many players in next few weeks as we got for Android.  My hope is that we'll have 40 on the board before Comicon.