Revealing the shocking secrets of App promotion: fake users earn millions of dollars a month!

The App industry has undergone five years of development from 2010 to 2015. On the one hand, the number of Apps has soared to more than 3 million, which has made the competition in App promotion very fierce. Rich App developers are spending a lot of money, while poor developers can only wait and see. However, even though there are more and more wealthy people, the traffic is constantly decreasing, because the shipment volume of the mobile phone industry has been decreasing, which means that the user stock in the mobile phone market has been saturated. Therefore, it is even more difficult to obtain so many high-quality users.

However, as the saying goes, there is always a way out. As promoters in the App industry, under various pressures from the boss, they can always come up with various ways to acquire users. Although the quality of these users is not very good, everyone can always think of these "evil ways". Below, I will share with you some channels and feelings of App promotion that I heard from others.

1. Fans Channel

Fanstong is a promotion channel launched by Sina Weibo. It mainly uses Sina Weibo and other related resources to provide promotion for many apps. The main form is to insert advertisements in the Weibo stream that users read. For example, when people often browse Weibo, an advertisement Weibo will pop up at the top banner or while they are browsing. Users can download it with just one click. This is the advertising display position of Fanstong. Of course, there are many other locations where it can be displayed in reality.

The author once attended the Sina Fans Tong conference in 2013. There were not many people at that time and I thought it was not very good. However, it was an illusion. It is said that the rebate for the first-level agents of Fans Tong is about 50%. In other words, if you can talk a customer into recharging 500,000 yuan a month, you can earn 250,000 yuan. The profit is very substantial. Therefore, many people want to obtain the first-level agent qualification of Fans Tong, but the first-level agent is not so easy to obtain. However, some media can become second-level agents, that is, obtain the authority of second-level agents from first-level agents. The rebate is not as high as that of first-level agents, but it is also about 25%.

It is said that a company in Shanghai earned several million a month by acting as a middleman. Later, many advertisers found out that it was a middleman and stopped cooperating with it in anger. Think about it, you spend 1 million a month on advertising, of which only 500,000 is actually used for promotion, and the remaining 500,000 is actually taken away by numerous second-hand and third-hand dealers. There is really considerable profit here, which makes me want to be the client of Fantong advertising. So I still have to find a first-generation partner to spend money, which can also save costs.

Next, let's talk about the effect of Fans Tong. It is said that the effect of Fans Tong is not so good now. On the one hand, the cost is getting higher and higher. It costs at least 20-30 yuan for one user. On the other hand, the retention rate is not very good. The main reason is related to the decline of Sina Weibo users. Think about it, the latest report from WeChat shows that there are more than 500 million users reading WeChat Moments. Is it possible that Weibo still has users? Sina Weibo relied on celebrity fans and grassroots fans in its early days, so now they are still supported by those few celebrity fans and grassroots fans, but these fans are of no use in promoting your App. However, it is said that the effect on promoting apps related to beauty and photography will be better, but the effect on other apps is not satisfactory.

2. Guangdiantong Channel

Next, let’s talk about the GuangDianTong channel. Thanks to the huge resource network of WeChat and QQ, GuangDianTong has an incredibly large amount of traffic. Think about it, WeChat has 500 million users, QQ has 500 million users, and there are also QQ Space users, which adds up to more than 1 billion users. Of course, excluding duplicates, it covers a wide range of people from those born in the 1960s to those born in the 2000s. In addition, the strong stickiness of this IM tool makes it a good channel for promoting apps. However, the bad thing about this channel is that no matter how rich you are, you still cannot get on if Tencent's competitors or Tencent is unhappy with you. One of my apprentices once told me that the company's fortune-telling App could not be accessed through GuangDianTong even if you paid. It seems that Tencent has a strong anti-competition and anti-gossip consciousness. Later, I heard that an app related to taxi-hailing was also not accessible. This may be related to Tencent’s investment in Didi Taxi. However, this is also human nature and is also Tencent’s defense policy.

As for the effect of GuangDianTong, it is said that money can be spent quickly on it. It is said that 300,000 yuan can be spent easily in a month. The advantage of GuangDianTong is that it has no shortage of quantity and can prevent competitors, so if you are not a competitor of Tencent, you can try it.

3. Ranking-boosting channels

Regarding the manipulation of rankings, I have written about it a long time ago in my article "Eight "Evil" Methods of App Promotion". I need to explain that the manipulation of rankings I wrote about here is manipulation of Android rankings, which means that the current top ten channel rankings in China can be manipulated. However, the previous manipulation of rankings was to inflate the rankings with inflated downloads, that is to say, the previous method was to inflate the rankings with tens of thousands of downloads. For example, some apps ranked first in the Android market have tens of millions of downloads. If you want to brush them up, based on 100 yuan for 10,000 downloads, it will cost hundreds of thousands, which is also a considerable amount. However, now the manipulation of rankings has "evolved", and people are no longer satisfied with this. Now they directly inflate the rankings. The manipulation companies can directly inflate the rankings to the top of a certain category list or the top of the overall list according to the needs of the customers, and the cost is much less than before, only a few thousand yuan. Therefore, the technology of the ranking companies is also advancing with the times!

In addition, iOS ranking is still as expensive as before, costing more than tens of thousands of dollars for one refresh, and maintaining the rankings also costs money, but is it effective? I guess the trial-and-error method has no effect, because a friend of mine tried it once and quickly reached the top three or four in the rankings. However, without spending money on maintenance later, the ranking slowly went down. As for the users it brought, there were not many, just a few hundred. It seems that in order to attract a large number of users, I think the maintenance of the list also needs to be continuous. Another possibility is that the App is not well-known. Even if it is in the top few places on the list, users have never heard of it and will not download it. The number of users who blindly download the App is decreasing. Therefore, those who can afford to manipulate the iOS rankings are generally rich people. If you don’t have several million to do it, it will be ineffective. Small startup companies can forget about it, but you can try to manipulate the Android rankings.

4. ASO

Recently, ASO is said to be very popular. Many companies that started with ASO have received investment. It is said that they can help customers do ASO optimization for their apps, and through optimization, the ranking of the apps can be improved. As a self-taught SEO expert, I have only had a vague understanding of ASO. Later, after a chat with a senior person in the industry, I learned that like SEO, SEO is facing search engines, and ASO is facing app stores. The specific method is to add keywords in the description and keyword column. Here I will talk about what ASO is. The ASO here mainly refers to the AppStore. I won’t talk about the ranking of the Android store, because Android can directly brush the ranking.

But how can an ASO company improve your app ranking? Is it really as amazing as those ASO people say? Just fill in some keywords in the App description and write a good description, and you can get into the top few? Actually, it’s not like that. The reality is that these ASO companies can capture users’ search terms and keyword search volumes. For example, for the word “game”, they can capture their search popularity, and then they can also obtain the App ranking data for this word. In this way, when doing ASO, they can help you to improve your ranking. How to do it specifically? That is, through the program, simulate the user's search habits, and continuously search for the word "game" to download the client's App. In this way, the AppStore thinks that the word game is related to this App. When a user searches, they will be placed on the list page of this word for the user to download.

Since they know the search volume and App ranking data for each word, they can target any word they want, as long as you have money. So real ASO is not difficult. What is difficult is that you have the technology to simulate users' search habits and target various words every day. However, this method will definitely be overused one day and will definitely be discovered by Apple. You can try it out while it still works.

5. Fake users

In fact, I guess everyone knows about the situation of apps creating fake users. As a person in the industry, there are only so many fish and the pond is so small, where can your fish go? Therefore, it is a common phenomenon in the industry for some apps to create fake users. However, some startups and even medium-sized app development companies are unable to detect general false data, or even if they do, they will turn a blind eye, because many things behind the data are related to the company's fate and financial situation.

However, the highest level of fake data is to brush the systems of large companies, such as a certain number, UBeir and other companies. Although these companies come from a security background, they can be faked by more powerful experts. It is said that thousands of data can be brushed a day and millions a month. Being able to brush fake data to this extent is also a state of mind, which makes the author admire it very much. It can be seen that there are mountains beyond mountains and people beyond people. Even the anti-cheating systems of large companies are helpless.

6. Points Wall Channel

The effect of the points wall channel has not been very good. The purpose of many App companies to create points wall channels is to increase the number of users. However, the points wall channels are relatively large, and there are good and bad ones. If you can come across some good points wall channels, then you will make money. So which are the good channels? There are some individuals in the app stores who, in order to make some extra money, use their power to get some positions in the store. The volume and quality of users in these channels are relatively high, and the price is low. It is rumored that someone in a certain store channel can make hundreds of thousands a month by selling volume privately. This is also a talent. So if you come across such a channel, it is worth spending money, and it is more effective than regular channels. This is actually the legendary smuggling order.

Some other points wall channels also have some effects. For example, some personal websites have large traffic and can make a fortune by promoting apps. They also help some apps promote users, so their user quality is also good. Of course, these channels are hard to come by and require constant attempts. Most of the remaining points wall channels are very poor. I guess App developers would be laughing if they can get a 7-day retention rate of 1%. So for the points wall channel, those who have money can try their luck.

7. Celebrity App Channel

Previously, there were apps with many users that had gone through 5 years of development and had hundreds of millions of users. However, these large apps had difficulty in monetizing, so they had to monetize by promoting other new apps. Now Tencent, NetEase, Sina and many old apps such as iReader have come out to sell traffic. It seems that business is difficult. Selling an advertising alliance, adding deductions, and various means, does not make money. Monetize through users, but there is no profit model and users will not buy. There is no choice but to sell to friends in the same industry. As a result, these apps all came out to sell volume.

Their effects are also mixed. Some apps have more authentic user sources, so the promotion effect of the apps will be better. Some apps have made a lot of false data before, and there is no effect on sales in the later stage. Therefore, it is still necessary to test and do more research when promoting apps on celebrity apps. Of course, if the effect is good, you will make money.