´Tis the Season to Create…with TinyTap´s Christmas Sticker Packs!
Tis the Season to be jolly…and to create games! Check out TinyTap´s fun and whacky holiday sticker packs and use them to create a beautiful game for our #GoCreateHoliday Contest!
1. Christmas Fun!
Create and play with everyone´s favorite Holiday characters – Santa Claus, the gingerbread man, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, and many more!
`Make Me Santa´
TinyTap´s funnest sticker pack ever! Take a pic of yourself or your loved ones and have a blast dressing up in funny santa costumes!
Happy creating!
How to Sell Your TinyTap Game on iTunes
After many requests, we have decided to write a post about selling an app on iTunes and the TinyTap Market.
This is one of the most exciting and unique things about TinyTap – people can not only create games, they can sell them as apps on the App Store.
So great, you created a game on TinyTap and you want the whole world to play it, now what?
Make a sell request! Here’s How:
Step 1: Share your game
After you’ve finished creating a game, it will appear on your TinyTap dashboard. Go to the top right corner of the screen, write a name and description for your game, choose a category and age range and tap on ‘Share’.
And don’t forget to set that blue little ‘Public’ switch to ON! This will make your game available in the TinyTap community for others to discover and play!
Step 2: Scroll down and send us a sell request
Great! Your game is live! Now scroll down to the bottom of the window and tap on ‘Sell your game’
Step 3: Submit your game for sale
Tap on ‘Submit for Sell’ and Voila! Your request is on its way to us and we will answer as soon as we can!
Super easy, right?
We get a lot of game sell requests everyday, so please be patient!
We usually reply within 24 hours, but if we don’t, don’t worry! We haven’t forgotten you and will answer as soon as we can!
Small Stature, BIG Imagination: 3 Kids to Follow on TinyTap
For us, it is truly exciting to see such a melange of cultures, ages, nationalities, and educational backgrounds converge and create on our app. So, we decided to highlight some of the youngest and most creative individuals of our inventive game designing community, the kids themselves.
Today, we take a look at three special creators, Emilie Melnyk, Makenzie Mathews, and Nada Alalawi. Stay tuned for our next post to meet more brilliant tiny minds!
Emilie Melynk
Whether you want to help her pack for vacation, create a fruit salad, or learn about a variety of farm animals, Emilie is sure to have the game for you! One of our personal favorites is “Back to School.” In this game, Emilie takes the important event in many children’s lives of “returning to school” and describes the process in a delightful and relatable way. Via her sweet narration and creative breakdown of the day, Emilie can help other children prepare and be excited for school who may have originally been fearful of the occasion. Well done Emilie! We can’t wait to see your next creations.
Makenzie Mathews
With her love for animals and fantastic imagination, Makenzie has designed games where you can help puppies get ready for school or even bathe a bunny rabbit! She also makes sure to reach out to her viewers by sharing her sources for images and keeping them apprised of her upcoming designs. Additionally, Makenzie has proven to be quite savvy in self-marketing. A few months ago she created a game about a design contest for other TinyTap members to partake in. The challenge was to create a garden themed game and it was even accompanied with the hash tag “#Mchallenge”!
Nada Alalawi
One more young designer who has our attention and should have yours is 7 year old Nada. Nada has a wonderful flair for storytelling and sharing her variety of interests. She’s created an impressive variety of games that give you a wonderful window into her hobbies, personality, and nationality. We love her multiple stories that show her passion for anime and seek to instruct others in the art. We also applaud Nada for attempting to teach basic Arabic through one of her games. So keep your eye on Nada! No mountain is too high for this girl. She plans to write a 20 page story soon, that we’re sure will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end!
These kids and many others are the essence of TinyTap, with their great passion for educating and creating. So, TinyTap creators everywhere, keep on creating! We look forward to every new day and the marvelous creations you’ll share with us!
Congratulations, Your App is on the App Store! Now Go Promote It!
It’s an amazing feeling to have your content published as an app, and more so a kids app that will be seen by millions on the App Store.
But then comes the tricky part – getting people to notice it among the more than one million apps available on the App Store today.
We already love your game, but we want others to love it too!
So here are some simple marketing tips to help you get started.
First of all, think of 3 reasons why someone should get your app and start to build a strong marketing strategy around that.
- Get App Store Reviews: Ask your friends and family to give you good ratings and reviews on the App Store. They should look something like this:
- Send emails: Think of people in your address book that may be interested in hearing about your app and start sending emails to let them know it’s out and it’s fabulous!
- Share your app: Write a great caption and choose the best screenshot for your app and post on your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and any other social accounts you have!
- Tell your story: Write a short and interesting article or blog post telling your story (e.g. ‘How an idea became a book, and then a book became an app’). See how a TinyTap Author wrote his.
- Make a video: Film someone playing your app, it’s most beautiful pages and their activities, screenshots, or how-to series and post them on social media video outlets like YouTube, Vine and Vimeo.
- DIY Advertising: Open your Google browser and type in ‘Google ad words’. Choose a budget you can afford and do some DIY advertising. It’s super simple!
- Pitch to relevant bloggers and sites: Pitch your app to relevant websites and blogs to get even more coverage! (if they ask for promo codes or giveaways, just ask TinyTap and we will happily send them over!). See how this major newspaper in Maryland covered a TinyTap Author’s game!
Below is a list of top kids apps websites:
- http://www.bestkidsapps.com/
- http://appadvice.com/appnn
- http://www.148apps.com/
- http://iheartthisapp.com/
- http://dadarocks.com/
- http://www.appstoreapps.com/
- http://www.topmommyblogs.com/pages/index.php
- http://www.jollymom.com/
- http://mamanyc.net/
- http://pickykidappguide.com/
- http://www.theiphonemom.com/
- http://www.funeducationalapps.com/
- http://appadvice.com/appnn
- Use your website/blog: Promote your app on your website or blog so your readers won’t miss out! See an example of how a TinyTap author used hers!
- Watch out for bad reviews: Remember, criticism is always good, even if it’s bad. Keep an eye out for bad reviews and comments and try to learn where they’re coming from, contact the reviewer, try to turn it into positive criticism. And, of course, make sure the review doesn’t go public! Do damage control!
- Do SEO and Optimize: Do some research on App Store and web keywords that will make your app standout! For example, let’s say your app is about learning to bake a cake; search on the App Store for ‘cake apps’, ‘baking’, ‘cake recipes’, ‘sweets’, and any other related words you can think of. See the top results that come up and look at the keywords they used!
Have any questions or just looking for more tips? Get in touch with the TinyTap team!
GOOD LUCK!