10 Portals and Blogs to Promote Your iPhone App in Russia

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So you’ve decided to promote your iPhone app in Russia. You have the Russian version on the App Store and now you want to let people know about it. How to spread the word out? Well, start a press release campaign and pitch bloggers to review the app. There are many editions out there, here’s a look at some of them.

iXBT.com is one of the biggest portals about hardware and software with the average audience of 200,000 visitors per day. The editors publish news about iPhone apps every day. So, if you have an entertainment or business application for iPhone, iXBT is a good place to announce its release. Find the email address for press-release submission at the bottom of the home page. http://www.ixbt.com

4PDA is the biggest portal about mobile phones using Apple iOS, Android OS, Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile. The average audience is 206,000 visitors per day. The specialty of the site is a very active community of users, so interesting news gets many comments. The news submission form is quite straightforward and becomes available after registration. http://www.4pda.ru

CNews is one of the largest portals about information technologies. The average audience is 200,000 visitors a day. The audience consists of executive officers, managers, qualified specialists in the area of information technologies. CNews is good for promoting business applications. You can submit your press-release through the submission form on the portal or by email. http://www.cnews.ru

3DNews is a news portal about information technologies targeted at a wide range of users, from home users and gamers to system administrators, programmers and overclockers. They claim to have over 160,000 visitors a day, over 15 million pageviews a month. You can find the email address for press-release submissions on the contacts page of the site. http://www.3dnews.com

Tom’s Hardware Guide is a popular portal about technologies. Targeted at consumers and professionals, the portal covers news about consumer electronics, hardware and related technologies. They claim to have over 3,100,000 visitors a month that read over 9,050,000 pages. Though they mostly focus on hardware, the editors can also publish the news about iPhone applications. http://www.thg.ru

Sotovik is a popular news portal dedicated to mobile devices and applications. The average audience is 45,000 visitors per day. The email address for sending press-releases can be found on the contact page. http://www.sotovik.ru

Mobiset is another portal dedicated to profiling and reviewing mobile phones. Also they publish news about mobile apps. The average daily audience is 50,000 visitors. The email for submitting news is at the bottom of the main page. http://www.mobiset.ru

Deep Apple is the largest shop of Apple products in Russian internet. They also write about and review iPhone and iPod Touch applications. http://www.deepapple.com

Macster is a blog that writes about Apple products. They claim to have 50,000 visitors a month. Their reviews are personally written and are of high quality, so get your app on this blog. Read submission information on the website. http://www.macster.ru

AppleInsider is an Apple blog. It claims to have 10,000 visitors a day, more than 7,000 Twitter followers, and 950,000 pageviews and over 270,000 visitors a month. The submission process is quite straightforward. http://www.appleinsider.ru

The list above can be expanded with even more editions, but these are the most popular sites where you can promote your iPhone application. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about promotion of iPhone apps in Russia.

My contact email is here.

Promoting iPhone and Android Apps in Russia: Filmoteka 1.0

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Hello! While you were on summer vacations, we prepared to launch a new service -- Promotion of iPhone and Android Apps in Russia. To promote mobile apps, we send press-releases to computer portals, magazines and pitch bloggers to review your application. We can promote your app in Russia and USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. The desire to participate in the era of “gold rush” at the Apple Store and Android Market has been bugging me for a year, but I decided to promote two-three apps to launch the service with real examples of promotion, not to be unfounded.

So, here’s the story of my experience promoting the first mobile app in Russia. The application is called Filmoteka and designed for iPhone and Android smart phones. Created by Bolide Software, Filmoteka is targeted only at the Russian-speaking users and distributed as a freeware mobile client of All My Movies, a popular movie organizer for Windows OS. The mobile app synchronizes with the desktop movie management software, allowing movie collectors to have a catalog of films always at hand on the home computer and iPhone or Android smart phone.

Filmoteka looks up information about a movie in the largest Russian online database of movies called Kinopoisk.ru that allows people to find information almost about any movie or actor. The user can read a movie summary and download it to the movie manager on a mobile device. Then, you can review movies offline which is especially useful when, for example, you are in a shop and do not want to buy one and the same DVD twice.

So, here’s how I promoted Filmoteka in Russian media.

Last fall I was approached by a developer with a question if I could promote a mobile application for iPhone and Android in Russia. I said: “Why not?” By that time I had already collected the editorial contacts of portals and blogs about mobile phones and applications. Also, I was going to send the press-release to the editors of computer magazines and news portals who I had working relationships with as I had been promoting press-releases about shareware applications for Windows for the last two years.

Over night I prepared the press-release about Filmoteka using the description of the application on the website and a video tutorial on YouTube. On Sunday, the developer said the App Store approved the application and next day (November 8, 2010) I delivered the news to the computer media. The first publications of the news began to appear on web portals within the next two-three days after the release.

* Press-release announcing Filmoteka for iPhone is available here (Adobe PDF, 360 KB)
* Report about press-release publications can be downloaded here (Adobe PDF, 2,21 MB)

According to the developer, press-release promotion generated about 11,000 installations per day (1900 installations was the peak), then the application held 9-10 place in Top Free of Russian AppStore (Bolide Software blog)

A month later came Filmoteka for Android that we also promoted with a press-release.

* Press-release announcing Filmoteka for Android can be downloaded here (360 KB)
* Report about press-release publications can be downloaded here (2.11 MB)

Media coverage showed that editors of news portals are interested in the news about mobile applications, especially freeware software for home users. In addition to portals, many Apple and Android blogs also responded to the release with reviews. But whether it’s a result of my promotion or not is still a mystery to me. Though I also delivered the press-releases to these blogs, reviews appeared three months later.

That’s the story. Got questions? Contact me about promoting iPhone and Android apps in Russia. You can reach me through the contact form.