One of the seemingly undying questions of the contemporary world–if one judges the marketing that one sees in smart-phone apps as any indication–is how one is to make money in the contemporary world. While we cannot expect marketing (as much as we might wish) to reflect reality, we can expect it to reflect the wishes both of those who are actually making money and those who want to make money who serve as the witting or, more usually, unwitting customers of others. What follows is a slightly but not entirely tongue-in-cheek discussion of how, based on advertisements in contemporary apps, one can market one’s application for potentially millions of users, based on the principles that other people use in marketing applications.

Focus On The Money: When marketing an application, any application, the most important thing is to focus on how it will bring money to the person using the application. This is true no matter what application one is marketing. If your application does not provide some sort of money to the player, it is almost pointless to advertise it at all, unless you are advertising an application with gorgeous visuals and compelling gameplay that has a large body of existing fans. For everyone else, focus on money, even to the point of not even mentioning the gameplay or workability of the application. Downplay any difficulties the app has in terms of providing money to people, like burdensome requirements, terrible systems of approving receipts and proving payment of customers, or allowing customers to use their proceeds in any useful manner.

Accuse Others Of Scamming: While making it difficult for people to obtain any actual benefit from your application, you must also insult others for scamming. Make your app the “pick-me” app that is different from the other applications that are labeled as fake apps and shady marketing techniques, or fake links that do not provide the benefits that the real link and codes the you provide (often out of date and thus impossible to be used by newer customers) give to others. Above all, insult applications as being dependent on the advertisements that one sees in the game, while downplaying that your app does the same thing unless someone pays you money to get rid of the advertisesments.

Appeal To Influencers: Make sure that your app is supported by relatable and/or attractive people who claim to be stay-at-home mothers who have played your app to pay off their rent or tens of thousands of debt, or find a famous person like Mr. Beast to talk about the application and how much it pays off and how much they are contributing to the profit of people who use the app. Don’t bother to tell users that the money received by the influencers is for their own marketing efforts and not actually from using the app, nor mention that the money that they gain has to come from others who are losing money in competitive cash-based competitions. If you don’t have any famous influencers, you can appeal to the high ratings one has from users one has coerced into giving high ratings to your application as a means of appealing to the crowd. If your ratings are bad, just don’t talk about them at all.

Minimize Gameplay/Actual App Experience: This has already been mentioned earlier, but if one is trying to market an application, the best ways to do it are to show as little of the actual experience of the application as possible. Show videos of exciting actions rather than the mundane experience of grinding on the application. If your game requires a lot of passive waiting, make up imaginary video footage that includes icons but not the actual experience, because it is better to show excitement than to show the actual slow pace of progress that one is likely to see using the application, because users need to think that they will profit in hours, when it may really take weeks or months.