I made a Spanish-learning app that feels like a nice fit for the hundreds of “Resources” pages made by teachers for their courses in schools and colleges. It’s free for 10% of content and offers a Pro version for a few dollars.
Has anyone tried contacting teachers? Are they generally ok with cold emails? What are their expectations?
Any other ideas on promoting to teachers and educational institutions?
Hey @ivm, I’m thinking of building something in this space too. Any insights with your learninig application?
Only one teacher replied after sending almost a hundred pitches, so I’ll skip this kind of outreach next time. But the app got a few backlinks from the old-school sites that list resources for language learning.
Overall, I’m not doing anything special beyond ASO because mobile apps are 90% centered around the stores nowadays (Apple killed the App Store’s referral program this August and now app review sites are dying).
Google Play instantly put the app into top-5, thanks to their clever ranking that considers many factors, including backlinks and apps’ descriptions.
The App Store only looks at the keywords and installs, so the app initially ranked at #60-70 positions there – below badly rated competitors and even irrelevant apps. So I’m now paying for the Search Ads in the App Store with the profits from Google Play to get more installs. 
I also did a big giveaway on a Spanish-learning subreddit: it brought a bit of revenue and some reviews (though it seems that the reviews from users who activated promo codes don’t count for ranking).
The app itself, ConjuGato:
Pretty interesting, lot’s of great insight there, thanks for that!
I’m curious, why did you go the mobile app route? I’d have assumed that you’d be able to charge more with any of the other delivery modes; saas or native desktop as opposed to in-app purchases but then for this type of app I guess it makes more sense.
Also, how did you pitch to these sites to get the backlinks? cold email, free licenses?
It’s basically a bit sophisticated flashcards app, so it works best on mobile. Subscription model wouldn’t work because the app barely needs any updates.
Here’s the email pitch, it got me 3-4 backlinks and one teacher’s reply:
[Hi _, / Dear Ms. _: ]
I found your page of [recommended student / Spanish learning] resources and thought you might find this interesting.
I’ve been learning Spanish for a while but couldn’t find an easy-to-use conjugation app, so I built one myself: https://qotoqot.com/conjugato/
It contains 1,000 of the most popular verbs, with a conjugation table for each. The first 100 verbs and two tenses are free, and upgrading to the pro version costs only $4.
It would be great if you could add ConjuGato to your page. I can also send you a promo code for the pro version – please let me know if you are using iOS or Android.
Thank you for your time!
Awesome, thanks for that.