My game which is almost finished is a puzzle/arcade/educational combination, it doesn't really fit any mold.
Also I don't have thousands of dollars to spend on advertising in advance.
Say, with 100 dollars for ads, where should it go?

Depends on the price and what you're trying to accomplish. If you have a $1 or $2 game you'll rarely come out ahead with ads.

A $100 budget won't really get you much regardless - better to hit up popular websites for a review and get friendly on forums/twitter/youtube/facebook.

I'm not clear yet on the process, in order to give out beta testing versions to reviewers, etc, do I need to submit my game to the app store first?

If it's for the iPhone yes, if it's for the Mac then is there any reason why you can't just send reviewers a beta?

Also, our experience with ads is that you are just throwing your money in the trash.

What I'd do with a $100 ad budget - one of these things:
-Buy a console/computer game or two
-Buy many mobile games
-Buy any of the useful content creation tools I need
-Buy any of the instruments on my wish list
-Buy a good meal at a restaurant
-Buy a new board game or two
-Expand my card game collection
-Get another external hard drive
-Upgrade my laptop hard drive
-Save it for emergencies

In other words, spend your $100 on something that isn't advertising.

In the appstore age, nobody really looks at ads that aren't on the appstore itself and you can't buy those. That's my 2 cents anyway.

cool that makes it simpler
I'm going to make an app facebook page anyway and share it with all my friends to get the ball rolling.

Agree with what others have said. Save your money for yourself and just do everything you can which is free like the Facebook page. One tip - when you email review sites don't just send them a generic press release. By all means include the press release but write a different email for each site. They get so many review requests each day that they'll often just ignore bulk emails unless they are about a known title.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelRose/2...e_Game.php

(Apr 28, 2011 05:53 PM)MattDiamond Wrote:  http://gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelRose/2...e_Game.php

do people actually read these specialized gaming sites before making a .99 purchase?
I might not be a great app consumer, but I usually go with what blogs I usually read, which are not focused on gaming, recommend as deals and cool apps, also by searching iTunes and simply through word of mouth.
As for reviews, I just read the user reviews in iTunes.
Reading the articles, I gathered the chance of a game even being picked up for review by a dedicated gaming site is pretty slim.

(May 23, 2011 10:13 AM)aerospaceman Wrote:  

(Apr 28, 2011 05:53 PM)MattDiamond Wrote:  http://gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelRose/2...e_Game.php

do people actually read these specialized gaming sites before making a .99 purchase?
I might not be a great app consumer, but I usually go with what blogs I usually read, which are not focused on gaming, recommend as deals and cool apps, also by searching iTunes and simply through word of mouth.
As for reviews, I just read the user reviews in iTunes.
Reading the articles, I gathered the chance of a game even being picked up for review by a dedicated gaming site is pretty slim.

All correct points. But consider, you may not have read about the game on one of those sites, but where are you getting word of mouth from? The person who wrote a good review of the game- where did he first hear of the game? For that matter, the more a dedicated iOS game review site hears about your game, the more likely they'll start covering it themselves.

You are trying to get a toehold in a very crowded field. I don't think there's just one way to do it, but it's not easy.

You can use not only facebook, use Twitter too and a lot of other social nets. Follow more and more people every day and let them know about your game!