What are the best ways to promote App Free

Here is what I did to acquire 1 million downloads for my first app(or business you may say) within 8 months with android app promotion. One fine day,I thought of investing my time into apps. After learning on how money is made via apps,I reallized a general purpose app with more user engagement will earn me more money than a niche app.

Yes games can earn you a shit load of money but the average life span of a game is very small. And there are so many games out there that getting attention of the users is very tough.
And I don't believe in getting lucky,I think none of us do. I think It's better to buy a lottery ticket than to hope that your first game will become a hit. Do you know the flappy bird game was his 42nd game?He had been into developing games for 8 yrs.Imagine that !!

So after thinking for some time,I thought my first app would be a music player or an audio player. When you search for a music player/ audio player on the play store,more than 300 results appear. I am pretty sure there are more than 1000 music player/ audio player on the play store. Scroll down to 50th music player / audio player ,even it would show 1 million downloads.

You know what it signifies?It signifies that people try out the music player / audio player a lot. A good sign. During the days I was developing the app,I used to read blogs while in bed,before going to sleep. The blogs were Business,entrepreneurship apps etc. And I developed a habbit of NEVER EVER giving up on something ,if I BELIEVED it worked !! 
Believe me when I say it,I DON'T GIVE UP !!

It was my first app with android ratings and since I was just a 20yrd old student(I still am a 21 yr student) ,I didn't had any money to advertise. However I managed some money for other things like screenshots ,video,website icon etc etc from 

1. The selling point for my app was the UI/UX. And for me the presentation was everything. I knew I was short on budget,and I wanted to convert every click into a download with android promotion (i mean there is a high probability that if a person clicks on the link,he may not download it because of poor screenshots) So good,professional looking screenshots were important so for that I needed a photoshop professional.

Now I asked around the rates for an icon. It came out to be 20$ There are a limited number of repitions a person would make for 20$. I thought the best way to get as many ideas for the icon would be by holding a contest for 40$(double of the normal rates)


Now the price I set was 40$ and not the normal rate(20$),the reason is,it seems like an opportunity for people that they can earn more than they usually do. So they put in the extra effort.I got about 60-80 ideas for the music player/ audio player ,I didn't like any of them.I awarded the contest to the freelancer on a condition that he will be making more repitions for me.

I got fake facebook likes(40,000 likes for 40$ people are real but they don't come to know when they liked the page,there are scripts for fake facebook likes) as I thought it can be used as an audience,but turns out it was a waste,as facebook has changed it algorithms,and a post's visibility only increases if it gets enough momentum(i.e comments and likes).And it is quite obvious that no one would be interested in a post from a page which they never liked themselves. The post never reached 40,000 people which was my intended target.

I wrote the description,optimized for ASO.There are websites for SEO (or ASO ,app store optimization)like sensor tower which can be used for figuring out which keyword to use.
Here are the general rules of ASO 

# A keyword should be 5 times in the description.
# Put the keyword in the name
# Put the keyword in the package name.

I Added 1000+ friends on facebook from my college before the launch
I launched the app.
I gave credit to those people on how they were so supportive and accepted our random friend requests and then sneaked in the download link with very pretty images.People like to take credits for no reason ,just like they want to feel good and superior and want to be a part of something, without any reason,I just exploited it.
The early downloads and reviews were quite important
They reviewed and downloaded.About 200-300 of them.
Just after I launched it,I changed my schedule and started sleeping 9 hrs in 2 days .i.e 4.5 hrs a day,with 3 hrs of sleeping shifts.

i searched for lists of websites which review android apps.Sent them a copy pasted message and often making intentional mistakes while typing the subject like "Android 'ApP' Review",to get their attention as you are not the only one sending them emails. we tried to make it look as professional as we could.But tried to keep the message friendly.I posted them 100 each day.