Poor donwloads - le't help each other!

So you are also a frustrated developer?
I worked 7 month on my app. From 5 AM in the morning every day till midnight. My wife for sure wants to get divorced and my kids and my dog probably hate me.
It is a very good app and I get good reviews from people that use it, but no one can find me in the English Google Play store. I am probably in place +500 (I stopped counting after I started to feel pain in my finger). The app is free (I have also a Pro version but this is another sad story) and I get few cents from adMob every hour. By the end of the day I might be able to buy a cheap bear in a very cheap place… small glass… if they give me discount.

And now to the point:
Google algorithm is based first of all on reviews. Yes, the keywords, name of app, number of downloads and uninstalls is also important, but first thing you need some good reviews. You can buy them, but this is against the Google policy and I am not going to do that.
But there is nothing against helping each other, right?

If you download and review my app I will download and review yours! Just let me know. That’s simple.
This is a link to my app. And yes, you can also use it- it is the best expense manager app and might help you save money…

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mediavision.handwallet

Thanks,
David

I don’t think reviews are most important - downloads seems to be the clue. If you look at the list of apps in some category the number of reviews can vary significantly between apps but for downloads there’s much stronger correlation. True, that can be the effect and not the cause - the higher app is ranked the more download it gets but still I don’t think reviews are the single most important factor.

I really feel you man. I have downloaded the app and i like. I gave you a 5 star rating but i am not sure if this will solve your download issues.

Since this is a nice app, there are sites that you can pay a few dollars and they will review your app as they have a huge following.

You can also use pay-per download system from ad companies and i hope you will get the downloads you need.

Some advice:
1. I tend to think that the permissions required are too many to scare any user. If you they are really needed for the functionalities you offer, then i think you should explain in the descriptions area why you need such permissions.
2. I also once developed an app for 5 months day and night, even missing classes. I used a lot of resources and invested heavily on good graphics and icons. In the end i only got 100 downloads after a month in the market:(. I even wanted to stop mobile dev. Next time, i developed a simple soundboard that took me 2 days to wire up and i got over 100,000 downloads. Didn’t invest anything and it paid off. Now i use it to advertise the previous app. That is why i have decided not to make serious apps then get disappointed at the end.

I really understand how you feel but fight on. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Say hi to your family and dog:P

Good luck

The game I put the most resources into is one of my least sucessful - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=magory.memoryowlhd - I even made a paid one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=magory.memoryowl - but no one bought it yet, haha. Anyway. I reviewed your app (in Polish, as Tomasz), nice job!

Mangnesus, hi.
The game is fantastic and I stopped playing with it just to write you. My son also loved it.
The music is also very good and professional.
2 remarks-

  1. I didn’t see ads in the free version (except the one for the Pro version). Why?
  2. The automatic Hebrew translation can be improved. I will try to help you with that.
    [hr]
    Babuye - hi.
    Thanks for your kind words.
    What are the names of your apps? I would like to have a look.

Google don’t give me statistics about people that visited the app page but DIDN’T download. That’s why we cannot check if the permissions are the problem. Anyway - since I get a lot of downloads from my country (Israel) I don’t think this is the case.

Regarding “Pay Per Download” - I checked AppBrain but they want $100 and a minimum of $25 per day…
Thus, after 4 days I might find myself with ~400-500 more active users and $100 less… This is ~3 month of AdMob, collected cent by cent… and I need to give up the cheap beer…
[hr]
Max-hi.
As we all know Google algorithm is a black box, meaning that we can only guess. It is probably a formula with many factors, one of them for sure is the number of downloads. Have a look at this article:
http://droid-blog.net/2012/03/07/app-store-optimization-aso-45-ratings-installs-or-the-google-play-search-algorithm/

Regarding reviews:
I agree that this might be part of the solution for a game or a smiling funny cat. But I have an Expense Manager. It is not sexy, not for children, only 10% of Android users are interested on it. 10% is enough to continue developing a good app and live from it. But if noone test your product because it is number 80 on the list (my current location) …

Thanks. It’s the first time my music composing skills came useful.

  1. I didn’t see ads in the free version (except the one for the Pro version). Why?

Yeah, I turn off ads during the game - which might be a bad choice - they should be visible between levels and outside the levels (menu etc.) but judging by the number of requests I get there might be a problem with showing them. I’ll probably turn them on everywhere in next update - since there is paid version now.

  1. The automatic Hebrew translation can be improved. I will try to help you with that.

Thanks, that would be very helpful. Google Translate is helpful but only in a language you know at least a little - and I only know Polish, English and a (very) little German.

@magnus very well made - I’m impressed. Looks very good, need to try it later on. I wish my games would look that good xD (working on it g)

But your are right, the ranking is a bit more complicated and the reviews does not count that much. Think about: Every review could be completely useless as soon as a dev uploaded a new version. Google have to think about such issues, that’s why I think google does not take the number of reviews in account very much.

They may instead rely on the frequency of reviews and ratings - google is famous for tracking such things, so I am pretty sure it is more the frequency and not the amount of reviews it is easy to guess, that this frequency is correlated to the number of daily downloads.

The daily downloads are visible in your dev console - so google have collected that data already, I am sure THAT does most of your ranking (which is also different for every country). Also your rank is updated on a daily basis which is another clue.

Let’s go and try to make your app more popular. You could use forums which are related to the theme of your app which would work great for your app I think.

Thanks. I’ll think about it.

Thanks for the tips.
I already posted on some forums (this is the first thing that developers are doing). All these forums look like a grave - 40-100 readers, some of them for sure robots and spammers, with no comments. Here are some examples:
http://androidforums.com/application-announcements/561374-handwallet-free-app-track-expenses.html
http://www.android.net/forum/app-announcements/87725-free-handwallet-personal-finance-manager.html
http://forums.androidcentral.com/android-applications/179127-handwallet-free-personal-finance-manager.html

If my statistics is correct I GOT ONLY FEW DOWNLOADS FROM THESE.

I didn’t try financial/economic forums. Do you have any suggestion?

What I need is to reach the person that is looking for “expense manager”, “track expenses” “personal finance” etc in the play store. This person will try few solutions. If one it them is HandWallet he will become my user. How to do that without paying more than I plan to get from each user?

I have not reviewed your app so far, but a great idea for various things, which makes the live easier are housewife forums, try it. I would suggest to sign up at one and ask the housewifes for your opinion about your app.

Sounds great, let’s go fot it.
What do you think about this one?
http://www.lipstickalley.com/f213/
:-/
Give me a good opening sentence…

That forum probably isn’t the best idea since that seems to be for the TV series “Real Housewives” and not a forum for actual housewives. :wink:

Other than forums you could also try sending an email to different blogs and see if they might want to review your application. That doesn’t neccessarily mean Android-oriented blogs but you could also try sending it to blogs about finance/stay-at-home moms etc.

By the way, what statistics are you talking about in this post: “If my statistics is correct I GOT ONLY FEW DOWNLOADS FROM THESE.”? Are these some statistics you can see that I’ve missed or you base it on the number of views your topic got/from what countries your users are that downloads your app?

Magnesus - did you get my email?

Solirify - because we are dealing here with small numbers (I am only 3 days in the Play store) the statistics is easy: Google gives me (in the developer console) the country and language of my users. Currently 80% of my users are from my country (Israel). I saw no change in the downloads (ignoring the download from Israel) before and after the posts…
Of corse these potst are here forever. My best customer might see them even 10 years from now, download the product and love it. But I was expecting a mass of downloads and that did’t happen.

goog news - day 3 - HandWallet is now located in place 72 if I look for “expense manager” in the English Play store. This is 9 places better than yesterday!
Bad news - “track expenses” - located 124
“expese tracker” 112
“money manager” 108
A user will have to check more than 100 apps before he finds HandWallet!

I guess those forum posts won’t be very effective unless you’re actually engaged in the community already. A few people come here, and post an advert in the “Promote Your Android App” section before disappearing again. They never bother to post in other sections, or interact with other developers. They don’t often get any feedback on the thread.

On the other hand, developers who post on the other threads here regularly tend to get more feedback when they release a new app. It’ll be the same with other forums. People will pay attention to you if they’ve seen you’re not just trying to spam the boards. Regardless of your actual intent, and account with only one post (which is self-promotional) doesn’t look very good! :slight_smile:

David, hi.
Yes, I agree. I stopped looking for forums for now.
The last one I tried (following reiti.net advice) was this one:
http://www.happyhousewivesclub.com/forums/index.php

But the security question was:
“What was your favorite part of “Happy Housewives”?”
:huh:

I tried “Part C” (it is always the best part) but it didn’t work.
If anyone knows the answer or have another idea I’ll try again.

As a “housewife” (I think most, U.S. mother’s at least, prefer the term stay-at-home-mom), I just have to laugh at this post. I don’t really think dropping in on a forum to advertise your app would be beneficial, and would probably just annoy them. Your better bet, if you really want to target that demographic, would be to email a link to your app to a blogger and see if she’ll write about it. Though even that is probably a long shot. Good luck!

Corvidapps, hi.
Thanks. Can you help me find one?

@corvid I don’t know the right phrase for it, so it was not meant in a negative manner :slight_smile:

Also it was not an idea which will work for every app; what I wanted to say is that you may find forums where you find your direct userbase on the subject of your app. For an expanses-app for example try forums where people will have use of it and get in contact with them.
Those people will probably never read any android related blog or whatsoever and may not even kow that such one exists. It would be very specific “marketing” which should not be overused by annoying the users there with every app you have.

Oh I am not offended, or anything. :slight_smile: I understood what you meant. I just found it funny to be a witness to a marketing conversation about a demographic I belong to.

davidshr - try looking on blogher.com.

davidshr, I think you should post your app on your facebook, economy pages on facebook, android pages on facebook, search forums or blogs relationeds and send them a email asking if they can talk about your app, post for twitter using hastags relationeds with your app, day a day, make another apps with more “market” and put ads of your another apps. Of course you gain many downloads :slight_smile: