Saturday, December 15, 2012

Pleasant Surprise

I just checked my Developer Console at Google Play and saw this:
It is a chart showing the number of active installs of Ring Live Wallpaper. Blender Live Wallpaper looks pretty much the same. As you can see, there is a sudden spike in popularity. At first, I couldn't figure out the reason for this. Then I thought about livewallpapers.org and decided to check out their site. Imagine my surprise when I saw both my applications on the main page with plenty of views and a good rating. You can see for yourself: Ring Demo on livewallpapers.org and Blender Demo on livewallpapers.org. A couple of people even bought the regular version.
Let's hope my wallpapers can stay on the main site for some more time and make my apps even more popular. I really believe they are pretty decent and given enough promotion could reach a large audience.
I enjoy making wallpapers very much, so if this kind of apps works out for me I will be the happiest person on Earth. For now, a hundred downloads is not enough and I'm waiting impatiently for what the future will bring.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

livewallpapers.org

Looking for a way to promote my live wallpapers I came across a site called livewallpapers.org. It enables users to browse through various categories of wallpapers based on multiple attributes and for the developers to promote their apps. Before a wallpaper gets submited it has to be reviewed first, which is similar to Amazon Android Appstore's rules. They boast to have 2.5 million pageviews per month which is quite impressive and should give you a big chance of getting some recognition. The only condition to get you wallpaper published is either pay $30 or provide a link from your site or blog to livewallpapers.org. If you're interested in some more details see their developers section.
I will try to submit my live wallpapers and see what happens. Hopefully I can make my apps more popular this way. Do you think it will work? Did it work for you?

Amazon Appstore for Android

Somewhere around three weeks ago I submitted my apps to Amazon Appstore to see if it can boost their downloads. Unlike Google Play it's free to register there as a developer, but before your apps get accepted they have to be inspected first. As it turns out, the process takes about a month. All my live wallpapers have passed the inspection. As to Toilet Sounds they wrote that I should make the sounds stop playing when there is an incoming call or the user presses the back button. Well, I'll have to correct the bugs and try again. Hopefully it can go faster than the first time.
I didn't submit the comic reader apps, because they are only for Polish speakers and probably wouldn't get downloaded anyway.
It has been two days since my wallpapers got accepted and they still have no downloads. They aren't very popular in Google's store either, so I'll wait with my final opinion about Amazon Appstore until Toilet Sounds get accepted. Does any of you have any experience with other online Android stores? Is it worth sumbitting your apps there?
Stay tuned and I'll keep you posted on my so far miserable attempts at earning money on Android.