I have had this idea for a while and i think this might benefit everyone in this community... so please, read this and give your feedback.
Last year I got interested in making my own apps and I wanted to start with something simple to experiment. I thought that coding was going to be the hardest part of this whole process. I did some research and was lucky enough to stumble upon B4A and join this community. B4A solved the coding problem, but then I ran into the problem that many of you run into... how to get my apps noticed in the play store with Google's app ranking system...
Having the right app, at the right time with good SEO can certainly get you some downloads... but even that is not enough to get a fresh app visible with all the competition out there. Apps that get more downloads are not necessarily better than the ones with fewer downloads. There are tons of crappy apps with 100k or a millions downloads that are very visible... which made me wonder, how the hell did they get that many downloads?
Most indie developers don't have thousands of dollars to pay for advertisement, so instead they rely on:
- Good SEO, Social media, Youtube + and some luck.
- They count on cross-promotional advertising. That might be a single developer with a lot of apps, or a group of developers that work together to promote each others apps.
Websites and social media
When I started developing I considered building a website and social media pages.I started with Facebook, Google+, Youtube, and more recently twitter, Pinterest, Vimeo and others. I've had some success with some of those like Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/myfreeworldapps).
Other B4A developers are also using similar methods to promote their apps, so I initially thought about proposing something where we could have B4A developers exchange app promotions through such means. Doing that though would be time consuming, most of us probably don't have the time to promote our own apps all the time on social media, and it would take a bigger effort to have successful ongoing cross promotions... Which brings me to my next idea...
Promotional App for Apps developed with B4A.
I first thought about suggesting something like tapfortap... but that would probably need a lot of work, time, and investment. Instead I suggest we make something more simple like this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bestappsmarket.android.bestapps
It could be called "New Indie Apps", "Best New Apps", or whatever name could serve best in SEO. Here's why this could be a good idea:
- Instead of each of us trying to promote the others app directly, we could all focus on promoting this app which in turn will promote all of our apps... A win win situation.
- The app would contain a categorized list of apps all of which are made using B4A and would showcase the latest published app on Gplay. That could help all of our apps get free promotions and our latest apps to get a good initial boost.
- I like the app showcase part of this forum, but it is not visible to non-B4A developers or developers that don't often visit that section of the forum. This app on the other hand could be something that you share with any android user that you know... it will also give us quick access to each others apps...
- B4A is very attractive software for non programmers because it makes coding android simple and more fun... Would it not be even more attractive if it could help developers get their new apps noticed? I would think that this could help advertise this community and make it grow even more...
To make such an idea work, we would probably need to:
1) Build an app that could have a simple submission process. I would not know where to start here, but i am sure that it would not take a group of us much time to put something together.
2) Everyone participating could work on promoting that app. I am ready to put a huge personal effort on this... from social media, my website to even adding banners, interstitial, etc in my apps. If enough of us do this at launch, the app will have enough downloads to be visible in the play store and start giving back...
The key in all this is group work... if we work together on this, we would all benefit as individuals.
Sorry for the long post... I've had this idea for some time and I thought i should share and get your feedback.
Last year I got interested in making my own apps and I wanted to start with something simple to experiment. I thought that coding was going to be the hardest part of this whole process. I did some research and was lucky enough to stumble upon B4A and join this community. B4A solved the coding problem, but then I ran into the problem that many of you run into... how to get my apps noticed in the play store with Google's app ranking system...
Having the right app, at the right time with good SEO can certainly get you some downloads... but even that is not enough to get a fresh app visible with all the competition out there. Apps that get more downloads are not necessarily better than the ones with fewer downloads. There are tons of crappy apps with 100k or a millions downloads that are very visible... which made me wonder, how the hell did they get that many downloads?
Most indie developers don't have thousands of dollars to pay for advertisement, so instead they rely on:
- Good SEO, Social media, Youtube + and some luck.
- They count on cross-promotional advertising. That might be a single developer with a lot of apps, or a group of developers that work together to promote each others apps.
Websites and social media
When I started developing I considered building a website and social media pages.I started with Facebook, Google+, Youtube, and more recently twitter, Pinterest, Vimeo and others. I've had some success with some of those like Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/myfreeworldapps).
Other B4A developers are also using similar methods to promote their apps, so I initially thought about proposing something where we could have B4A developers exchange app promotions through such means. Doing that though would be time consuming, most of us probably don't have the time to promote our own apps all the time on social media, and it would take a bigger effort to have successful ongoing cross promotions... Which brings me to my next idea...
Promotional App for Apps developed with B4A.
I first thought about suggesting something like tapfortap... but that would probably need a lot of work, time, and investment. Instead I suggest we make something more simple like this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bestappsmarket.android.bestapps
It could be called "New Indie Apps", "Best New Apps", or whatever name could serve best in SEO. Here's why this could be a good idea:
- Instead of each of us trying to promote the others app directly, we could all focus on promoting this app which in turn will promote all of our apps... A win win situation.
- The app would contain a categorized list of apps all of which are made using B4A and would showcase the latest published app on Gplay. That could help all of our apps get free promotions and our latest apps to get a good initial boost.
- I like the app showcase part of this forum, but it is not visible to non-B4A developers or developers that don't often visit that section of the forum. This app on the other hand could be something that you share with any android user that you know... it will also give us quick access to each others apps...
- B4A is very attractive software for non programmers because it makes coding android simple and more fun... Would it not be even more attractive if it could help developers get their new apps noticed? I would think that this could help advertise this community and make it grow even more...
To make such an idea work, we would probably need to:
1) Build an app that could have a simple submission process. I would not know where to start here, but i am sure that it would not take a group of us much time to put something together.
2) Everyone participating could work on promoting that app. I am ready to put a huge personal effort on this... from social media, my website to even adding banners, interstitial, etc in my apps. If enough of us do this at launch, the app will have enough downloads to be visible in the play store and start giving back...
The key in all this is group work... if we work together on this, we would all benefit as individuals.
Sorry for the long post... I've had this idea for some time and I thought i should share and get your feedback.
