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[This post seemed to have gotten dropped by the system, I posted it originally nearly 24 hours ago. Recovered it from the editor buffer.]
I don't believe he claimed he had zero sales from the beginning - just that he had zero sales for the last few days:
Unlike some people here, I agree that BlackBerry World needs a lot of work. Actually I think a lot of the mobile app stores need work.
And here is where the conflict of interest comes in: BlackBerry has in some cases corporate interests that conflict with developer interests. Case in point: app store owners always want their stores to appear "huge" and "full of variety". But the tactics used to create that impression often work directly against developers and users, making it in many cases very difficult to find the apps you want.
Specifically in regards to the example above: mapping and GPS apps. NINETY NINE PERCENT of that category is filled-up with page after page after page after page after page of so-called "apps" which are in fact just mapping data for a single town or city, for a single mapping app. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. Those stupid things completely swamp the other content in a category, or when trying to do a search for "GPS" or "maps" etc, making it completely useless trying to find something in that category.
Google Play suffers from a similiar problem, but I don't see the operators of these stores doing much about it because they are so addicted to the revenue from the "Top 40" apps, that all the rest are just basically fodder for them to bulk up the numbers. NONE of those stores actually have a good search function, as far as I'm concerned. And to be honest, I don't think they WANT to. They want people to constantly roll around in there amongst tens of thousands of things that aren't what they are looking for, trying to give the impression that if they didn't find the right thing, it must be the USER's fault, because, after all look at all those darn apps!!.
It's very similiar to the music industry: a few top headline acts get all the investment and all the promotion, and make 90% of the money, while most of the artists don't get enough in royalties to buy a cup of coffee.
My suggestion: Polish the app as per some of the suggestions here, then get some journalists to write about it, and it will stand out. EVERY SINGLE TIME I see a feature article about an app on Crackberry, that app rockets up to the top of the "top grossing apps" list. This tells me that the main issue is indeed, exposure. Especially if the app itself is decent.
I think creating this thread was an excellent first step, actually. Already a bunch of people are aware of your app that never knew it before.
Good luck.12-11-13 10:33 PM - Low App sales are a tough topic. I'm developing and publishing myself. Only in my spare time but my apps with advanced functions and higher quality are also not free. It is my hobby but sometimes it transmutes into hard work and personally I'm not a friend of the android mentality to pay a lot of money for a smartphone and to demand all apps always for free. I don't like this kind of disrespectful attitude.
I'm making myself not much profit with my apps, but it is currently enough to refinance my hobby. In the beginning I bought books about C++ and Qt, I payed so far the bills for my trips to two BlackBerry Jams to learn even more and to meet other developers and I will maybe able at some point to buy myself a shiny new BlackBerry Z30. Not enough to make a living but enough to keep the passion running.
Regarding a article I've read some months ago less than 1% of all publishers are making profit by selling apps. 400000 not a single time downloaded apps at google play store or iTunes are a bold statement. The most of them may be of course useless, but some may be surely useful but nobody knows about those except the developer itself. Wasted resources and time.
It is hard or nearly impossible for a small spare time developer to compete against the big players at the market.
There are from my point of view many possible reasons for this. From a developer side and from a user side.
App Store:
As a new app it is extremely hard to compete against the established even if your app is superior. I've created myself a App which is from my point of view superior to similar apps at BB World, but the already established have as far as I'm able to track still higher download rates and are getting in the same timeframe more positive reviews than mine.
The established apps have a commanding lead, they have more good reviews and already some downloads per day. As far as I found out the apps are sorted by downloads per day at BlackBerry World and the users are selecting mostly by the rating. Hence those ratings are leading to more downloads and a higher visiblity. So as a newcomer it is hard for you. There is a short timeframe your work is good visible at BlackBerry World. It's when it is visible at the new area. You need to be at the first page, the newest 8 apps. Then you're visible to the users. If your app gets approved during a calmer timeframe you have luck and the app gets a chance to be longer at this attractive place. If in the same timeframe 100 new Maps for Podunk apps get approved you will get not a single download during your famous 5 minutes because nobody will have seen your app.
The Bloggers, News sites and social communities:
You need those, a review by them is extremely useful to get a foot into the door of your potential users. Sites like CrackBerry are extremely powerful in pushing apps and developers or letting small developers strave until they gave up publishing. I had a single review at CrackBerry for my App ClipMan. It was just great and pushed myself enourmous and the effort I invested into creating apps. But since then nothing else appeared at CrackBerry about one of my apps while others gets articles for each small update or just the moment their app appears at the store.
So there is a lot of stuff going on behind the curtains and I guess the sole way to get visible until you got big enough is by becoming involved into their communities. Make postings and ask for feedback about your app. But handle it with care, don't annoy with spam and the time you're spending by talking to people you can't develop. And you need a lot more time to develop as soon as you get reqests for new features. Big player have a whole department only for advertising and social media. As a small developer I can only say: good luck!
But this whole "how to get reviewed by others" is a point I have myself a lot to learn. I'm not good in this and I don't know with whom I have to sleep until you gets visible as a valuable developer.
So maybe others may have more to say about this topic.
The Developer itself:
Stuff users don't like needs to get avoided. This got already debated at this thread. Keywords: screenshots, advertising, functionality, design and at BlackBerry especially Android apps! Publish only what really works. Once you get a bunch of bad reviews your app is done and you can spent your time on a new project.
The Users:
The most users can't see the effort needed to create a app, so why paying 99ct for it if the most apps are anyway free?
They don't know how much you have to learn until you're able to develop and publish a working application.
I got some weeks ago a rude review for one of my apps you could try freely and if you like it you can unlock all functions by simply paying 99 cent or just uninstall it if it is not worth the equivalent of a small bottle of coke for you. The reviewer claimed that he is using the app since weeks and asked to finally unlock all functions for free, in this case my app would get 5 stars. I immediately rejected the review at the vendor portal and doubled the price for my app to 1.99$.
I sell now less, but I'm for myself more satisfied.
After some experience at the Nokia OVI store and 10 months with BB10 apps at BlackBerry World I have IMHO 2 important suggestions to users at BlackBerry World:
- leave a good review at BlackBerry World if you like a app, this will help the developer to get more downloads. If the developer is satisfied how his app is going you will get more often updates and improvements to the app you're using. If you're the sole user you may end at some point with a not longer working app because something changed with a firmware update and the developer left months ago and stopped updating his app
- in case something is not working for you, you found a bug or a typo just drop the developer a mail via the link at BlackBerry World and let him know what is going on and give him a chance to give feedback or to ask for more details. In case you don't get a reply within 3 or 4 working days you still have the option to give a 1 star rating and to tell others about how bad your experience was
I'm handling it the same way as a user at BlackBerry World and trying myself to answer as a developer to emails I get as accurate as possible. It may need this way sometimes a day or two (depending on my backlog) but a respectful relationship between developers and users is the origin of satisfaction for both sides. Users and Developers.Last edited by QtHelex; 12-15-13 at 04:47 AM.
12-15-13 04:30 AM - Thanks a lot.
I don't want to take over this thread so I will make it short. But since we're talking over here about a Android port knowing how to learn coding native BB10 apps won't hurt.
Search for a good book about C++, recomending the book I've used myself may be not helpful for everyone since I read a book in my mother language to have it easier to learn. But as far as I know the "C++ PRIMER" should be the choice #1 in english.
My advice, try to find a C++ book which teaches without UI patterns, just commandline apps. You need to learn the fundamental stuff first. And don't try to begin coding while you're still reading. Finish your exercise first before you try to use your knowledge with own projects.
You maybe could stop reading after you have understood the object oriented stuff, how a class works and how to use pointers. You don't need to read the stuff about file operations in C++ and about strings you should only know why it is painfull to do it in C++.
Start learning Qt now. I had also a book for this, it was about Qt 4.6 but the framework develops faster than the books get written (we have Qt 5.2 in the meantime, at BB10 it should be version 4.8 or 4.9). You basically needs to understand how the SIGNAL and SLOT concept works and why it is a superior programming technique, especially if it is about resources, cpu load and communication between user interface and your code. And learn to use Qt libraries for everything there exists a Qt library. Never use again C++ types if there exists a Qt object for this. Don't touch char and string ever again if you're not really forced to. Use QChar and QString from now on. Knowing some backgrounds about qml and QtQuick won't hurt, but at BB10 it works totally different.
After those smalls steps you can start here: https://developer.blackberry.com/nat...tion/cascades/
I wish you good luck, endurance and a lot of success!12-15-13 12:43 PM -
If you're referring to your battery app, here is my personal perspective:
I have been a user of the most popular app in that category pretty much since I bought my Z10 the first day Verizon started selling it, as that app had an established reputation at that point, and it was the only useful app of its kind, most of the others were joke things like "battery optimizer" junk.
It's been working very stable for a long while (though it hasn't had an update since around March if I recall correctly), and since many others also use it, it is easy to compare stats with them. Regardless, it does a good job and I keep it running all the time. The developer is responsive and courteous, and he is also rather active in both the public community (ie on Crackberry, less so recently though) and the developer community.
A few days ago here on CB I ran across a screenshot from your BaSA app showing a graph, something I had not seen before. In fact I think it was posted by this guy:
I asked him what was that screenshot from, I hadn't seen that before, it looked interesting. He told me, I found it and downloaded it. Today I registered the paid version.
I had stopped looking at battery apps because the one I had been using worked well enough and trying to find something decent amongst all the garbage was just too much waste of time for me. As it turns out your app has some features I had asked the developer of my existing battery app to implement, but he had not done so yet. And honestly, I don't consider the price of a smartphone app in almost any case to be any sort of burden, it costs me 3 times that much these days to buy a sandwich. Even if I end up not liking it that much, it is a trivial investment.
But this brings me back to my complaint about the app stores in general: NONE of them want to have a feature where a user can only search for something that they have personally not seen before - or even just by date of introduction (which would make it really easy to investigate new battery apps, in this case, and save much time), because it would undermine their objective of making their stores look bigger than they actually are.
So this is why I say that the operators of those stores have a certain self-interest that in some ways works against the interests of developers and users.
But there are ways to get past those barriers, and I think we have seen several good options discussed here already.
Best of luck to you all.12-15-13 02:17 PM
My App Sales Number is Zero
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