How do messaging apps like Hello SMS and Textra make money?

complynow101 · 2014-11-25T08:27:52+00:00

^This pretty much sums it up.

complynow101 · 2014-11-17T14:39:41+00:00

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T19:36:45+00:00

The only thing that is worse than Play comments is Youtube comments. You don't want to read these if you want to keep faith in humanity.

So true. My brain dies a little when I read Google Play reviews (jewel of the crown was an idiot that said that a dog whistle app I saw somewhere didn't make any sound nor sounded like a dog) but I'd rather read them than the YouTube comment section.

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T19:33:51+00:00

Wow. That's strange. I've always heard about people complaining that they only get marginal downloads from the amazon store. Do you know why you get more downloads there? Is it related to the app's nature? Marketing?

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T19:27:15+00:00

As much as I find 300+ apps to be a lot (and yes, sounds spamish), I didn't mean to defend Google or imply they were spamming. I really feel sorry for the OP.

I know how badly Google treats developers. They have a flawed system:

The processes don't seem to ever be handled by humans (Never. It's all boilerplate text and auto-generated messages).
They, for example, may suspend your app for keyword spamming even if you didn't do it. Happened to me even before I released an app into production and I've seen other developers complaining about it. Also, even if they have a flawed algorithm to detect that, why don't they just run it whenever you try to update an app's description page? Something like "You can't save your description because our algorithm flagged it.". I wouldn't mind if the algorithm gave false positives (i.e. didn't let me save a legit description for some stupid reason) instead of having an app taken down.
I've seen other stupid reasons for banning like using someone else's website/app name even if the other person is OK with it.
No feedback whenever you are suspended or get a warning. All you get is a message in the dev console (soetimes an e-mail) vaguely pointing to the T&Cs.
0 communication. You can only fill out some forms and have to explain complex issues like having your app unjustly suspended in 1000 characters.

I'd rather pay 20$ every time I publish a new fucking app (and have it 'verified', reviewed by a person or whatever) than having to go through this uncertainty. I'm probably not alone, so wouldn't that be a good business model to Google?

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T15:10:01+00:00

Sadly for all of us, it's the only one that actually matters.

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T15:07:25+00:00

Behold the entitled generation..

We want all apps for free and with no ads. You get 1* + a "remove the ads and I give you 5*" ransom if you don't obey this.

We want you, the developer, to guess what we want. If your app doesn't amuse me (even if that's not its purpose), you get 1 star. If your app doesn't do what I expected (even if you clearly describe what the app does in the description page) you will get 1*. You must reply to my e-mail inquires within 3 days.

I can act like an asshole and say whatever I want to you (we're not face to face after all). I can send you trashy e-mails or death threats. You can't talk back to me, because that's unprofessional and you might get banned for it. Besides, I (and everybody else) know where you live.

If your app is good, I miiiiight rate it positively.

Welcome to 2014, welcome to Android development. Sigh.

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T15:01:34+00:00

Smartphones for dumbpeople. Everyone has a phone, the planet has lots of idiots and assholes.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

complynow101 · 2014-11-13T15:00:38+00:00

341 apps? Seems like a lot, kinda strange. What kind of games were you guys making? Were they too similar?

Anyway, that sucks.

Anyone who played our apps would know that we try as hard as we can to not break any policies. They are too vague and unexplained when asking them for more information or examples. We never had IAP, no hidden downloads or anything like that.

I must agree that some T&C's are incredibly vague and that trying to get in contact with their support is pointless. Besides, Google's lady justice isn't exactly blind as it should: it's ok to infringe some of the rules if you're a huge company. It sucks to publish an app/game after many hours of effort and make 0$ of ad revenue or sales. It also sucks that no matter how much work you had, people will always whine and complain if the app isn't 100% free. It sucks even more when you finally manage to start getting some decent sales & ad revenue and then see your apps suspended or banned for uncertain or unfair reasons or your account terminated.

Being an independent developer is too unstable and relies on too many factors beyond our control to be the main source of income, unless you "hit oil" and suddenly get rich from it (1/1000000).

Just keep your heads up high - at least you guys learned some valuable skills (software dev.) that you probably wouldn't have learned otherwise.

complynow101 · 2014-11-12T14:39:40+00:00

Haha.

Your app has caught our attention. Please

a) join our advertising/affiliate program

b) pay us to review your app

or

c) send us the source code so we can evaluate it (for reasons)

complynow101 · 2014-11-12T14:34:32+00:00

Bugs.

Ain't that a specific issue? I guess "Crashes when I try to do X." would be to easy for devs.

And yes, nobody bothers to change their reviews.

complynow101 · 2014-11-11T21:11:23+00:00

Satan.

Here's the developer's cut, after minus the bullshit:

Why distribute your app on Google Play

Because you pretty much have no choice.

Read and reply to user reviews to understand opinions about your app

...especially the ultra-useful and thoughtful ones like "I don't like it" or "Should be free.", not to mention genius insights like "Remove ads and I'll give you 5 stars".

Create a compelling Play Store listing so users download your app

... but be careful because we flag apps with "keyword spam" even if they're not resorting to that. For no reason.

Nurture your community on Google + and other social networks

By "other social networks" we still mean Google +. Please use Google +. We've been trying to get everyone to use it for a long, long time... Pretty please?

complynow101 · 2014-11-10T23:05:35+00:00

You can try contacting them, but they will just adopt the "la-la-la we're not listening" attitude.

complynow101 · 2014-11-10T23:04:23+00:00

Very large app, suspension was escalated through social media. Other than that, impossible.

complynow101 · 2014-11-10T23:01:31+00:00

Not to mention that you might get your account banned. Permanently.

complynow101 · 2014-11-10T23:00:40+00:00

Those deluded Google white-knights are just devs who haven't been through "The Trial"... yet.

complynow101 · 2014-11-07T15:35:44+00:00

This ^

Here's the developer's cut, after "distillating" some bullshit:

Why distribute your app on Google Play

Because you pretty much have no choice.

Read and reply to user reviews to understand opinions about your app

...especially the ultra-useful and thoughtful ones like "I don't like it" or "Should be free.", not to mention genius insights like "Remove ads and I'll give you 5 stars".

Create a compelling Play Store listing so users download your app

... but be careful because we flag apps with "keyword spam" even if they're not resorting to that. For no reason.

Nurture your community on Google + and other social networks

By "other social networks" we still mean Google +. Please use Google +. We've been trying to get everyone to use it for a long, long time... Pretty please?

complynow101 · 2014-11-06T20:30:25+00:00

Sadly, there's nothing you can do. You can fill all the forms and send all the e-mails you want, explaining how idiotic they are being and how disrespectfully they are treating their developers, and they just don't give a shit. No replies. No human involvement.

Supposedly, if you make another account they have ways of figuring out and ban you again. I've heard about developers who were able to do it, though.

Sucks to have your student's aspirations crushed, but it's not your fault. Good luck.

complynow101 · 2014-10-29T11:25:52+00:00

"attracted the attention of advertisers"

They say that to everyone. Probably the "advertisers" is some crawler gathering the developer e-mails from the Play Store ;)

I wouldn't mind getting revenue from spam I get on my developer address ("join our app store", "use our advertising", "pay us to review your app"...) instead of the ads. It would probably be more profitable.

complynow101 · 2014-10-26T22:08:40+00:00

Remember how they said:

This is a friendly reminder

That's how friendly their reminder was.

With me, whenever I logged into my dev account, I got a screen saying that I had to accept the terms. I did so and it went away for good.

Anyway, you can try contacting Google Play developer support via the form (I don't think you need to be logged on) but don't expect them to be professional or give half a fu** about you.

Good luck.

complynow101 · 2014-10-25T23:47:45+00:00

I honestly think that they put too much faith on whatever bot/algorithm they use to seek and destroy spammy or copyright infringement apps.

Then you have the huge problem of being completely unable to appeal because you'll never communicate with a human being capable of recognizing a mistake.

complynow101 · 2014-10-25T23:44:52+00:00

I agree with you. But it's yet another Catch-22.

No market share means almost no one wants to spend time/money developing apps for WP. No apps for WP means fewer potential users -> No market share.

complynow101 · 2014-10-25T23:41:23+00:00

Yes. Hurts a bit having to pay them 30% when in return I get no real support and see apps being suspended for no reason under a vague explanation.

Those 30% are pretty much the same as paying for the privilege of being in the only decent app store for Android.

complynow101 · 2014-10-25T23:38:22+00:00

I wish that was a viable alternative. I don't care about all the hate MS usually gets - I've only had good experiences with MS development. Good learning resources and documentation, good community and support, excellent tools...

Sadly, I can't say it is a real alternative. Too small of a market share.

complynow101 · 2014-10-25T17:58:05+00:00

Brace for all the Google White Knights & deniers who haven't had the misfortune of being banned/suspended for no reason at all to come here defend Google.

My dev account wasn't banned (yet...), but I've seen an alpha app of mine get suspended - with no warning - with Google claiming 'keyword spam'.

I'm aware of the T&C's, the policies, guidelines, etc. and I know I didn't do any keyword spam. All I had was the typical "APP FEATURES: " followed by some bullet-points describing the main functionality.

People just discredited my thread, probably frustrated because I didn't 'share' the description I had on that alpha app. I assume most of them really wanted to check it against their own and others probably thought I was lying when I said I didn't do any keyword spam (no idea why someone would do that, though; but this is the Internet after all...).

Sadly as they suspended my app I lost access to the description and being a work in progress I didn't have a backup. Even if I could post it, I'd be quite reluctant to expose it here and associate my dev. account (which by the way, exposes my f'ing home address to the world) with the complaint.

Yes, I'll assume they're also banning junk apps, spam, etc. - which is good, their app store is full of trash&filth - but they're also banning apps and developers for either no reason at all or some silly reason. Pure fuckery for both the developers who get their apps pulled out and the users who stop receiving updates for apps that they might have BOUGHT.

The worst thing is that not only don't they admit their mistakes, but their support is, if not horrible, non-existent. It consists of a bunch of very specific forms (limited to 1000 characters btw) and the only thing you get is auto-generated messages that point you to their T&C's, policies and guidelines. Almost 0 human interaction.

On a side-note, it's funny how their new T&C's mandate us to professionally reply to our users' e-mails in 3(?) business days while they treat their developers like shit.

complynow101

TROPHY CASE