Commercializing watch faces

Watch Face Studio
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Hi, fellow creators and entrepreneurs.

After a lenghty process I’ve finally gained access to the Google Playstore and these last weeks I have uploaded around 40 of my previously most popular watchfaces from my Samsung Galaxy store times back before 2020. Thank you very much everyone who helped me along this journey.

Now I’m at a point where I’m commercializing. While I have had some sales, I’ve noticed that they don’t seem to drive themselves, at least not as of yet.

For that reason, I’m asking if anyone here would be willing to share some of their secret sauce: What are your tips and tricks to boost sales?

So far I’ve come across:

-Creating an easily recognizable brand.
-Using clear and uncluttered marketing pictures.
-Offering retroactive 2 for 1 deals.
-Posting frequently in facebook groups.

Has anyone tried using google ads? How helpful is it?
What other good tactics are there to reach new customers?
What other good tactics are there to increase sales?
Do we have anyone from samsung or google we can contact for sales/marketingcoaching now that both Niklas and Ron has moved on?

Best regards and thank you in advance / Kevin L Partridge.

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As I suspected, you probably won’t get much feedback on any secret sauce here. If you do, I’ll be surprised. As far as I know, Facebook groups seems to be the only game in town as far as effectively being able to promote. I have had more feedback in Reddit though. I have also heard there’s a vibrant community in Telegram too. Google itself doesn’t seem to have any platform to promote. They have top free/paid list but that looks more like someone at Google spent maybe 5 minutes to randomly select whatever faces. Perhaps paid promotion is more successful? I would first need to get to a place where making faces doesn’t cost me money to ever consider that. I use coupon sites to get my numbers up but they seem pretty useless as the same people who most likely never pay for faces just grab all the coupons. Haven’t tried the BOGO yet myself.

Anyway, looking to see what others may add here…

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Yes, It’s sort of like asking for a family recipie, but we’ll se if more people chime in…

I’m an engineer in a company that mainly operates in Sweden and India.

In the swedish office, employess openly discuss their salaries, so everyone knowing what a fair salary is. If you are below the mark, your collegues will generally feed you negotiating strategies, and everyone has relatively high salaries.

However in this specific Indian office, people tend to lie about their salary and say they have less than they actually do. The reasoning behind this is that “If my collegue knew my salary, he would negotiate to have the same or more than me. I won’t disclose anthing, because I want to be paid more than my collegues”. This results in few people knowing what a fair salary is, and it becomes a race to the bottom, because no one shares negotiation tactics. Very few people have fair pay - Or at least I believe so, It’s sort of hard to make out.

The watch face creator community may be or end up the same as the Indian office, where few people actually are successful because we all keep our secrets to ourselves instead of developing strategies together. I thoroughly believe that we are smarter together. Especially now that sales are so much slower than in the Samsung days.

When I run in to your content on Facebook, I’ll upvote and speak well of you. Thank you for your answer.

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In my experience the only nurturing community for this watch face making scene has been Facer’s but it’s next to impossible to get platformed there so I ventured into this space coz I got tired of giving my stuff away for nothing. I guess the real trick to this is not the watch face making but the “social-media-ing” which I have never been very good at. :smile:

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I’m hoping to make at least little bit of money off of some of my work too, but at this point I’m still building products and haven’t spent much time and energy on marketing. If I figure out something that seems to work, I’ll let you know. :slight_smile:

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I am pretty new in the business and so far I have tried Reddit ads, Instagram ads and Google ads. I am also using coupon sites and Facebook groups and at the time I am selling about 10 watchfaces a day.

Another question: When releasing a watchface with Google Play Store do you release it in every country Google offers or just in certain countries?

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On the Google Play Store I have only tried releasing in USA so far. This is mainly because I am not sure how to handle any language translation issues and I am unsure about Google’s rules regarding product support in languages I don’t speak or write. Unfortunately, I can only speak and write one language at this point in my life. So, since Google required me to provide developer contact information that is now displayed to customers on Google Play, I am concerned that I will be unable to properly offer customer support if I release watch faces to any countries where English is not a common language. I know Google Translate may be able to help somewhat, but I don’t know if that translation service is accurate enough to be able to use it to have an entire conversation with someone in another language.

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That is an interesting point, thank you for your input. I was wondering if it is actually possible to make money developing watch faces on WFS

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You sure can! I am making about 10 cents an hour at this side hustle! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Seriously though, It can’t be about the money I think. It’s about just getting anything in return for your effort as opposed to just giving it away in other places. Maybe some here have gotten in early, established their brands, and actually do make real money but they seem to always refer to themselves as “we”, which makes me believe they are an actual company with employees and departments. :smiley: :smiley: We’ll never know though, so just enjoy what you do and hopefully make a little money doing it too.

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@Club I totally agree that there are some giants with amazing talent. That said, you can always own your nische. Be the best at making your own style of watchfaces.

@hirnverbrandt Have you had any success with ads on insta or google?
Regarding where you should release watchfaces, here are my global sales distribution 2017 to 2020, so I’d say translating to German would be a good idea. I use the app HelloTalk to get in contact with foreigners that can help me out.

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@MergeLabs I made a living out of face creation from when I reached a ranking around 40 of 4000+ sellers back in 2018, so I’m guessing there is a market that could feed the top 30-50 actors depending on living standards, but that was in the Samsung Galaxy Store days, and then we had a fuctional sales funnel where compatible devices didn’t show “Your device is not compatible”, and there was a reliable search function, and reviews could be left way more reliably than now…

On thing I’m thinking a lot about now is the correct amount of watchfaces to publish. I’ve had over 800 units on my store, but looking back, some of them were quite ugly. I’ve now posted around 40 and I have another 60-70 that I sort of like, but I’m afraid posting the will just dilute my sellers page… Decisions, decisions…

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No success yet. I came pretty late to the party, though, and started with WFS since I did not like the faces on my Pixel Watch. First I had downloaded a Casio Retro watchface for 0.99 $ that had like 500.000 downloads and I aimed at that. I have a free watchface with around 20.000 downloads and my very first published watchface that has no function or complications gained like 300 bucks.

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I missed so many boats in this watch face game. Back in 2018 I was giving away my replica faces I made in Watchmaker so I missed the free-wheeling days of anyone who can make a basic face in Facer making partner, and all the Galaxy-Tizen stuff. I have been at it for a long time but I have always been doing the wrong things - oh well.

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Hi there! I’d like to share my experience. I started creating watch faces in January after wanting to try it for a long time. My first attempt was last year, but without any significant traction. This February, I decided to give it another go, and so far, I’m making around $1,200–$1,600 per month.

I’ve been posting to Facebook groups and Reddit, but these platforms haven’t been very effective. Reddit, however, occasionally brings in some results. Unfortunately, my experience with Reddit has been frustrating. At one point, my account was suspended without any explanation and never reinstated. I created a new account, but it was suspended as well. Now, I’m posting from a new account via VPN and using a separate browser to avoid automatic bans.

As for Google Ads, it’s quite tricky. The watch face market is heavily saturated with low-quality products priced very low. This makes it difficult to maintain normal pricing. Even $3–$5 is considered expensive these days. In this situation, it’s challenging to afford a decent budget for an ad campaign and still stay profitable. I managed to get 1–3 installs a day from ads, but it only brings in about 30–40 cents per install. To achieve these numbers, I set my daily budget at $50 and targeted a cost per install of around $1. Then, one day, Google overspent my ads budget by $100 with no installs at all. I lost $100 with no chance of a refund, so I’ve paused all my Google Ads campaigns for now. I don’t see the point in continuing at this time, although I believe there’s a way to gain traction—I just lack the knowledge. I should mention that I prepared high-quality assets (images and video) for this campaign, yet it was still ineffective.

I’m still learning how to make it all work, but so far, the most valuable piece of advice I can offer is to focus on creating a high-quality product. The Play Store is full of subpar content, so it’s not that hard to stand out if you work on your style and avoid copying other creators’ and brands’ work.

I haven’t done any 1+1 promotions yet, but I’m considering trying it. I price my watch faces around $1.50–$2 and don’t run sales very often.

Wishing everyone the best! :raised_hands:

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1200-1600/month?..F**K me…I am doing it all wrong. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I’ve spent last 14 years working as a professional designer and creative director, I think that’s helping

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Wow, that is what I am aiming at also, quite impressive

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Keep up the good work

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On Facer which some of us Know and Love when you click on the profile of a Community Member you can go straight to thier Published Work . You can get us even more interested by doing that . Excuse me .
.

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I’m sorry, I don’t use Facer, so I’m not entirely sure what you mean

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I was just saying it is not so easy on this Forum to Have a Look at the Work of a Member if they are Publishers . I was intimating that as another method of promotion Makers could Post a link here to thier Store Faces . Sorry to cause confusion .

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