Over the past few months, I’ve published a couple of free watchfaces (without companion apps) on the Google Play Store, but have achieved zero installations (other than me). I know that my stuff isn’t top-drawer but, for free, I would have expected more interest than none.
Is this normal, or does it indicate that I’ve stuffed up the publishing process?
Share your Console Link and we can all come and look and give you some Syncs.
Thanks Russell. Faces are Time and Track and Stonewear.
Please bear in mind that I’m not posting to try to drum up ‘sales’ (for free products). I’m trying to work out (a) if the faces are actually visible in the store to others, and (b) if getting hardly any downloads is normal.
No Sir . You are an Important Contributor here . I know what Self promotion looks like and the Work is not usually that good . ON the other Platform it is a Two step Click to the Contributors Profile / Console so it is easy to see who is who very quickly . I wish we had that here . Thank you I will have a look . One gets tired of looking through Fresh Faces for something Interesting . 
I have a couple of Opal Faces here and there . I wish the Battery Progress was a bit more Subtle and below the Hands . The Subdial one is Great . I don’t really have much trouble getting faces here and there ad I have had plenty practice .
BTW gave a go with round end progress . it is a Signature of WOS and very popular .
.
I published my first three dials in autumn 2023 and wanted to see if anyone was interested in them. After nothing happened four weeks later, I abandoned the dial idea.
Almost exactly 6 months later, sales started for all three.
From a motivational point of view, this is a disaster. Nevertheless, I resumed the blind flight three months ago. In other words: you have to be patient.
Thanks @BFD; that’s the sort of info I was curious about. My experience may not be unusual after all.
I’ve had considerable experience creating faces and apps for Fitbit; user interest there was quicker and greater. I expected that Wear OS activity would have exceeded that of Fitbit.
The problem is each year the number of Face makers increases exponentially . That is why Google has made it so difficult to get a new Console . Count yourself lucky you have one . A Face can get featured somewhere and it will jump up and be Noticed .
The increasing number of face makers is indeed a problem. I made a reasonable amount of money in the microstock business 15 years ago, but had to stop because the flood of images became too great. That’s why I’m still cautious about evaluating small successes.
Hmmm, so saturated market. Makes sense. I guess that having an easy-to-use tool like WFS is a double-edged sword for us.
I do wonder if Play Store discoverability is also an issue. I often can’t find what I want even when I know exactly what it’s called!
Google in their wisdom will only allow you to find apps that your device (the device you are searching on) can install. This is one reason that when you search for your own watch faces on your phone (likely 90% of searches are done on phones now) for instance, nothing will turn up because your watch faces are made for Wear OS devices only. You have to refine your search to search for Wear OS apps to get any results which of course, most users would not do. This is one reason why developers use companion apps because then your watch face will turn up in a search because there is an actual app for their phone. Also, Google itself has no platform where watch faces could be uploaded for customers to check out like Facer or others. They only have their own internal platform on Google Play to showcase watch faces and we all know how lame that is. Aside from “new and trending” nothing else seems to change and many of the watch faces there are absolutely horrible or they are from the usual watch face mafia cohort leading me to believe that they are paying for advertising but I haven’t figured that our yet. Anyway, add this aspect to the saturated market and the odds are really stacked against you to gain any real traction in the watch face game.
Many good points. I do try this but it doesn’t seem to eliminate non-Wear apps; it just seems to send an incredibly subtle hint to tweak the order in which results are returned. One still has to wade through non-Wear listings which, of course, are the great majority. I can’t find a way to filter out non-Wear products. The goal of the search engine seems to be to always return as many results as possible.
I always wondered why people advocated companion apps; thanks for the explanation. It seems like a fine line to tread since Google is trying to eliminate apps that don’t actually do anything in their own right.
Yeah on one hand Google does nothing to help increase search results for watch face makers so they are forced to use exactly the types of companion apps Google doesn’t want clogging up Google Play. I understand Google is a business and maybe they are trying to compel us to use their advertising services? I looked into it, and was even willing to pay some money to see what advertising can do for me but Google doesn’t even give you the option to advertise Wear OS apps in their Google Ads platform as far as I an tell??? So yeah…wtf? I leave this open for anyone who has ever advertised on Google play to chime in on but I won’t hold my breath for any help on that (another figure it out for yourself secret). Another thing I notice is that your results are influenced by your algorithm. To try and get unadulterated results when I use Google Play, especially to check how my stuff pops-up in searches is I use an alternative browser (Duck-Duck-Go) which I have not signed into Google on. It seems to give me “true” results of my apps when I search for them on Google Play and a couple of my apps that have been featured on Google Play.
Google Play sales tend to fluctuate without any clear pattern. I think the Play team is constantly running experiments that impact organic traffic and sales. I’ve never had two months in a row with consistent sales, it’s always a rollercoaster
