Google Play - is it a graveyard or am I doing something wrong?

General (non-technical) Marketing and Monetization
#1

My app is up on Apple Store, Google Play, Amazon&Nook stores, as well as on Samsung store, and (don’t ask me why) appland.se - the Swedish android store.

There is a free/lite version and a paid version. I will be referring to the lite version.

Here’s a curious thing. There is a reasonable download rate on iOS. Samsung store, interestingly enough, beats iOS for me for now in lite downloads but not in sales of paid version. But Google Play is basically dead. A couple of downloads a day. Even appland.se is beating it handily.

The app is an educational math game “Math to the Rescue” - http://www.mathtotherescue.com.

With such enormous user base, why would Google Play be such an incredibly low download source for me compared to others? I wonder if I did something wrong when I put the app up so that something is making it not show up for users…

What are your experiences with Google Play? [import]uid: 160496 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 332648[/import]

#2

Welcome to the club. I have 3 free apps and 2 paid apps on Google play. With the exception of OmniTrivia, they have all been there since March/Early April and OmniTrivia since May.

Only one of the free games has over 100 total installs. The other two free apps/games are at 96. I’ve sold a whole 6 units of the two paid games.

There was a post on here to a blog site that would for $10 sell you a list of 100 blogs/review sites that did free reviews for Google Play. I don’t remember the link. I’m not sure how effective that would be, but everyone I’ve talked to has had a horrible experience with Google Play, except for one guy and he’s marketing the bajeebies out of his apps but his educational apps are used in schools which drives a lot of his sales.

I think the problem is with the Android market in general. People buy Apple devices for the apps. People buy Android phones to make phone calls (or are techies wanting to root the phone and play around with it). Neither are app buyers. They will get Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds and call it a day. They also do not buy apps. They expect everything for free. There is no culture of buying things. This is one reason that Amazon and Barnes and Noble are much better platforms because those people are used to buying stuff.
[import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129814[/import]

#3

Hi,

@robmiracle, I think you are a bit off with your assumption regarding users… don’t forget that Google is selling over 1m tablets a month these days and I really don’t think people are buying them for phone calls…

In general I think it’s very hard to anticipate where you’ll succeed. The market are very different. Google has much more apps published but most of them are just garbage since there is no review process. Apple has less apps but you are competing against stronger apps in general.
Amazon is a small market in which you can make relatively good money.
In our case most of the cash is flowing in from Google…

We have 7 apps (6 educational). We have a top 10 paid app on both Amazon and Google but on Apple we are struggling.

It’s really hard to tell why, I think that Math in specific is very crowded, so in terms of visibility you are up against a huge base of apps that appear before you when a user performs a search…

Start off by thinking what the user is searching for and in which search terms you would like to show up high in the list. For example where is your app located when someone search “Math Educational Game”.

You can try playing with the keywords and description to appear higher in the chart and even adding stuff to you title name could help.

To read our full experience you’re invited to read a blog post I wrote a few months back:
http://www.remarkable-games.com/?page_id=200

Good Luck! [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129833[/import]

#4

If you look at recent studies, they did a comparison of the App Stores. It’s was pretty interesting, if Apple was considered 100%, Amazon came in second at 89% followed by Google Play for about 23%.

It is obvious the Google marketplace is tiny in comparison to other stores. I think there are a few reasons and it certainly isn’t because Android users do not use apps. As Gtt said, it was released recently the Nexus 7 is selling more than 1M units a month and the Nexus 10 blows it away in functionality and in fact it has better specs than the iPad 4 just released.

Amazon apparently does really well and I think there are a few reasons for that. Everyone has an Amazon account with their credit card tied to it. Even though the process is harder to get connected to their app store, Google doesn’t have the credit cards on file so they lose to many people for that reason.

Another reason is Google Play is tied to your Gmail account, most people who have more than one device in their home have their own Gmail account, so you can’t share apps when using multiple devices like a tablet and phone or family members.

Google is pretty nice where you can see an estimate download for each app. I’ve seen indie apps with millions of downloads (free) and paid apps from Indie studios with hundreds of thousands.

Android market place may have less real competition than the Apple App Store, but it is still strong enough competition to make it virtually impossible to get exposure. If you get it, you can do really well. [import]uid: 160288 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129836[/import]

#5

Welcome to the club. I have 3 free apps and 2 paid apps on Google play. With the exception of OmniTrivia, they have all been there since March/Early April and OmniTrivia since May.

Only one of the free games has over 100 total installs. The other two free apps/games are at 96. I’ve sold a whole 6 units of the two paid games.

There was a post on here to a blog site that would for $10 sell you a list of 100 blogs/review sites that did free reviews for Google Play. I don’t remember the link. I’m not sure how effective that would be, but everyone I’ve talked to has had a horrible experience with Google Play, except for one guy and he’s marketing the bajeebies out of his apps but his educational apps are used in schools which drives a lot of his sales.

I think the problem is with the Android market in general. People buy Apple devices for the apps. People buy Android phones to make phone calls (or are techies wanting to root the phone and play around with it). Neither are app buyers. They will get Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds and call it a day. They also do not buy apps. They expect everything for free. There is no culture of buying things. This is one reason that Amazon and Barnes and Noble are much better platforms because those people are used to buying stuff.
[import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129814[/import]

#6

gtt - when you search for “math educational game” or “math game”, my app is nowhere to be found.

Yet the words “math” “education” and “game” are in the description several times and “Math” is obviously in the name of the app. see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.medved.games.mathtotherescue

So - how come?

Is there a resource out there that explains how to structure the keywords in the app submission to get it to show up in searches?

BTW - if someone wants to download the Math to the Rescue from Apple Store, here are some leftover promo codes I’ve got. These will be active for another couple of days:

LHJXYP6HJ9RL
A36HEPY6EYRF
NNJWYTXPML4H
W9WH4EMT44MW
HTEFNMLX4WMK
PPPEWRHNWF4P
96HFLTLJ4KYT
W6PJL3R3APHH
9MN6LMTJ3HHA
[import]uid: 160496 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129835[/import]

#7

Mike, the competition is fierce and you aren’t even guaranteed to rank for your exact app name. It took me a long time before my app could even be found when searching by the exact unique name! [import]uid: 160288 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129837[/import]

#8

Hi,

@robmiracle, I think you are a bit off with your assumption regarding users… don’t forget that Google is selling over 1m tablets a month these days and I really don’t think people are buying them for phone calls…

In general I think it’s very hard to anticipate where you’ll succeed. The market are very different. Google has much more apps published but most of them are just garbage since there is no review process. Apple has less apps but you are competing against stronger apps in general.
Amazon is a small market in which you can make relatively good money.
In our case most of the cash is flowing in from Google…

We have 7 apps (6 educational). We have a top 10 paid app on both Amazon and Google but on Apple we are struggling.

It’s really hard to tell why, I think that Math in specific is very crowded, so in terms of visibility you are up against a huge base of apps that appear before you when a user performs a search…

Start off by thinking what the user is searching for and in which search terms you would like to show up high in the list. For example where is your app located when someone search “Math Educational Game”.

You can try playing with the keywords and description to appear higher in the chart and even adding stuff to you title name could help.

To read our full experience you’re invited to read a blog post I wrote a few months back:
http://www.remarkable-games.com/?page_id=200

Good Luck! [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129833[/import]

#9

If you look at recent studies, they did a comparison of the App Stores. It’s was pretty interesting, if Apple was considered 100%, Amazon came in second at 89% followed by Google Play for about 23%.

It is obvious the Google marketplace is tiny in comparison to other stores. I think there are a few reasons and it certainly isn’t because Android users do not use apps. As Gtt said, it was released recently the Nexus 7 is selling more than 1M units a month and the Nexus 10 blows it away in functionality and in fact it has better specs than the iPad 4 just released.

Amazon apparently does really well and I think there are a few reasons for that. Everyone has an Amazon account with their credit card tied to it. Even though the process is harder to get connected to their app store, Google doesn’t have the credit cards on file so they lose to many people for that reason.

Another reason is Google Play is tied to your Gmail account, most people who have more than one device in their home have their own Gmail account, so you can’t share apps when using multiple devices like a tablet and phone or family members.

Google is pretty nice where you can see an estimate download for each app. I’ve seen indie apps with millions of downloads (free) and paid apps from Indie studios with hundreds of thousands.

Android market place may have less real competition than the Apple App Store, but it is still strong enough competition to make it virtually impossible to get exposure. If you get it, you can do really well. [import]uid: 160288 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129836[/import]

#10

gtt - when you search for “math educational game” or “math game”, my app is nowhere to be found.

Yet the words “math” “education” and “game” are in the description several times and “Math” is obviously in the name of the app. see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.medved.games.mathtotherescue

So - how come?

Is there a resource out there that explains how to structure the keywords in the app submission to get it to show up in searches?

BTW - if someone wants to download the Math to the Rescue from Apple Store, here are some leftover promo codes I’ve got. These will be active for another couple of days:

LHJXYP6HJ9RL
A36HEPY6EYRF
NNJWYTXPML4H
W9WH4EMT44MW
HTEFNMLX4WMK
PPPEWRHNWF4P
96HFLTLJ4KYT
W6PJL3R3APHH
9MN6LMTJ3HHA
[import]uid: 160496 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129835[/import]

#11

Mike, the competition is fierce and you aren’t even guaranteed to rank for your exact app name. It took me a long time before my app could even be found when searching by the exact unique name! [import]uid: 160288 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129837[/import]

#12

I tend to disagree just because our performance is really good on Google and Amazon and in Apple it’s quite poor.

I think there are a lot of factors the contribute to your success in each market. For example we have noticed that around 80% of our downloads in Play Market are from tablet devices. We think that this might be the case for the education category. It makes sense to give your child a large and cheap sub $200 device over handing him your personal phone to play with.

So, in our case it might be that our category is not represented well by overall market stats. I really don’t know. I just know I’m getting consistent results over the last year.

Regarding Amazon vs Google, I also disagree we had an application ranked number 10 on both markets so we compared apples to apples at the same time (in educational apps category). Google made us more than twice the money. so I don’t understand what 89% vs 23% really means…

@mike470: I really don’t know what keywords you should use. you can try out:
https://searchman.com/add_app/
It will tell you which words drive customers to your app but that’s on iOS…

I would just change them from time to time and see the results, try to capture clients searching for things less direct then “Math”. For example Quantitative thinking and such. just ideas… [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129890[/import]

#13

Flurry analytics as well as others have done studies, and have come to the conclusion the Amazon app store does about 89% as much business as the Apple store and Google Play does about 23%. This is over millions of apps, not just one. Most developers I have spoken with have confirmed similar numbers.

Can read more about one of the studies here:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/30/amazon_appstore_earns_3x_more_than_google_play_apples_app_store_still_leads
[import]uid: 160288 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129902[/import]

#14

Yes, but as I mentioned I’m not talking about 1 app. I’m talking about the same application ranked the same in the same category on BOTH markets but still making more than twice on google…

I understand these stats are overall but once you are talking about a specific category I’m not sure how relevant they are… [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129903[/import]

#15

I tend to disagree just because our performance is really good on Google and Amazon and in Apple it’s quite poor.

I think there are a lot of factors the contribute to your success in each market. For example we have noticed that around 80% of our downloads in Play Market are from tablet devices. We think that this might be the case for the education category. It makes sense to give your child a large and cheap sub $200 device over handing him your personal phone to play with.

So, in our case it might be that our category is not represented well by overall market stats. I really don’t know. I just know I’m getting consistent results over the last year.

Regarding Amazon vs Google, I also disagree we had an application ranked number 10 on both markets so we compared apples to apples at the same time (in educational apps category). Google made us more than twice the money. so I don’t understand what 89% vs 23% really means…

@mike470: I really don’t know what keywords you should use. you can try out:
https://searchman.com/add_app/
It will tell you which words drive customers to your app but that’s on iOS…

I would just change them from time to time and see the results, try to capture clients searching for things less direct then “Math”. For example Quantitative thinking and such. just ideas… [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129890[/import]

#16

Flurry analytics as well as others have done studies, and have come to the conclusion the Amazon app store does about 89% as much business as the Apple store and Google Play does about 23%. This is over millions of apps, not just one. Most developers I have spoken with have confirmed similar numbers.

Can read more about one of the studies here:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/30/amazon_appstore_earns_3x_more_than_google_play_apples_app_store_still_leads
[import]uid: 160288 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129902[/import]

#17

Yes, but as I mentioned I’m not talking about 1 app. I’m talking about the same application ranked the same in the same category on BOTH markets but still making more than twice on google…

I understand these stats are overall but once you are talking about a specific category I’m not sure how relevant they are… [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129903[/import]

#18

Ok, I’ve read the article you linked and I quote:
“In other words, for every dollar in revenue generated from Apple’s iOS App Store, the Amazon Appstore for Android brings in 89 cents per active user, while Google Play earns 23 cents for software available at all three storefronts.”

So as you can see these are stats per active user… This means that if lets say Google has 5 times the user base of Amazon it will earn you more money than Amazon. And I assure you Google has much more users than 5 times amazon… Just to give you a taste, we have free app of ours ranked around 90 in google education category and 16 in the same category on Amazon yields 750 downloads a day on Google but less than 150 on Amazon. I chose a free app because it represent the overall user base size better than a paid app (I have no argue with you on the fact google users pay less per head, just that there are more google users to compensate for that fact).

The data provided in this article should be multiplied by the number of active market users in each market, and I’m not sure any of these analytics companies have this kind of data.

@mike470, I feel you asked a question and we spread out to a broader discussion.
Basically my message would be you shouldn’t compare between the markets and ask questions like why it works here and not there. Just try to improve each market by itself by tweaking with what you have available (app title, description, keywords, icon, banner, etc). For Google educational apps I would highly recommend you make sure your app shows as compatible with tablet devices because the new cheap tablets are a driving new force. Nexus 7 alone contributes now 15% of our paid downloads. Always remember that each market is in a different stage, Apple is more mature and has quality apps, Google has less quality apps and a lot of junk, and Amazon is practically a filtered Google play market. Because of these differences we have a high ranked app on Amazon that doesn’t even show in Apple while other apps that are behind us in Amazon are ranking under 50 in Apple… It’s all about discoverability which is a new mostly known science and is specific to each market. In addition there are a zillion factors you cannot account for in advance. For the ones you do control there might be no obvious “right” choice, for example the release date. Do you want to release on a weekend which has more active users but also has more competition from large studios because they all release on weekends? or you can release mid week, get a smaller user base but with less high end competition… Our best release so far was early last January, by the book this is the “off season” after Christmas, but for us it worked great!

Last thing regarding Google play. The free apps market competition is just brutal. We also have a paid/lite version per game and we _never_ had a lite version even come close to the rank of it’s paid big brother. There are A LOT of free apps I guess :slight_smile: Just saying this because you have given data on a free lite version. [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129921[/import]

#19

Ok, I’ve read the article you linked and I quote:
“In other words, for every dollar in revenue generated from Apple’s iOS App Store, the Amazon Appstore for Android brings in 89 cents per active user, while Google Play earns 23 cents for software available at all three storefronts.”

So as you can see these are stats per active user… This means that if lets say Google has 5 times the user base of Amazon it will earn you more money than Amazon. And I assure you Google has much more users than 5 times amazon… Just to give you a taste, we have free app of ours ranked around 90 in google education category and 16 in the same category on Amazon yields 750 downloads a day on Google but less than 150 on Amazon. I chose a free app because it represent the overall user base size better than a paid app (I have no argue with you on the fact google users pay less per head, just that there are more google users to compensate for that fact).

The data provided in this article should be multiplied by the number of active market users in each market, and I’m not sure any of these analytics companies have this kind of data.

@mike470, I feel you asked a question and we spread out to a broader discussion.
Basically my message would be you shouldn’t compare between the markets and ask questions like why it works here and not there. Just try to improve each market by itself by tweaking with what you have available (app title, description, keywords, icon, banner, etc). For Google educational apps I would highly recommend you make sure your app shows as compatible with tablet devices because the new cheap tablets are a driving new force. Nexus 7 alone contributes now 15% of our paid downloads. Always remember that each market is in a different stage, Apple is more mature and has quality apps, Google has less quality apps and a lot of junk, and Amazon is practically a filtered Google play market. Because of these differences we have a high ranked app on Amazon that doesn’t even show in Apple while other apps that are behind us in Amazon are ranking under 50 in Apple… It’s all about discoverability which is a new mostly known science and is specific to each market. In addition there are a zillion factors you cannot account for in advance. For the ones you do control there might be no obvious “right” choice, for example the release date. Do you want to release on a weekend which has more active users but also has more competition from large studios because they all release on weekends? or you can release mid week, get a smaller user base but with less high end competition… Our best release so far was early last January, by the book this is the “off season” after Christmas, but for us it worked great!

Last thing regarding Google play. The free apps market competition is just brutal. We also have a paid/lite version per game and we _never_ had a lite version even come close to the rank of it’s paid big brother. There are A LOT of free apps I guess :slight_smile: Just saying this because you have given data on a free lite version. [import]uid: 80469 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 129921[/import]

#20

From my experience, Google play is hard.
Unless your App is popular on iOS, i think it is hard to get into Google Play Chart.
There is no “new app” category, so we need to either get featured by Google or spent on marketing, or else its all up to the search engine and word of mouth.

In iOS, we can still depend on “new app” category, Although the new iOS App Store reduces the “New App Effect” significantly, newly launched app still gets decent number of downloads (unlike Google Play store where you might see less than 10 download on first day).

Samsung App Store has alot less apps, which is a good thing. And we can sort the list by “Most Recent” which helps “new app” discovery. [import]uid: 49513 topic_id: 32648 reply_id: 130316[/import]