App publicity sure is a tough nut to crack. When you think about who your target audience is and how they will actually find your app in the market, it's pretty difficult to do anything but hope for random chance, not a very good marketing scheme.
This new Droid thing from Verizon is going to change the game a bit. It may get 100,000 sales the first month, perhaps even more, and over the course of a year, we should see a doubling or tripling of the number of Android/market capable devices in the hands of users. Android has gone from a curiosity to a contender. If the iPhone model is used, then basically the market is the marketing plan and we're all pretty much stuck with what Google does with that program. The 2.0 market app might be better, it might be the same. I've got a good feeling Google will beef up that program somewhat in the next few months, they have to or risk losing the confidence of their developer community. I don't believe there is going to be any traction from alternative market schemes. They are the 1% solution and as such not worth the effort. If these alternate market apps aren't included with the device, very few users are going to download it. Then there is the pay vs. ad revenue model. With the current ability of a user to be able to simply back up the app and return it for a refund, then restore it to their device, or download it from one of the pirate sites, the pay model is kind of a bust. Until Google allows the developer to validate the user, it will be fraught with piracy and cheating. The ad model is good, but the problem is AdSense is severely restricted (100,000 pageviews a day minimum!) and other schemes like Admob have such low quality ads, poor performance (slow to load) and a dubious reputation to make them suspect as well. My revenue plan is to allow our apps to accumulate users to the 100,000 pageview a day level and then implement AdSense. We've had great success with that model in the web world and have high hopes for the Android and AdSense. It may take a long time to reach that level but with potentially many millions of devices, it won't be forever. -John Coryat "Radar Now!" "What Zip Code?" -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
