

What to Expect When Being Featured on Google Play - rharter
http://ryanharter.com/blog/2013/08/20/what-to-expect-when-being-featured-on-google-play/

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unoti
He mentioned that he was doing 12 requests per second, and it was costing him
$10/day on App Engine. I rent a server from Rackspace, and do volume in the 12
requests per second range, and including bandwidth this costs me under $40/mo.
Am I doing the math wrong, or is App engine kinda expensive compared to
rolling your own solutions with virtual private servers?

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timothyb89
It definitely can be, if you write your app assuming that you are working with
a traditional server. You're very directly charged for writing inefficient
apps. I have a moderately popular app running on the AppEngine right now that
initially had similar cost problems, but spending a few days with the cost
profiler can resolve most issues. You have to be particularly smart about
caching and datastore queries. What I found in the end was that after proper
optimization, I was able to get a better value out of the app engine than with
a normal VPS - but it definitely takes some extra work to get there.

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kumarm
I am surprised that number of downloads for featured app is so low. Typically
for Games and Entertainment apps when its trending it gets anywhere from 10K
to 75K downloads a day on Android. We got some entertainment apps featured
about 15 months back and got 20K downloads per day.

Downloads on Featured apps depends on category of app and other features like
Icon, Screenshots etc.

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bookwormAT
I imagine games are different because people who own games still tend to buy
games. Someone who already has a note taking app that works for him is less
likely to try another one.

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jamesaguilar
I enjoyed the article. Kudos on rewriting your server to be more performant
and efficient. It's amazing what a motivated dev can do in a weekend, and it's
a great reminder of how much room there often is for optimizing.

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rharter
Thanks James. I wish it hadn't been in a panic mode, but it worked out well
and the users have told me they really like the new backend. The Mobile
Backend Starter was a great starting point, but I needed something optimized
for my app and didn't want to disappoint new users. Passionate users really
are a great motivator.

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Jagat
Awesome. It's a welcome relief to see a happy story of an independent
developer, instead of the sad endings that we are so used to when we see such
titles. Good luck.

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rharter
Thanks Jagat, I have had a great experience as an Android developer and
working hard to make a product that people like has been a fun thing to do.
Getting emails every day from users that like the app, even though they
usually ask for a feature or two, is a great motivator.

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6thSigma
My app was on the 'Trending' section of Google Play a couple of months ago and
in comparison I received about 1,200 downloads. Trending is only featured for
24 hours and does not have as good of a placement on the store, however.

Edit: Number of downloads is more than I originally put. The graph I was
looking at is downloads by day - I thought it was total downloads.

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joeblau
Did you do any other marketing when your app first launched? Being featured on
Play is great, but what did you do in general to just get your application
some awareness?

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h00k
It appears like a shameless self-plug article about the developers app.

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rharter
I guess it sort of is, hOOk, though I'm not sure how to write about my
specific experience without it being just that.

Before my app was featured, I was looking online for two pieces of
information, how to get featured and how many downloads I could get from being
featured.

All I could find for how to get featured was "make a good app", turns out that
part is true.

I couldn't find anything for what to expect as a result of being featured.
Some people shared general looking graphs, but I'm sharing actual numbers so
that people can have an idea of the process, and the result, of being
featured.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Sometimes HN is quite appropriately nicknamed Hater News, and we're also no
less likely to get trolls than any other community!

Thank you for an amazing write-up. I wish more developers would open up about
their experiences in public!

