On Aug 20, 6:23 pm, Mark Murphy <mmur...@commonsware.com> wrote: > TreKing, I haven't read all the posts on this thread. Generally > speaking, I agree with your sentiment that the 325-character limit is > artificial and, well, limiting. That being said...
Yep, I'm now earning a healthy full-time income from Android development. This is my livelihood now, and yes, the character limit on the Android Market description is far too restrictive. I don't think it's the worst problem with the Android Market, which has many, but it is definitely something that directly impacts the performance of apps. I was very excited to see the changes to the market previewed at Google I/O this year, and can only hope that the new market will be launched soon. I'm going to have to disagree somewhat with Mark about marketing, though. > Every seller of products and services on planet Earth has access to > the most dizzying array of marketing tools in human history. Some cost > money, some do not. Some vary by geography of the marketer, others > vary by the geography of the audience. Some require skills that the > marketer may not have and would have to hire. Hence, the subset of > that array of marketing tools available to any given developer will > vary, based on the developer's resources, location, and so on. > > Exactly one of these is the Android Market. That's true, but what it ignores is the relative importance of each tool. Someone just asked what other tools exist for market. A good recent reference is "The Business of iPhone App Development: Making and Marketing Apps that Succeed": http://www.amazon.com/Business-iPhone-App-Development-Marketing/dp/1430227338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282398691&sr=8-1 Much of the advice in that book applies equally well to marketing Android apps. And what are your other tools? Your company website and/ or a website devoted exclusively to your app. Your own blog/Twitter feed/Facebook page promoting your business/app. Other blogs/websites/ forums that discuss mobile apps and Android that you can either post directly to or contact the administrators and try to convince them to review/mention your app. There's advertising, e.g. AdWords), or serving up house ads in one of your apps to cross-promote your other apps. You can also try to form collectives with other developers to cross-promote each other's apps, through any of the other channels mentioned above. And on and on. Mark is right. There are many other ways to market your app. And though it is often difficult to measure the effectiveness of these strategies, so far my assessment is that the single most important channel *by far* is the Android Market. I'm talking something like 98% Android Market and 2% everything else. Why? Look at it from the consumer's perspective. The #1 channel for app discovery, by far, is the market itself. The official web presence of the market is still virtually useless. When we have a real desktop portal, that might be a draw to consumers. There are a number of good third party websites (like AppBrain), but my guess is that the vast majority of people who walk into their carrier and buy an Android phone have no idea they exist and don't go looking for them on the web. The analogy to being in the Staples catalog is simply not a good one. If you are trying to sell something like paper clips, you have many, many viable channels by which to sell them, both in online and physical retail stores. This is simply not the case with apps. I have tried selling Android apps, and the results are *very* depressing. Mark has written an article advocating more developers support the third-party stores, but unfortunately in my experience it is not worth the investment of time and effort. Every third-party store has a different set of requirements for resources (i.e. text descriptions and screenshots). And if you have multiple apps, that means every time you push an update, you need to maintain X number of resources for each market that you submit to. This becomes very cumbersome, very fast. It would be worth the effort if sales through any of these channels were more than rounding errors on the rest of your sales figures, but for me they have never been. The number one thing that can happen to your app, either an iPhone or Android (short of someone like Oprah or the President endorsing it on national TV) is being featured in your respective market. Take the famous Edward Kim example: http://eddiekim.posterous.com/an-android-success-story-13000month-sales-0 His sales quadrupled when he was featured. This demonstrates the huge power of the market itself as a marketing channel. All this isn't to say that you shouldn't do other things to market your app. But in my opinion the single most important channel by a huge margin is your listing in the Android Market (and thus, your icon, description, and screenshots). Being restricted to 325 characters isn't the end of the world, but it does hurt, especially in the absence of a real changelog. You simply don't have the space to mention changes between versions, briefly explain why certain permissions are required, or add other information that many users could easily ignore but would be extremely useful for certain other users. Redirecting users to your website for such explanations is clunky and ineffective. So yes, the character limit is something that really does negatively impact devs and should be changed. And yes, there are other ways to market your app, but their relative importance compared to your market listing is small. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
