FYI

This blog was created as a platform for my Android apps, namely NTW Text Editor and Pendulum Chaos so far. But I admit I neglect it and often digress, a lot :'(

Nevertheless, if you are interested in this sort of things, you can glean some conceptual insights into how NTW was conceived in my earliest posts

Thursday 23 February 2012

How do I increase download rates of my apps.....

I'm thinking how to increase the download rates of my apps. A youtube video would probably work for Pendulum Chaos, but NTW is sort of problematic. Thing is, the power of NTW will not really be appreciated by casual users. And I'm not very good at making super beautifully designed graphics and stuff... I'm afraid I've always been rather utilitarian.

So here's some ideas I brainstormed up for my 2 apps

Pendulum Chaos
- Allow users to write script files to control exactly how the blurriness and color is calculated, set limits, make use of bmps as their pendulums instead, make special background effects etc etc. But problem is the calculation of blurriness and color already has over a LOT of variables that can be tweaks even using just my current 2 color equation, so I dunno man.... Will people actually want such a feature? Would the difficulty level be to high for them and/or too high for me to program?

- Allow users to record videos of the wave that can be converted to Live wallpaper that can be uploaded/downloaded freely via my sorely neglected guinea-pig website. This is cool, but I have to look into it first.... I have never programmed live wallpaper before.

NTW
- Enable users to share their txt files via a network folder that connects to a NTW dedicated server somewhere. The general idea is to share the novels/recipes/etc you're writing. Exactly how this could be implemented is still a big question. I could open a special sugarsync folder just for NTW and share the username and password around? Or make it integrated as part of NTW's own file explorer. But I think people will prefer to share via Facebook, twitter or their own blogs and such, so maybe this is a bad idea afterall

- Make NTW open Java/C/Matlab/HTML etc code with customizable coloring options. This should elevate NTW to the ultimate level of geekiness I think :D :D :D. But I dun think many people will want to write code on their Android device :(

 - Pay for advertisements! But but but .... I'm poor and cheapskate :'(


Lastly, what I fail to mention thus far is, I really need to find a way to better monetize my apps. Maybe I should write apps related to SMS, soft keyboards, GPS, golf and phone calls.... People who care about these features tend to be more fervent than others and should be willing to pay for them, right???

2 comments:

  1. Don't mind me, I'm bored and cruising through your blog..

    Why not iOS leh? Just curious..

    And as an app consumer..(and I was in marketing for 2 years plus) two suggestions..

    1) Sometimes I know an app is great, but I do judge an app by it's cover, mainly the icon. While it may not be true, a nice icon (first impression) do signal to consumers that there was production value and most probably equate that to high programming value.

    May or may not be true, but what you do need is for people to click into the app to take a look at all that power underneath and first impression/attraction is that hook. NTW from a marketing point of view, is kinda ambiguous..Unless I knew what I was looking for, I probably wouldn't know what NTW stand for..

    2) I don't know how Android works, but I also base my purchases on peer-reviews. You should prolly find some way to get people to leave stellar reviews for you..(some iPhone apps will pop up a request for 5 star review after certain amount of usage..some even say please :D)

    There are other ways of course, just suggesting! Jiayou!!

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  2. iOS quite problematic to program for without iDevice and Mac computer. I have neither and buying them just for expanding my sideline seems too extreme loh.

    My reviews very stellar one :D, the majority is 5 stars, some 4 stars and only very few 1,2,3 stars from users making weird and/or unjustified complaints.

    But I think I know why lah, it's because my position on the search results for "text editor" tend to be very low, and my user interface is not that slick. So people not attracted by it. And also very important is that text editing is not really a very essential app to most people, especially not for super large files. They are happy enough with Colorme Notes, Jota Editor, etc.

    NTW stands for Need To Write, I shortened it to NTW Text Editor Lite and NTW Text Editor Pro just so I could include the "Text Editor" words into its title for better search list rankings. But dunnno how the ranking works one, it doesn't seem to follow logic one... :(

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