.NET App

App Spotlights for Windows Phone

Apr 102013

I’m pleased to announce the availability of App Spotlights.

As a Windows Phone developer, I can tell you that one of the best gifts a developer can receive is when one of his apps is in the spotlight. First, it’s an honor from Microsoft to be selected and secondly, it has a huge impact on downloads. Currently, there is no easy way to know if an app is featured, as there are 121 markets. The main feature of this app is to notify the developers with a live tile notification and a toast when an app is in the spotlight.

App Spotlights is a perfect companion for Windows Phone app buyers and an indispensable tool for developers.

Windows Phone Buyers:
★ Access to more than 2400 spotlighted apps from all 121 markets every day.
★ Have more confidence when buying a spotlighted app.
★ Consult three charts to find out the most spotlighted apps in the marketplace.
★ Navigate faster than the built-in Store app when looking for spotlighted apps.

Windows Phone Developers:
★ Get notified when your apps are in the spotlights in any markets. Share the news with potential buyers on your favourite social networks.
★ Obtain a detailed history when your apps were in the spotlight in each market.
★ Analyze the impact on your downloads when your apps are in the spotlight.
★ Track the visibility of your competitors.

Other features:
★ Toast and Live Tile notifications.
★ Lock screen information from App Spotlights can be used.
★ Fast loading and resume.

Note: Spotlight statistics have been calculated since February 17th 2013.

Promotion until April 17th: 33% off

My experience with Ads in my Windows Phone apps

Jan 112013

After some thought, I decided to share my experience with ads and to provide the revenue that my apps provided. If my details help you, then I’ll be happy.

The two apps that generates the most revenue are:

Ultimate Poker Hands & Timer
Ultimate Poker Manager Free

Those apps target a niche audience: the poker players that play home games. Although they are niche apps, these two apps are popular in the US Windows Store. If you enter “poker timer”, the apps will get the 1st and 4th places:

The advantage of adding an ad control into a “timer” app is you get a chance that you’ll get tons of ad requests. I was curious if the ad market can be good.

Smaato

Back in early 2011, there were few providers where a Canadian developer can be paid. Believe it or not, the PubCenter by Microsoft was not in the list. So, I ended up choosing Smaato. In 2011, if my memory is good I got three payments of ~$5 each. My user base was very low, so it was not that bad getting the $15.

I don’t look into the details of my ad revenue day to day, but at the end of 2012, I checked what was going on. I was quite disapointed to see that on 151 244 served ads for the last 6 months, that the generated revenue was $1.91. Unfortunately, Smaato does not provide data older that 6 months. I contacted the support on their website, but I never got any answer. I found a Twitter employee where he forwarded my question to the right team and it took more than a month before getting an answer. They did not seem to understand that the $1.91 of revenue on 150 000 ads was abnormal. At this point, I gave up and remove the Smaato ad control into my apps. It is not fair is only one company is making money.

Microsoft PubCenter

At the end of 2011, the PubCenter finally arrived in the Canadian market. I decide to make the PubCenter my primary ad provider and when an ad request cannot be fulfilled, the Smaato would try to request an ad. So, it doubles my chance to display an ad.

What you see is $32.06 for 135 205 ads. I’m not an ad guru, but those numbers seem fair to me.

I would like to point out that integrating the Smaato and PubCenter ad controls into a Windows Phone app is almost as easy to drag a button into a page.

Nokia NAX

In the autumn of 2012, Nokia released the NAX ad network that supports multiple platforms. As a big fan of Nokia, I decided to give a try. We always have a dream to become rich I put the NAX as the primary ad provider and use PubCenter as the backup.

The NAX ad network is powered by the company inneractive.

When I first integrated the NAX ad control, it took me some time to figure out that the AdFailed/AdRequest events were static events and does not belong to the control. To use the NAX Ad Control it was not as easy as Smaato or PubCenter.

When I ported my two apps to Windows Phone 8, the NAX ad control was not even released despite having all other non-Windows Phone platforms. I was a bit surprise, but they told me that I can use the WP7 version.

The first surprise

After my apps were updated with the NAX Ad control, I received a couple of days later a crash report showing that the AdFailed event generated an exception because it was not returned in the UI thread. When you are using an ad control in an app, you expect that the ad control have been tested and you can have confidence in it. By definition, an ad control fetches an image and display it every 60 seconds, right? I immediately contacted the support. Without too much surprise, they confirmed the crash and told me to update my apps.

I updated my apps and waited for the certification time… That part is not fun to wait when you know your users can have random crash without even touching the timer page.

I gave them a chance…

Last week, I got another new crash report and I found out a 100% repro case in an app that I’m developing right now. I contacted the inneractive support and after two days, I got no answers. I reached out the NokiaDeveloperTeam Twitter account and they quickly asked for my info and forwarded it to the inneractive team. After a day, I still did not get any support. I found out the Twitter account of inneractive and I got a reply right away. Once again, they forwarded my info the the engineering team. I won’t go into details, but the inneractive engineers do not seem to understand the WP platform and I’m still waiting for an answer or an update for the current situation.

On top of that, I got another new crash report today.

Two person from Nokia are aware about my situation and they asked me my feedback and I’m keeping up to date. It is way more important for Nokia to know what’s going on with their contractor inneractive. Nokia thanked me for my feedback to them.

If I put aside the negative experience with the NAX ad control, the numbers are impressive so far (it is less than 40 days): $0.85 for 3853 served ads.

In conclusion, I would suggest to avoid the NAX Ad control for now, it is not ready for prime time yet. The PubCenter is my top suggestion. I know I won’t be rich with my two apps, however, the part where I’m the more happy with is over 320 000 ads that have been requested over the last 2 years and if one ad is requested every 60 seconds, it represents 5333 hours of usage of my apps.

Happy New Year of coding!

Application name matters

Jun 282012

If you are developing an application for your company with a brand name or if you are developing the next Angry Bird game with a cool new name, this post is not for you.

However, if you are concocting a generic application like a calculator, a converter, a task manager, you might want continuing to read this post.

Last year, I released the Ultimate Poker Manager along with the ad based version Ultimate Poker Manager Free. Those apps are a poker timer, a hand reference helper and a statistic manager that can produce a whole website with game results and a leaderboard. After a couple of months, I realized that my apps were not gaining traction as much as simple apps like Poker Timer or Poker Hands even if my app was more appealing.

With these results, I tried to rebrand the app for Poker Hands & Timer and I added it to the marketplace (only as a free app). I kept the old Ultimate Poker Manager Free in order to be able update the users that installed my app.

After one and half year, I can tell you that the Poker Hands & Timer has been downloaded twice as much as the Ultimate Poker Manager Free. My download count is in thousands.

I do believe that the marketplace search algorithm put a lot of weight on application name first. So in the end, don’t look for fancy names, keep it simple!

This post is not based on exact science but on my experience. If you agree or not, please feel free to comment.

Windows Phone 7 App Hub VS Windows 8 Dashboard

Jun 242012

This week, Microsoft presented what I believe are the best announcements in the last 10 years: the coming release of the gorgeous Surface and the next Windows Phone 8 OS.

I was ready to blog about the new SDK of Windows Phone 8, but we have to wait until the SDK is released. However, we should be pleased that the core of Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 will be the same.

Back to the blog post now!

Microsoft is serious about Windows 8. They ran a lot of interesting events for the developers. I must admit that living in a big city helps. Recently, I participated in the App Excellence Lab for Windows 8 where I was given early access to the Windows 8 Dashboard. I presented my port of my Windows Phone Canadian Developer Connection app to Windows 8. In a future blog post, I’ll talk about my experience porting an application from Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8.

For developers that submitted Windows Phone 7 applications, you will have dealt with the App Hub many times and you have probably seen some hiccups. Fortunately, the Windows Phone team gave the developers good news about the upcoming upgrade of the App Hub.

Right now, the Windows 8 Dashboard (that’s the current name) does not share the same system as the App Hub. In a couple of years, they might share a dashboard, but for now I’ll present some differences.

Dashboard

Submit an app

All the steps are well defined and you get the approximate time for each step.

Explore store trends

This is what I consider the best tool of the Windows 8 Dashboard. It gives you the ability to analyze what people install on Windows 8. I hope this feature will soon come to the App Hub.

Financial summary

This is the place where you find out if you’ll be millionaire one day.

Profile Account

I skipped the section Renewal, there was nothing interesting. The Profile Account is pretty normal except that you can change the Publisher name.

Microsoft Support

This is the second major feature of the Windows 8 Dashboard. Recently, I had a question to ask the certification team and I visited the support page. I was expecting to fill in a form and get an answer one or two days later like it is in the App Hub, but I was totally surprised that the Dashboard offers you the possibility of chatting with a support representative during the week days. I picked this option and 2 seconds later, I was chatting. I hope this wait time will stay the same!

Now, go back to your code and port all your beautiful Windows Phone apps to Windows 8!

How to fill a W-8BEN form if you’re a Canadian individual

May 232012

If you are only making free applications, you don’t have to fill in this form.

As a member of the AppHub, and because I’m a Canadian citizen, I had to fill the W-8BEN form. As you know Microsoft always keeps 30% of your revenue, and if you make $200 in revenue, Microsoft will send you a cheque. If you don’t fill the W-8BEN form, Microsoft will keep an extra 30% until you fill the form. We all love tax paperwork, eh!

The process seems complicated, but it’s actually really easy.

Follow these steps:

1- Download the W-8BEN form.

2- In Part I, fill the following fields: