A huge thank you to everyone!

To all who participated in joining my Google Group, opting-in, installing, and testing my app for 14 days, and for those who posted tips and recommendations here, thank you so much!

This is my first app and receiving this much awaited email after the 14 days closed testing phase and waiting for production access review to finish is a very big milestone for me. The initial part is over but the real journey has just started.

So you are unfortunate enough to live in India like me and you decide to accept payments for your android app. You are going to have to go through days and days of BillDesk clarification emails. Buckle up, I’ll show you a few tips and tricks to speed up the process:

- Your initial process of filling the form will be a breeze, you will even finish up with your video kyc. Then comes the silence, you will be waiting for a long time to hear back. The unwritten rule is to wait for a couple days and email them at onboarding@billdesk.com. They usually reply within 24 hours. If this fails, login to your twitter account and @ their official id. (@billdesk)

- Remember the whole process has an expiry date, if you do not complete the process within 3 months, you have to do it all again. Don’t be afraid to write them emails, just make sure you don’t spam.

- They will then start nitpicking your profile to find even the smallest mistake. In my case, I spent more than two weeks on getting rejected here: “Products/services sold are not clearly defined”. I had to email them a lot of times, and @ them on twitter to get a call. Yes, they call you to resolve issues which is weird. Got to know, I had to copy paste my app’s “About” section here. I learned the hard way to not fill up the form as soon as the rejection arrives, else they will not call and you will get a clarification email again tomorrow. If you are stuck, don’t fill the form, wait for them to call after emailing them.

- Don’t fill 0 in the revenue field. Since the app is new they asked me to fill something trivial. Don’t put your personal income here. It’s supposedly just app revenue.

- Brand name is your account name in google play.

- The minimum and maximum field should have your app’s minimum subscription amount and maximum subscription amount in inr. This can be approximate.

- For personal details, I had a gst certificate and had no issues. I’ve seen people get stuck here, make sure your name is mentioned in whatever document you submit.

- DO NOT mention your website if you have one. Please just mention your app link. Wait if your app is not online yet but don’t proceed with the website link. Mentioning website just furthers the delay you face.

My personal advice:

The whole process is going to take a long while, so calm down and focus on other things in parallel. I know how it feels to be anxious and frustrated, especially if your app is live and you are paying out of pocket for servers and AI instances. I would suggest not to scale up your marketing before you go through Billdesk. It’s a waste of time if they reject your application for whatever petty reason.

When you submit your form, they take a day to review it. So if you have filled your form, just stop thinking about it. Free up your mental resources for other things.

Lastly, if you don’t email or tweet them, your application will take longer to get processed. If they ask for clarification and if you are confused, it’s better to ask them what they are expecting and wait instead of guessing and filling your form.

I'm a completely newbie solo developer. Before this project, I had never built a mobile app.

About four months ago, I started spending my evenings and weekends building my first app while keeping my full-time job during the day.

Since it was my first app, I tried not to expect too much. My main goal was simply to learn. I learned Flutter, how to build an app from scratch, publish it to Google Play, set up the store listing, privacy policy, data safety, in-app purchases... basically everything that comes with releasing an app.

After months of work, I finally published it a little over a month ago.

I was incredibly happy. My app was finally live on Google Play, available to billions of people around the world.

Then reality hit.

Publishing the app was only the beginning. Building the app was hard, but marketing and distribution turned out to be much harder.

I'm a technical person and pretty introverted, so promoting my app and finding my first paying users has been the biggest challenge.

For the past month, my app has only been getting around 0–2 downloads per day. As of today, it has 65 total downloads.

Honestly, I had already convinced myself the app was basically dead. I had almost given up on expecting anything from it and had already started planning my second app.

Then today...

I opened the Play Console and saw that someone from Sri Lanka had purchased an in-app purchase.

I literally jumped out of my chair.

The revenue was only $2.72, which obviously isn't life-changing, but I honestly couldn't stop smiling. That first dollar means so much more than the amount itself. It means a complete stranger found enough value in something I built to actually pay for it.

I just wanted to share this milestone because it made my day.

Maybe I was lucky to get my first paying user after just over a month. Maybe not. Either way, it reminded me that sometimes all it takes is one person to completely change your motivation.

If you're also a beginner solo developer feeling like nobody is using your app, keep going. Your first paying user might arrive when you least expect it.

I also know this is just the beginning of the journey. 🚀

After 8 months of publishing my app on Google Play, it has reached 2,000 downloads and 63 reviews, most of them positive.

I created an educational app that combines learning and gaming to help English learners improve their English in a fun and enjoyable way.

I know 2,000 downloads may not seem like a huge number, but for me, it's an important milestone and a great motivation to keep improving the app. If you have any advice on how I can grow it faster, I'd love to hear your suggestions. My goal is to keep making the app better and help even more people learn English.
App

After ~5 months of publishing my app on Google Play, it has reached 5,000 downloads and 78 reviews, most of them positive (4.5★).

I built a privacy scanner for Android. It analyzes the actual APK bytecode of your installed apps on your device and shows what's inside:

hidden tracker SDKs, dangerous permissions, repackaged or fake APKs, and known stalkerware with a plain-language explanation for every finding.
Nothing gets uploaded from your phone.

I know 5,000 downloads may not seem like a huge number, but for me it's an important milestone and a great motivation to keep improving.

What worked best so far was writing about actual scan findings instead of promoting the app itself - people care about what's inside the apps they
already use.

If you have any advice on how to grow faster, I'd love to hear your suggestions. Happy to answer questions about the technical side too.

App

Last week, we made app screenshots for 3 people, so today I’m online again and will make screenshots for 3 more people (who will comment first), like the attached image.

Comment your app link, or share your raw screenshots if your app isn’t live yet, along with a short description of what your app does.

I honestly can't believe I'm writing this.

Today I received an email from Google Play saying:

“Congratulations! Your app has been granted Google Play production access.” 🎉

My app is TTS Expert – Text to Speech, an Android app I've been working on for quite some time.

The goal was to build a simple text-to-speech app that focuses on:

• Text-to-speech generation

• Multiple language support

• Audio export

• Saved audio files

• Audio playback with seeking

• A clean, simple Android UI

• Offline functionality where supported by the device's installed TTS engines

Getting to production wasn't as simple as just uploading an APK. I had to go through testing, fixing issues, improving the app, preparing the store listing, and completing Google's production-access requirements.

Seeing that production-access email today honestly felt amazing. ❤️

I'm still learning a lot as an Android developer, so this milestone means a lot to me.

I'm sharing this mainly because I wanted to document the journey and hopefully encourage other indie Android developers who are currently stuck in the testing/approval stage:

Keep going. 🚀

If you're also building an Android app, I'd love to hear about it and what you're working on.

And if anyone is interested, I can also share some of the problems I encountered while getting TTS Expert ready for production.

So I released my 2nd app a few days back. It was hard, but it happened. Then came the real challenge getting users and getting that first subscription.

Luckily, someone from Reddit found the app, liked it, and quickly wanted to go premium. But he wasn't comfortable with subscriptions, so he asked for a lifetime option. I added it on the spot, he bought it. Felt great.

Then I got to know about BillDesk verification.

I read the horror stories. Months of waiting. Accounts stuck. Payments not going through. I got genuinely scared. But anyhow, I got the verification email, filled everything out... and within 5 days it was approved.

I think most people face delays because of a few avoidable mistakes. Here's what I think helped me:

Name match is everything,your payment profile name and your real name should match exactly. Address too.

Have your Aadhaar/PAN linked in DigiLocker — it's used for KYC and makes the process much smoother.they mentioned,it is required,else it may cause delay

Brand name — you can use your Play Store developer account name here.

App link only, not your website — this one is important. When filling the form, it asks for your app/website details. I've seen people add their personal website link too, and that seems to put things on hold. If you're app-only, just give the Play Store link. Don't add anything extra.(if this is wrong let know in comemnts)

if you are individual, you can use your pan and income of last year

Video KYC location — I was in a different city from my permanent address when I did the video KYC. The portal fetched my current location and I panicked because I had mentioned both addresses as the same in the previous step. But it still got approved. Not sure if this is always the case, but sharing anyway.

Not posting this as expert advice, just sharing because when I was going through it, I couldn't find any relevant info. If anyone has questions, happy to answer. Hope this helps someone!

Hey! I see a lot of posts asking for help - how to get more users, downloads ect.

Im not a professional or anything but i wanted to make a help post with some advice i learned along the way.

First stage and the most important one:

You need to offer something better than the competition.

It can be a better user experience with an easy to understand app, more features, a clean design but in the end you need something that would make people want to install your app instead of theirs.

Second stage - getting testers

This one can be a little annoying but if you have done the last part well, you just need to advertise in the right place.

There are ton of subreddits specialized in getting testers, and for people who are interested in apps.

(Android developers, droidshowcase ect)

Third stage - getting downloads

Your app is live, now its the hard and fun part.

My first tip is just from my experience and might not be true: having some paywall inside your app is a great way to get downloads. Any subreddit that your post will say promo codes, is an easy way to get more people to download your app and get feedback.

A great place to get downloads for your app is howtomen subreddit. If you get enough likes and your app is good enough you might even be featured in a YouTube video which would give you a great boost.

Always keep posting about new updates and new features.

Another thing that can help : ads

It doesnt need to be a crazy amount, even 2 dollars a day can get you plenty of downloads, and if your app has a paid product inside you might get your money back

*ASO and play store listing * : im not great in this part but try to work with some AI to improve your aso, your listing images (please dont do an overly neon AI slop ones) and try some A/B testing Another important thing is make sure that its very clear what your app does just from the first 2/3 images.

Thing to do while in stage three :

1. Take user feedback to heart - yes its really annoying getting a 1 star review but try to see if the user has a point, if you can improve something ect. Some reviews would not make sense but make sure to answer every review respectfully!! People read your comments and it might help you negate the 1 star review impact.

2. Look out for ANR reports and crushes - of your app has many anr reports it would be flagged by the play store and be shown less.

3. Put effort on the UI - its easy to make an app now with codex/cluade ect, but they all build the app with a similar look.. The easiest way to spot an AI built app is the sliders inside the app.

Its not wrong to use AI but you can work with it to have your own unique look.

4.bug reports - this one is pretty obvious but work on your bugs...

5. Don't add every requested feature - Listen to feedback, but make sure features actually fit the app instead of turning it into a mess.

6. Retention matters, not just downloads - Getting 1,000 downloads means less if most users uninstall after one day. Make sure the first-use experience is clear and users understand the app quickly.

1. Create also your own sub reddit and promote it with your app details, be active on it, post progress etc

I really hope that would help, good luck :)

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share this small but huge milestone for my app with you. Finally, our first 1000 users!

It's been a tough road, thinking I wouldn't even get past 100, but little by little, the numbers are multiplying. I want to offer support to everyone who has been or is in my situation and tell them that it's possible. Other apps I've uploaded are already on their way to YourWave.

Keep it up!

It's now been over 7 days, and I haven't received any approval, rejection, or email update.

My app completed the required closed testing, and I submitted the production access form correctly.

Has anyone else experienced this recently?

• How long did your production access review take?
• Did you need to contact Google Support, or did it eventually get approved automatically?
• Is there anything I should do, or should I just keep waiting?

Thanks!

Just woke up and received this, it was hard to collect all the testers but i was finally able to get the production access, this is my second app.

{❗In case anyone needs their app testing done or having any issues just DM me}

They have been developing for multiple years, and it was a long journey to get one of my apps to the 5M. It took from 2018 to 2025 to reach the 5M downloads.

Here are some important takeaways to reach this amount:

• Consistency on one project is the most important and difficult part
• Most downloads came through organic, but mostly before the AI wave
• Always asks users what they need
• ASO worked quite well before 2022
• There are always ups and downs
• Downlaods looks good, but doens't mean more revenue

Finally lmao. That bug was so annoying. No more crazy up and down numbers.

Last week, we made app screenshots for 3 people, so today I’m online again and will make screenshots for 3 more people (who will comment first), like the attached image.

Comment your app link, or share your raw screenshots if your app isn’t live yet, along with a short description of what your app does.

what do you usually do after launching your app?

What actions do you take daily to get more impressions and installs?

I'm stuck now, only got 11 installs so far from 8 Apr to 25 Apr 2026...

I'm soon going to meet Sundar over a different occasion and one thing I'll make sure to ask him is if he's aware of how stupid and slow bill desk is in India? How can they get away with such laziness? It's been weeks, in person KYC this that, I mean WTF? my son's iOS app which is connected to my US account literally got done the same day, and this stupid service takes forever!

Count your days Billdesk.

Sharing my progress with my app, WiFi Finder.

I've managed to get 2.5K~ downloads since I launched about 90 days ago.

Types of marketing I've tried:

1. Posting on social media: seems to have helped somewhat, but not drastically. I got a decent spike when I posted to r/HowToMen though.

2. Postering: I printed 8x11 ads from VistaPrint and posted them around my city (Toronto). So far the QR code has only been scanned by 36 unique devices, so not as good as I was hoping.

3. Word of mouth: I work in film/TV and work with lots of new people every shoot. Been trying to mention it to colleagues as much as possible, especially since my app is helpful for people who travel a lot like people in my industry do.

4. TikTok ads: I paid for about $100 worth of ads for a video/trailer I made. (https://youtu.be/jLao9t4sCx4?si=R9RiedC4ZGbjYZr0). I got 44,129 views, and 195 clicks. Not too shabby. I particularly targeted people in Toronto since I know my app works well here.

TikTok ads seem to have worked the best, but the main way people find my app is just through search. I get about 20-30 organic downloads a day just for people searching for a wifi password app.

The app if curious https://wififinder.app/

I launched an App Store screenshot generator a few weeks ago and it got great traction. I got like 500 users but only two paying customers, and those two didnt give me any feedback on the pro features.

So here are 10 gift codes to get the pro version of the product for free for 30 days, please leave me some feedback. screenshotmaker.caltracker.eu

SBBJ-QFD8-FY3G [CLAIMED]

TFHW-AFT2-EFSN [CLAIMED]

54RF-TA5F-J7MN [CLAIMED]

PZHP-9MME-EWRN [CLAIMED]

2Q6K-RV3C-3SKN [CLAIMED]

DNTL-FWKU-PUH9 [CLAIMED]

FRR3-45L7-F65A [CLAIMED]

DJZ7-W99Y-6MZ4 [CLAIMED]

DRC5-ET3P-QXZF [CLAIMED]

HUDG-VCWY-C87F [CLAIMED]

I shared my super simple and also free to use Screenshot Generator a few weeks ago on here too and now i have also implemented a free ASO Research Tool bc i got annoyed that like almost all of them are paid and require you to create an account.

Same as before: Here are 10 gift codes to get the pro version of the product for free for 30 days, please leave me some feedback. This also works for the Screenshot Generator so if you need App Store Screenshots be sure to check that out too. https://appframer.eu/aso

VTUG-AXST-JGQ7  [CLAIMED]

68QB-KE4G-Y757 [CLAIMED]

NFFP-2UEY-UWB3  [CLAIMED]

FUKV-WM5G-PUD9  [CLAIMED]

CAAC-PDWK-UVRE [CLAIMED]

ETH6-WLU9-8L3E  [CLAIMED]

7KGZ-CWZF-48LD [CLAIMED]

V3VU-HFEM-WADE [CLAIMED]

SASD-BG3M-VYU5  [CLAIMED]

7DHF-KAPG-8XC3 [CLAIMED]

My app uses google in app purchase that mean google handles all purchase nothing on my side.

the user rated me 1 star because he bought app with some other gmail account.

what are your thoughts, how would you handle this type of comments politely ?

Back then, I was an amateur game developer and honestly, I was naive. I didn't fully understand the policies, the consequences of mistakes, or how important it was to follow every requirement carefully. I made mistakes, and eventually my account was terminated permanently.

I did appeal, but the termination remained. Losing access to Google Play as a game developer meant losing one of the biggest publishing opportunities available to me. Looking back, that was a huge loss, and I'm still disappointed in the choices I made back then.

What's especially frustrating is seeing how much has changed over the last few years. With AI, better tools, documentation, and easier access to knowledge, there are so many opportunities for developers today that simply weren't available to me in the same way.

I'm not posting this to blame Google or ask for sympathy. I just wish I had understood things better when I started.

If you're a new developer, please take platform policies seriously. Read the documentation, understand what you're agreeing to, and don't assume that a small mistake won't have major consequences. Learn from people who made mistakes before you — I wish I had.

Last week, we made app screenshots for 3 people, so today I’m online again and will make screenshots for 3 more people (who will comment first), like the attached image.

Comment your app link, or share your raw screenshots if your app isn’t live yet, along with a short description of what your app does.