Add Your Own Emoji Sticker Packs To Gboard In 3 Easy Steps – Millions Of New Users, ZERO Competition!

Wondering how to maximize your emoji app to get the most usage, downloads and revenue?

I’ve developed over 100 emoji apps and am always looking for new ways to bring in more money to my apps and business.

If your goal is to be making 6 figures a month in ANY business, you need to be doing one of the following:

Be the first or be the best.

When Gboard announced they were giving their millions of users access to third party sticker packs, I jumped at the opportunity!

My app SausageMoji was one of the first 25 stickers packs featured on the Gboard store.

But getting my sticker pack approved by Gboard turned out to be quite challenging.

Emoji developers have made a killing on platforms like iOS, Android, Amazon, Facebook…

Is Gboard another easy revenue stream for emoji devs?

For me personally, Gboard has brought in exactly 7% of my ENTIRE emoji revenue the last 30 days.

While slow and steady, Gboard revenue is showing signs of increasing.

Keep reading to learn if it’s worth it for you to add your emoji stickers to Gboard and the exact steps I took to get my sticker app featured on the Gboard store.

First, What The Heck Is Gboard?

Gboard is one of the top 50 Utility mobile apps on both iOS and Android.

Gboard is a speedy and reliable keyboard all under the roof of one app and has an emoji search feature to help find emoji stickers faster.

But the big problem emojis users are having is…
With over 10,000 Android devices, it can be incredibly difficult to develop emoji apps for EACH Android device.
The reason why?
Some devices don’t have a 🌐  button or even a spacebar – making it nearly impossible to switch keyboards without going to the Settings menu every time (ugh, annoying…).
The Gboard app solves all this.
Gboard makes it easy for EVERY device to access and use emojis no matter the make, model, or OS.
And the Gboard app has it’s own stickers store with practically zero competition making it extremely appealing for emoji app developers.
Cha-ching!

Is It Worth It To Add Your Stickers To Gboard?

If your app is making $15+ a day the answer is YES.
If your emoji app is making under $15 a day, keep tweaking your app and ASO before making the jump to Gboard.
At the time of publishing this post, there are only 26 sticker packs featured on the Gboard store!
Below are a few notes from my personal experience with Gboard thus far:

1. Cheap and easy to code.

Music to my ears 🙂
The code work for Gboard can be done in under a week and range from $300-$500 for any intermediate programmer to develop.
If you would rather get your hands on a working Gboard template now, we are promoting the code I use for $299.  Click Here for more details.

2. Zero competition.

There are currently 26 sticker apps featured on the Gboard store:

That’s it.  That’s all of them.
This is your chance to be one of the FIRST sticker packs featured!

3. Wild Revenue Patterns.

The last 30 days Gboard accounted for 21% of my total Android sales and 7% of my entire emoji revenue, but it ranges dramatically.  One week it was 4%, and another 25%.
4. Bye-bye Apple Review.
Apple is making it harder and harder to create a network of emoji apps.  If you’ve already published an emoji stickers app in your Apple account, there is a chance you will get rejected unless you put some heavy firepower to make it totally unique from anything else in the App Store and your network.
With Android emoji apps we don’t have to worry about reviewers shutting us down.
You can create as many emoji stickers apps as you’d like and sleep well!

5. Kooky Bugs Between the Gboard API and Android Studio IDE

One of the reasons we believe Google isn’t opening the floodgates to new sticker packs is because they are still monitoring and fixing all the bugs between the Gboard API and the Android development software applications.
Some of our updates work perfectly, others contain minor errors.
A few of the bugs we’ve seen from our sticker pack in the Gboard app include:

• Scrambled sticker order
• Blurry images
• Smaller loading screen
• Misplaced logo
• Some stickers even get deleted

It’s enough to drive a programmer crazy but luckily nothing to make for an awful user experience.
Android Studio and the Gboard API are constantly being updated and are not always in sync, but the technology will get better.

The 3 Steps To Add Your Own Sticker Packs To Gboard

Below are the steps my team took to get our app featured on the Gboard stickers store.

Step 1: Coding requirements

Gboard requires some small code work to make sure your app is indexed with Google Search.
The Firebase App Indexing API helps get eyeballs on not just your app, but also allows for individual stickers to be searched.
Here are the 2 posts I followed and gave to my programmers when developing for Gboard:

• https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/09/create-stickers-for-gboard-on-google.html
• https://proandroiddev.com/how-to-create-your-own-sticker-pack-for-google-keyboard-demo-e6ef7f9df31f

If you want to skip this mess and just get your hands on a Gboard template NOW, Click Here to get the exact one I use for just $299.

Step 2: Publish to Google Play 

In order to get your sticker pack added to Gboard, you must first get your app published on the Google Play store like you would with any other Android app.

Step 3: Submit the Gboard Form

Once your app is live on the Google Play store, it needs to be added to the Gboard stickers category.
To do this, you need to submit the Gboard Sticker Collection Form:

Unlike iOS where you can automatically notify Apple that your project is a stickers app, for Gboard you need to notify Google by filling out the Google Form above.

The Secret Steps You Need To Know To Get Featured:

The truth is even after following all 3 steps above, my app was still not added to the Gboard Stickers Store.
In fact, it took more than a month to get my app featured.
Why?
Google does not have the systems and employees dedicated to making this a smooth and speedy experience for developers.
In addition, Google reviews all submissions to make sure stickers are high-quality and the app works well with Gboard before adding it to their sticker collection.
To get my app approved, here are the 2 secret steps I took to get featured:

1. One week after you’ve submitted the Gboard Sticker Collection Form, resubmit the form every day until you get a response from Google.  It took me over 20 submissions before I received a response from Google.
2. Find someone who has a contact in Google and ask them for help. This sounds exhausting, but it was fairly easy to do. Search LinkedIn for Google employees and reach out to them.  If you want my contact’s info, email me at support@bluecloudsolutions.com

To Sum Up…

What Google and the Gboard Stickers Store are doing for emoji enthusiasts is useful and WILL be beneficial to emoji developers.  It’s just not there yet.
However, there is something to be said for those who are first to market.  As the Gboard Stickers Store improves over time, developers who invest early will get rewarded.

Do not waste your time and money adding your stickers to Gboard until you have a dialed and successful iOS and Android emoji app.

Having your stickers featured on Gboard ins’t going to 10X your business but it is another passive revenue stream that will add up over time.
I hope this article and my personal experience has provided you with some insights before choosing to develop for Gboard.  If you are interested in Gboard, don’t forget to check out the exact Gboard app template I am using Here.
See ya!
-Mark