Thank you!!!
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Thank you @GAUSS, I hope so but that is yet to be foretold. I obviously have their attention, I just need to pull the kinda numbers you do. I’m about to roll out some new stuff so we’ll see how it goes! 
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You’ve got my vote!!
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It’s about time! Congratulations! 
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Many compliments, Phantasico!
Just a few thoughts, since I need to understand, so pardon in advance for exposing my point of view. I think it’s useful for everyone here. I deeply respect your work, I’m in no way against you and, besides, we’re in the same age range. Sixties guys rule… 
So, you basically had to give away 84 (eightyfour!) free watch faces, and had to apply for Premium Designer two times before being accepted. We know the second time took a couple of weeks, but how much time passed from your first to your second application? And how many watch faces have you created during this time?
I’m asking because I’ve applied in February and I’ve been promised a lot of times - via email - that I would be in the infamous “next batch” of Premium Designers. But it never happened. And we’re nearing July.
So, maybe my three watch faces are awfully bad. More than 5000 people downloaded them, they all must be stupid or color blind but, anyway, I’m ok with that. I don’t need others approval to do something i don’t do for a living. It’s kind of a hobby, after all. Just passion.
But I do care for sincerity. And trust. And i don’t like to be mocked. I’m quite sure I’m not the only one here which is having or has had the same experience. Care to share anybody? I’m grateful that Facer.io gives the developers the opportunity to sell their work, of course. And I also agree that they have all the rights to filter the content to their liking. That’s an understatement.
But the way it’s happening is not the right way of doing it. Why not just tell the truth?
Dear developer, after thorough review, we decided that your work does not qualify for this community.
You cannot re-apply until three months have passed. Practice your skills, learn Photoshop, visit modern art museums, go to an ophthalmologist. Whatever.
But to keep people giving away - for free - their creativity and passion - during months - while giving them back just vague promises is not fair.
Besides, the whole “Premium Designer” application/approval process is fairly opaque. Why can’t we see the number of syncs of other authors just to check that everyone is treated correctly?
I wish you all the luck you deserve, Phantasico. But I’m in no way inclined to give away for free not even a pixel more of my work until things change.
Thanks for your best wishes.
I can understand your way of thinking and i know how disappointed and frustrated you must be in the moment. I was in the same position the last months. The worst problem for me was to get no answer at all.
Well, i personally have no problem with giving away 84 watch faces for free. For me, it´s not about the money. I simply love to be creative in all ways, i started drafting when i was 6 and never ended this process and widened the range of my possibilities continously,
Facing means, at first, a lot of fun and inner peace for me and gives me a platform to make users worldwide a little happier.I don´t count the hours i was working on these unique pieces and i never will.
Besides this, it´s a wonderful community in here with awesome people that help each other where and how they can.
It´s a honour for me to be now a part of the premium designers, potentually earning money with some watch faces could be a nice side effect, but nothing more.
I think facer wants to check if potential candidates are, besides their watches and their success, long term Creators, teamplayers and active in the community.
And i think, this is a right decision. You can´t easily go in with only 5 watchfaces and think they waited only for you. It´s a process.
I am totally with you that they should do it more transparent and that they should write some more, but that´s their decision.
You should go on, Throw the frustration overboard and get your fun in facing. If this isn´t your way, stop it and do something different. You don´t have any influence on what the facer_officials decide.
Greetings,
Phantasico aka Gauss.
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Phantasico,
I prefer an agnostic approach. I understand. respect and appreciate your motivations, but they are as valid as anybody else’s. Someone just loves to express creativity, someone else to be creative and earn some money.
I don’t think this is the point.
The point, imho, is how the “premium designer” program is managed, independently from the expectations of any given developer. The lack of transparency and consistency.
I insist: why can’t we see the number of syncs of other developers? I cannot find a “non suspicious” reason. Can you? Can anybody?
And I think this matters because, after all, the work of hundreds of developers - whatever the reason why they did it - is what contributed to the success of Facer. And Facer shouldn’t forget it.
Besides, I have an additional issue. And I think I’m not the only one. I develop watch faces for both Wear OS and Tizen OS native platform and respective market.
When I publish here a watch face that I have already published on Google Play or on Galaxy Apps, I cannot give it away for free and fully featured. It wouldn’t be fair with the people which purchased it elsewhere.
So, what I publish here, is limited and somehow mutilated, with respect to the original work. And even if i would publish the full featured version, I couldn’t because, as you know, themed watch faces are a “premium designer only” feature.
Best regards.
@veertualia.team
First and foremost I can only speak my perspective/opinions and not for facer but I’m inclined to agree with @GAUSS.
One thing you have to remember is facer gives anyone the ability to use their platform to make their own custom faces absolutely free. This means anyone can come in and make a few designs that could be really good and/or really lucky to make the minimum requirements in a short amount of time. Think of it like a job. You have a lot of people working in the entry position and when it’s time for a promotion they look at it from all angles to make sure you’re the best candidate for the job. It’s not much different here I’m sure. Soon as you go premium and start selling faces you become a business partner with facer. They want to make sure that you’re going to be in it for the long haul not just you had some fun and now your done with it. I’m sure they are also looking for people that are going to be an active and helpful part of the community, someone that understand the platform and helps push the boundaries. Making sure their dedicated and truly wants to help elevate facer to the next level. They don’t want to be just a decent face company, they want to be the best and in that they need to make sure that the people they invite to priemium are the right people for the job.
Keep in mind with all of this I’m saying that I’m not speaking against your faces, skill, or knowledge. I looked at your designs and agree that you have some good work but they can’t see all of these qualities in that short amount of time.
I want to become priemium so that I have access to all the goodies that they have, it’s not about the money despite that is a nice added bonus. I’m just thankful that facer has given me an opportunity to do something I love and share it with the world. I love watches, technology, my artwork, my fans, facer, and this amazing community and I’m just glad to be a part of it. I know I’ll be priemium someday, hopefully sooner than later, but when that happens I want to be known. I want a, “it’s about time Orakix, we would love to have you part of the team!” Versus a, “I’m not sure, should we take a gamble on this person we don’t really know?”
This is one reason why I don’t mind giving my faces out for free. That and because free means that more people can enjoy them, the more people I can make happy with my artwork the better. Even if I’m not making a profit.
~Orakix
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BINGO! Same here.
One of my recent reviewers messaged me the other day to say, "thank you for having them for free… " That just made my day and inspired me to create more free designs…
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Great work @GAUSS !! Well earned. It’s a shame you had to push so hard, but I’m glad you made it! I was considering applying a second time as well…I have over 100,000 syncs now and feel that I more than exceed the application criteria @Facer_Official laid out…I’m getting a little sad that I never heard back!
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I think it is very different. You are not in an entry position fighting for a promotion while being paid for your job. You are actually still applying for that job. And when applying for a job, you don’t have to work for free while they think about hiring you for weeks. Or months.
Let me be very clear, I think it’s important. I also think this is a fair community. People are nice and respectful. And I understand everybody’s reasons. But I have mines. And are as valid as anybody else’s.
I don’t work for free. Not if somebody else is earning money with my work. Sure, Facer is a free app. Apart from the detail that it contains ads and offers in-app purchases. Meaning somebody is earning money, here, with more than 1 million installations. And this is possible exclusively thanks to your free watch faces. No free contributed designers work, no Facer. No deal. Let’s try not to forget this fact.
And while it’s true that Facer gives anyone the ability to use their platform to make their own custom faces for free - which is not completely true since you are still paying by contributing your work - from my point of view, since I do not need a platform as this one or Watchmaker to create my stand alone watch faces, the only added value, here, is visibility.
And i’m willing to pay, for this visibility. In fact, that’s what happens on other stores all the time.They help people find your creations and keep a certain percentage of any purchase in exchange. You can still publish a free watch face, if you want, and earn nothing. But it’s your choice.
Besides, as I said, I cannot give away for free the same watch faces I sell elsewhere. Even if I could create them as complete as they are on Wear OS and Tizen OS, that is. Which I can’t since, as I already said, non premium designers have limited possibilities.
Am I the only one here selling watch faces on Google Play or Galaxy Apps and facing this problem? @Mellin @eradicator09 @syntaxracing @GAUSS @linlay ? Do you? Do anybody else?
And still no one tells me why we can’t see other authors number of syncs. Any explanations @Facer_Official, @Facer-Staff? I can find none.
Well then I see your point but I guess it comes down to, if you want to live in facers house then you have to play by their rules. It’s obvious that my intentions of helping you feel better about the situation were unsuccessful but I’m not going to argue about it. I wish you the best of luck with your venture and I’m just going to continue to be grateful for what i have.
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I don‘t sell watchfaces in google play or elsewhere.
I am very new to all this, just bought a smartwatch in December last year and deciced to create watchfaces for me.
Didn‘t expect they would become that famous… 
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I started the same way as @GAUSS
I bought a smartwatch, that just happened to be on sale, and after spending few days looking for a face that would suit me, I thought to myself:
I’m a graphic designer, I will design my one face.
Then I found Facer and created my first face:
(similar one to this, because I updated it since)
And it just kept going…
At some point, Facer itself suggested that I become a Premium Designer, and the only reason I agreed, was to have access to all functions of Facer.
Nothing else.
I think I only ones got actually paid for it.
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To answer your question, I have no desire to sell my watch faces. I would, however, appreciate a level of distinction once it is earned to let the public know that my designs are not just internet images that I’ve slapped up here as is. Having access to more resources/functions would be great. Just as with the public tutorials, I try most of them if they are applicable to the type of faces that my followers want. If you sell your watch faces elsewhere and cannot give away the same faces, why not keep doing it elsewhere?
As to the “job” aspect, where I’m from volunteers and interns are hired before people who walk in off the street. The company knows you and your work.
I’ve done a lot of free work. It has always paid off in more ways than one.
I’m glad that we can’t see other designers’ syncs. I would probably get so discouraged that I’d stop enjoying what I’m doing. That’s why I don’t post for opinions. I do what I like and edit or delete frequently based on my own evaluation and that of no one else.
Chiming in as well. I started making faces for fun to go with my own watch I received for Father’s Day last year. Did it purely for my own interest. When some of my unique faces became popular, I was asked to be a part of the Premium program. To this day I still treat it as a fun experience and not a business opportunity.
I have zero ambition (or time) to put into learning how to code direct to market faces through Google Play or Galaxy stores. This is work I do outside of my normal day job. Any results I get from sales typically go to support my substantial Diet Coke habit and taking my girls on Daddy/Daughter dates. I stick around because it helps pass the time during lunch breaks and because we have a great community.
As to the consistency of offers from @Facer_Official, I can only speculate that the minimum sync requirement is only the starting point for them in deciding whether to partner with a new designer. I would imagine factors such as uniqueness, community involvement, submission rate, quality, social marketing, and level of non-douchyness all go into their decision.
One factor I hope they also consider is the number of active premium designers. As Syndrome put it:
If everyone is offered premium status, then that dilutes the ability for premium users to gain revenue with a relatively fixed market of actual buyers.
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I agree, not everyone should be able to sell their designs, there needs to be a reason for premium status.
On the other hand, I strongly feel that having all the tools available is an important thing also. I do this for fun as well. It’s a creative outlet for me (I used to do digital art, comics, logo design, websites, animated gifs, etc) but I really hope the decision to hold back tools is reconsidered. It’s like being told you can create anything you can think of, so long as you don’t use the color red or circles.
Now whether that means offering addition perks to premium designers to help grow the community as a whole, who knows? Other markets are catching up and in some cases pulling ahead of Facer. And from my web design experience when you have imitators and similar content you’re creating you have to continually evolve and offer something new.
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In other words: less premium designers, less competition. And more revenue for the ones allowed inside the market. Did I get that correctly? Because there’s a word for that: protectionism. 
I’d rather prefer letting the market choose the best designs. I’m not afraid of competition.
Besides, an open market usually favors excellence. And also dilutes douchyness.
Speculating about the premium designer program is all we can do. That’s the whole point.
It’s like playing a game while guessing its rules. I don’t like it. That’s why I stopped playing.
Hi, @cth4242 to which markets are you referring to?
@Linlay, I really only referred to it like a job to get my point across that facer is going to look at the bigger picture not just the syncs like @eradicator09 explained but I agree with you whole heartedly as well.
Recently I had a user send me a direct message asking me what I thought about all this and why I keep working towards my goal and I just wanted to leave a portion of that conversation here for you guys.
I do it because, “I love Tomas, Mellin, Tron, GRR is like my watch face idol, and I appriciate GAUSS’s honesty. This is the team I want to be a part of mostly, yes facer too but mostly want to stand next to these great names.”
There’s obviously more to it then that and more great names on this platform, premium and not but after reading what these great names have said in this thread it just reiterates why I feel this way. I mean, [quote=“eradicator09, post:44, topic:24388”]
taking my girls on Daddy/Daughter dates.
[/quote]
There’s my watch face designer and dad goals right there. So i just wanted to say again that I appriciate you guys and what you do. Im glad to be here and work next to you wether I get premium or not.
@Mellin @Tomas @grayhare @GAUSS
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