Thanks so much Paul! I appreciate your kind words. Your work is just amazing & the work of so many others and that is what inspires me. I have often been offered to be paid for custom work, but I turn the money down and do it anyway. I am a true amateur. For the love of it! Let’s keep in touch my friend!
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You have the right attitude. Keep up the good work!
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Good, you should. I looked at your play work and Facer too, you only have like 30 designs. You also have a bunch of copies on your IG. I think your work is good, though not super varied, but I can tell youre a good designer. If you were “overlooked” it could be because you have a bunch of copies, or it could be that you don’t have a ton of work to review, or both. Facer wants partners who are going to be active so they can make money.
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My two cents worth. If Facer wants to stay online for all of us to publish our faces and make money too, it needs to do what it needs to do to do that. If bringing in outside partners is that way, they must have done considerable research to see what would bring in that revenue. Businesses work that way, no questions asked. When I first discovered Facer, I thought, “Hey maybe I can make some money creating watch faces”. After a very small amount of time, I resigned to the fact that that wasn’t going to happen, I just don’t put enough time and effort into it. I’ve learned a lot about how to create simple watch faces by some of the greatest Facer face developers on here. I enjoy creating my watch faces and sharing them with others. What really makes me happy is when I get “Liked” and get comments on my watch faces. I know I only speak for myself, but I couldn’t less if I ever get invited to be a partner. I just love the idea that someone else loves my watch face designs.
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Well thanks for your input, I honestly forgot about the “copies” that you mentioned on IG. Those in fact are just portfolio images showing my illustrator/photoshop abilities. However, in the event that Facer ever happened upon them, it’s safe to assume that they wouldn’t see that there are no links to the actual files for people to take and they’re simply to show my skills (also remnants from G+ days, and many partners here have the same skeletons in their closets too). It could be an oversight for sure. I must disagree with my work not being varied though as I don’t see a lot of designers doing anything beyond their “look” personally, but it’s all objective right? I’ll just slink back into the corner, be an independent maker on Google Play and “another platform” and I hope one day, I can have the validation I seek as being among the best at Facer. Maybe you’ll see me again.
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I don’t think you’ve got to worry about your past replica projects being relevant, as you know that’s how many of us got started into making faces in the first place. Facer was well aware of my replica past before I was brought in. But none of those were ever on Facer and I had moved on to the B# brand by the time I had come to Facer. I think you’ve kind of had bad luck with timing, not many new partners were brought in over the last couple of years until this round of WFF makers, and previously some of the additions were shader specialists not really established watch face designers because Facer was trying to really promote and develop that new feature. But… It looks to me like the plan is to create a better pathway for the standout Facer community designers to get on board. I’m basing this on the inclusion of the application link in Creator. So don’t give up hope yet maybe.
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Congratulations to the new Partners! I did notice that a few of them don’t appear to meet the requirements listed in the Facer guidelines, like sync counts or community activity. To avoid confusion and keep expectations clear, it might be helpful if Facer could review or update the published requirements.
What Facer says you must / should have
-
Be an independent designer
You should be producing your own watch faces (not just copying others’ work), and you should be creating high-quality, innovative, and diverse faces. -
Sync count requirement
Your watch faces need to have at least 5,000 syncs in the past 30 days. “Syncs” means how many times users have synced/downloaded/installed your faces. -
Have a collection with banner
You need to have at least one collection of watch faces that showcases your designs, with a banner (following Facer’s quality guidelines). -
Be active / constructive in the Facer community
Engage with the forums, comment threads, etc. Being part of the community helps. -
Respect copyright & trademark rules / TOS
You must have no copyright infringement strikes, follow their terms of service, etc.
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No - I think you speak for many here!
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Thanks…woulda, coulda, shoulda eh? I remember you back in the day talking about moving to Facer. I should have done the same thing back then too.
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Yes, welcome to the new partners!
Facer is a small company and to be competitive and stay in business you need innovation, you need to go down new avenues, sometimes make risky decision that could go either way, and at some point you may need to re-invent yourself. And being dependent on the big players delivering the base OS, is not easy either.
I am all for transparency, but how much you are willing to share is not for me (us) to judge or complain about. I do not have shares, nor am I part of the board, so to some extend I accept the way it is. Sharing views and opinions to help improve is definitely not a bad thing.
For me, the Facer business case seems to add up, and I have high esteems for the team who have put Facer out there for us to use at a cost from free to a fee which is really not high. And if the Facer team can live of that, respect!
I may not do enough in terms of promotion to support the business case - not a big fan of some social media … But as a partner I would expect they go the extra mile. And I would do that too, should my application go through.
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Hi everyone, I’ve noticed something unusual and I’m curious if anyone else has seen this.
I am new here and over the past 6 months I had over 26,000 syncs with steady engagement, but right after I joined this discussion and posted a few replies, my syncs and likes suddenly dropped to almost zero.
I’ve never experienced a drop like this before, so I’m wondering if there has been a ranking or visibility change recently, or could this just be a coincidence?
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There have been changes in the past to make the charts, and could be that something has changed again. I noticed too. Currently easier to make the Apple charts, approximately 10 syncs and a lot of likes will get you in. WearOS, you need at least 20 syncs in a short time.
Would be interesting to know the criteria …
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Thanks for sharing that, interesting to hear how Apple vs. WearOS charts differ.
I don’t make Apple faces myself, so it feels extra odd to see such a sudden drop after months of steady performance, especially dropping almost to zero.
Totally agree with you though, it would be great if Facer shared the actual criteria for charts and visibility. That would clear up a lot of guesswork for all of us.
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Facer is a victim of their own success and users should understand that becoming a partner is by invitation. That is to say that it’s a subjective decision and those who decide have their own opinion on what is a good watchface - some may prefer digital and some analogue. There has to be some prerequisites though, be it the number of syncs in a day, or, participation here, or whatever to filter and limit the number of partner requests.
Facer has high standards and it is not enough just to want to monetise your designs. For example, I would like to monetise my designs even though they are, in my opinion, far below the standard of most designers here. I have some followers and a couple of thousand syncs, so there are obviously some who like my designs, but ever becoming a partner - not a chance. No I’m here in Facer because i enjoy making watchfaces and being here in this community because i like the camaraderie and the help i receive.
Like i said earlier Facer is a victim of it’s own success and high standards. This is also confirmed by it’s financial model- they would obviously benefit more…if they allowed everyone to sell their designs and take a percentage cut - but no, they don’t
I am truly amazed of what Facer has managed to do and can only look forward to the future.
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I completely see your point, Facer does have high standards and I agree that not everyone should be able to monetise just because they want to.
What I do find strange though is that sync counts and chart positions don’t seem to be strongly tied to quality or creativity. I have faces that are very similar in style and functionality where one gets 8k+ syncs and the other only a few hundred. It makes the definition of success feel a bit random.
You can even see this in the charts sometimes, faces that are near copies of existing ones or similr, rank very high. That unpredictability makes it hard to know what to improve or aim for.
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I still think Facer should give everyone a fighting chance to shine at least. Granted I haven’t put a face up in …years now and maybe it’s changed since I have. I do think there should be limits to how many faces you can post daily (5 a day max.). It always frustrated me to no end to upload a new face only to have it very shortly afterwards, buried under a sea of the same watch face but with a different colors or something to that effect. I am not sure how these top 100 lists work but there seems to be a very small window to make an impact and get that face on the list where it has a chance to advance further. Also, maybe split up the top 100 lists further to give everyone a fair shake. Because of their massive amounts of followers, perhaps Creator partners could have their own free and paid top 100 lists. There is no way a new user can compete when followers just scoop up free faces from established Creator partners which in turn, occupies slots (the top slots) in the top 100 free list and this just drops the no-name newbies into obscurity. There could be paid and free for creator partners and different tiered lists for free face designers (non Creator Partners).
Hear me out.
What if there was a set up along the lines of a video game? Where free users could elevate their status in the platform by “graduating” through different tiers/degrees/levels.There could be something like beginner/intermediate/advanced tiers for amateurs only. Everyone starts at the bottom where you can toss whatever amateur garbage on the list you want to your heart’s content. At the same time, these who are serious about making a go at becoming a partner one day can advances by continually placing high on the top 100 list for that tier. Once they acquire enough points through multiple high placements on the list, they could advance to that next tier and so on. So you would have a system to filter out the straight amateur who really doesn’t care and just wants to try to show off their Pokemon watch or whatever (and the 20 different colors of it), to the person who wants to learn and wants to hone their skills while getting the proper encouragement they need by advancing through the tiers and being active in/learning from the community.
It seems fair to me and also, it’s a way for Facer itself to easily see potential Creator partners if they ever choose to promote from within one day. At the very least, it would give the shaky, “lacking confidence about their skills” amateurs (like myself) some measure of bragging rights as the ascend higher and higher in the platform (game).
Anyway, just something I have thought about for a long while now.
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There’s simply no accounting for taste…users decide what is popular and even if you consider your design should be number one in the charts everyone else may disagree - i had one in the charts once, it lasted a couple of hours before it dissappeared. Fame and fortune is not coming my way - at least not yet, 
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True, taste definitely plays a part and of course users ultimately decide what they like.
My point was more about how unpredictable the system feels even for very similar faces. When two designs are almost identical in style and functionality, and one gets thousands of syncs while the other barely a few hundred, it feels like there’s something more going on than just user preference.
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Dare I mention the watchfaces in the charts that obviously break copyright…
Personally, im not sure a tier system would work - the newbies, no matter how good they are would have to start at the bottom amongst those who produce poor designs in multiple colours. Im sure they would soon get bored and leave. Sorry to say but i think Facer have got it right.
I totally agree that the number of faces one can publish in a day should be limited ( to max 2).
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Good point about copyright.
Some transparency on how rankings work would really help and motivate creators to keep improving.
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