My first featured extension on CWS
It took me nearly 6 months to get the Featured badge on the Chrome Web Store including a 3-month gap where I had actually unpublished the extension. I haven't promoted this extension heavily, yet it still gets noticeably better impressions than my other extensions on the CWS.
One thing I learned from this experience: Chrome Web Store tends to favor extensions that already present themselves well attractive thumbnails, polished listing assets, clear positioning, and consistent organic traffic. If those signals are strong enough, you may not even need to request the Featured badge manually.
Another big takeaway: organic traffic performs far better than shared-link traffic. You can spend hours promoting your extension in communities or DMs and still end up with only ~50 views a week. But when you build something people are actively searching for especially alternatives to existing tools discovery becomes much easier.
So now I'm focusing more on:
* products with clear demand
* searchable pain points
* "alternative to X" type keywords
* tools users already pay for but want simpler/cheaper versions of
Also curious does anyone have any underrated or "ninja" methods for finding demand for alternative products before building?
If you're curious about the extension, search for "Mailflame for Gmail" on the Chrome Web Store.