I’m Rich

Posted on November 28, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

After many months of developing with a freelancer I have finally released I’m Rich.  It is an updated approach to those old ‘Most Expensive App’ in the market apps.  Those original apps only illustrated that the person spent $200 on an application and offered nothing more than some cheesy graphics.  I’m Rich allows the users to show off to the world how rich they are. 

The application is a free app and anyone can download it.  The user starts off with $0.01 and every day they can add $0.01 to their total amount of money they have.  They can also make in-app purchases to add more to thier daily bonus and remove ads from the app.  With a $.99 in-app purchase they can remove the ads and add $1 to their daily bonus to make it $1.01.  Everyday they can then come back and add $1.01 to their total without making any other purchases.  They then compete against others in a high score type fashion to show the world who is the richest.

Android, App, I'm Rich , ,

Looking to Interview Fellow Developers

Posted on November 25, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

I’m looking to interview other app/web developers and post their stories here.  I am looking for any kind of developer, not picky in any which way.  It is up to the person if they want to be anonymous or I can go as far as providing links to their sites and a quick profile of their applications/sites.

If you are interested please drop me a line at wesleythurner@gmail.com or leave a comment.

Uncategorized

Hiring a freelance developer

Posted on July 14, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

You can’t do everything! Sometimes you have an idea, that is beyond your skills or you get stuck in the middle of some code. This is where hiring a freelance developer can come in handy. But, where do you begin? I’ll tell you about my first hire.  I got stuck in a piece of code and just couldn’t find my way out.  I struggled on and off for a couple weeks and then just shelved the idea.  After a week or two on the shelf, I knew I still needed to implement the new code.  So I joined ODesk.com and posted my problem.  Within 12 hours I had over 10 applicants.  One applicant created a working example of my request and sent it in with his application.  Needless to say I hired him and it only cost $35.  After a couple days of back and forth refining the code, I had my polished product that I integrated with my existing app.  You do have to carefully screen applicants, I worked with someone from the Ukraine and his English was great.  However, the really cheap applicants had trouble with English.  But ODesk.com does a great job of protecting people if there is a dispute.

 

 

 

Android, Freelance, General

April income statement

Posted on May 3, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

It was another good month clearing about $18, just slightly lower than last months $19.  Hopefully revenue will stabilize at $20ish and grow from there. My expenses are covered so far and enough for my Google developer renewal fee. Based on current sales and free listings it is not worth it to renew the Amazon app store at $100 a year. I introduced a new app IT guru, during the last days of march.  April was a full month to get stats and revenue. It is already doing three times the ad revenue of the pinout free app. I’m expecting a drop in revenue after the first month, but then it slowly begins to recover and build.

I adjusted the price of my cable color coder app from $.99 to $1.99. There was a drop in sales by half, but the revenue is the same. So I think I’m in the right price range, ill see after a few more months before I adjust again.

I need to continue updating all my apps. It is difficult to maintain so many apps and I’m working on releasing another app.

General, Income, Marketing, Stats

AD SDKs

Posted on February 12, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

I just released a new app to test various AD SDKs.  It is a really basic kinda boring app, but some developers might find it interesting.  I created it to test out a couple different ad networks and sizes.  I still have Admob banners in my apps and I have not tried anything else until now.  I want to try a few more kinds of ads and networks before I settle on changing my apps around.  Anyway, if anyone wants to try it out, check out the market.

AD SDKs, Android, App

Alternative App Markets

Posted on February 12, 2012 by admin 2 Comments

Updated: May 8th, 2012

Amazon App Store

Everyone should know about this app market, It has its pros/cons.  Many people use it only for the free app of the day and nothing else.  My Cable Color Coder app does well due to a lack of competition, but my free app downloads are low.  I continue to have sales, but nothing compared to Google.

First year free/ $100/yr after that.  70/30 revenue split.  min payout?

AppsLib

“Appslib is present on over 2 million Android tablets from a range of Manufacturers including Archos, Arnova, Coby and Naxa among many others.”

“Preinstalled on these tablets, Appslib is the first stop for users of these brands to download apps.”

It is also an easy way to get your apps tested on numerous tablets.  When I uploaded Ultimate Pinout it was visible on all most all of the devices, however my paid version Ultimate Pinout Pro was not visible on any tablets.  Time will tell if this is some sort of approval process or some sort of anti-paid apps thing on these devices.

No registration fees, 70%/30% revenue share for paid apps and money is transfered via paypal.

Update:  This site has been horrible for my apps, after months I might have totaled 50 downloads of free apps and no sales of paid apps.  Despite the number of tablets they claim to have, they don’t seem to have users.

SlideMe

A long process to sign up and the payouts are confusing at best, we will see how it goes.

70/30ish split maybe? dependent on how customer pays and how you withdraw.  Paypal/bank withdrawls

 

UPDATE: This has so far been the best market outside of Google, to include Amazon, for me and my apps.  I have had over 1000 apps downloaded in a couple months, which is way better than Amazon App Store, but still nowhere near Google Play Market.

GetJar

My free aps were already listed on the site.  I haven’t tried to add paid apps.  anyone else use them?

 

Note:  If you have any alternatives, comments, results, etc. please comment below and let us know.

Android, General

January 2012 Income Report

Posted on February 1, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

This was a great month for me, it was my first profitable month.  However, overall I still have not turned a profit.  If February continues with the momentum of January I should be able to turn an overall profit in the next month or two.  Either way I cleared $12.99 this month! For all the details check out my Income Statement and App Stats.

Ads

I am disappointed in my ads  I mroe than tripled the number of impressions yet made less money then last month!  I have been consistently getting more than 100 impressions a day last month, hopefully this month I can push it closer to 200.  I expect more impressions next month, hower I’m worried that revenue will remain flat.  I simply went with admob and now I really want to try some other ads.  We will see what I have time for.

Downloads

Every day my daily average of downloads is increasing.  With about a 35% retention rate, I am slowly building my user base.  All of this is and should continue helping with my ad impressions.  It was my first full month for Ultimate Pinout and I’m happy with the downloads.  It started off slow but quickly increased and we will see how the next month is.

Sales

Sales have been surprisingly good!  I need to redesign my old app, yet it is still selling decent.  It should continue to post a couple sales each month.  The Ultimate Pinout Pro is starting to take off and should do better next month.

Android, App, General, Income, Stats

Keeping Tabs on the Competition

Posted on January 28, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

In Android development just like in any other business there is competition.  It is important to understand your competition as it is very rare that you will have a market all to yourself and if you do corner a niche market, chances are copycats will pop up.  As a small indie developer you won’t have a huge marketing department to analyze the competition for you and make adjustments to your marketing efforts for you.  There are two simple ways to keep up with what the competition is doing.

First, AppBrain, most people know it as a review site and an old way of browsing apps on your computer and have them download to your phone.  The site has a great Changelog Section, where the history of an app can easily be seen.  You can easily see how active a developer is with their app.  Do they update often?  or is it possibly an abandoned effort?  The other info important info that can be gleaned is how many downloads they are getting.  Is the app skyrocketing as it’s popularity takes off? or has it been sitting at 1,000-5,000 downloads for over a year?

Second, is ChangeDetection, it can be used for keeping track of changes to your competition’s Android Marketplace page.  This can be very helpful when your competition changes their app description or uploads new screenshots.  You can learn a lot about how they market their app and if they adjust their marketing to target a specific demographic or another app’s audience.

With these two simple methods, you can keep track of the competition with minimal effort on your part.  It is an easy tool to use in developing your on marketing and making adjustments as your competition does.

Android, General, Marketing

1000th download

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin 1 Comment

Sometime yesterday afternoon, I hit my 1000th download for Ultimate Pinout.  I am pretty excited it took about 35 days to get to 500 downloads and only 15 days to get to 1,000.  My new goal is 5,000!  I am happy to see that I beat my closest competitor to 1,000 and we will see how long it takes him to get here.  He beat me by about 2 days to 500.  I have seen some off days and I am finally getting some numbers on retention and its not pretty, but I am still building a solid user base.  We will see how this goes, I am just wondering now where my market saturation point would be at, maybe 100,000???

Stats, Ultimate Pinout

Yesterday was a slow day, they suck!

Posted on January 18, 2012 by admin 1 Comment

It can be really discouraging after a rally in downloads and ad views to get a day or two with less than half the average of normal downloads or ad views.  While I technically have 4 apps on the market (cable color coder, telecommunications reference, and ultimate pinout paid and free) it feels like I have just my pinout app. Even though cable color coder still sells, I’m in the process of recreating it.  I consider that from my first generation of apps, where I had no idea what the hell I was doing (note: I’m much more knowledgeable now, but still not sure half the time).    So all my emotions are tied up in ultimate pinout and checking my stats is a daily ritual for me, sometimes, hourly.  So when a slow day happens which is inevitable, it turns into a bad day.

Android, General