i've got a paid app at the android market and i would like to share some gift codes, so someone can get it for free.
There is no support for gift codes at the android market.
My idea was to make a free version of my app and lock it. If someone gets a gift code, he can download the free app and unlock it with a gift code.
I would like to know if there could be any problems with the android market or google if i upload a "locked" free app?
Or maybe some has a better idea how to solve that problem...
Thanks.
You can make a simple website to generate codes, then attach the website URL in your app description at the market So when the user opens the website link gift code will be shown :-D , That's more easier I think :-)
One way you could do what you need will be as follows:
Your user gets a gift code from somewhere (preferably your website).
The user goes into a section of your app where they can redeem the gift code (for example in the unlock app menu option).
This gift code is then sent to your server for validation. How you validate this is a whole different topic, but I'm trying to keep this abstract.
Your server then responds with the equivalent of yes or no depending on whether the user entered in a valid gift code.
If done right (on your server end), you can effectively guarantee that gift codes can't be used more than once, which also implies they can't be shared (if already used).
The main downside of this method is that if/when someone reverse-engineers your app, unlocking its full capabilities will be quite trivial. Granted the probability of this depends on how much these gift codes cost, if it's worth it, etc, but this is something you should be aware of.
Related
Is there an API to get ratings provided by the user to the app through native in app review? and can we get a hold of the event when the user clicks NOT NOW or CANCLE button?
read through few websites but could not find a clear solution.
We are not able to get the user's rating for Andriod or iOS app. Otherwise, developer could encourage users to rate their app by giving rewards. That may violate the Apple App Review Guidelines: Apps should not require users to rate the app, review the app, watch videos, download other apps, tap on advertisements, enable tracking... including but not limited to gift cards and codes. The same goes for Andriod I thought. In iOS, we use SKStoreReviewController to get feedback on the app. We cannot modify or inherit it.
I also found some answers similar to this question, such as iOS App Store Rating (Tracking The User's Actions). Do2 presented a way of popping up an alert to track user's options before presenting SKStoreReviewController. But it may cause poor user experience, right? Maybe we should pay more attention to improving app ratings with right strategies.
Hope it works for you.
I like to implement Refer a Friend functionality in my mobile application (Android and iPhone).
User "A" will refer my mobile contacts via SMS (Referred user "B"). And if "B" install my referred application or the referred content, "A" will earn some reward points.
This is my scenario. Suggest me.
Thanks in advance.
I used Google Analytics Campaign to implement this scenario.
Another way to do this is to generate unique links for all your users, that they can then send out to their contacts.
Let's say User A shares a link with User B. When User B clicks on the link to get your app, rather than immediately redirecting to the App Store, you can make a call to your backend, with the goal being to create a digital fingerprint. Your backend can record the digital fingerprint then do a 301, 304 or 307 redirect to the App Store.
To create the digital fingerprint, your backend can then make a browser-based digital fingerprint including:
1. IP address
2. OS
3. OS version
(These can be grabbed from the request headers).
--
Later when the user opens your app, you should send up the same 3 things, IP, OS and OS version. If they match and are close time-wise, you know that they came from this click from User A's link! Then you can give User A a reward and thank him for getting User B to download the app. This is what we do at Branch Metrics, where I work. We also leverage a browser cookie that works across apps, so that we don't need to rely on fingerprinting except for the very first time we see a user in any of our apps.
You should also think about preventing fraud. You should prevent User A from referring himself, you should prevent User A from referring User B over and over, etc. This is something we work on everyday as well. Definitely spend time on fraud prevention unless you really don't care about giving out duplicate rewards to the same user. Please leave a comment if you'd like more info.
I found different approaches to offer android app user the opportunity to share an app link with friends form within an app and also ask them to rate the app on google play. As I am a friend of doing things the standard way yet new to android I was wondering if there is a google recommended standard way to do this, to
ask the user of an app from within the app to rate it on google play
offer the opportunity to share a link to the app on google play from within the app via email, facebook etc with friends
Thanks buddies
UPDATE
As this was obviously not so clear, my question is mainly around the technical aspect of doing it. (other suggestions are of course also welcome)
UPDATE 2
Found
http://www.androidsnippets.com/prompt-engaged-users-to-rate-your-app-in-the-android-market-appirater
which is not exactly what I wanted but maybe useful for people stumbling over this thread. In its core it is what Budius suggested
There's really not an 'standard' way of doing it. It's a very delicate situation, I guess the 1st rule will be don't be rude or over-intrusive to your users.
Leave the share option always available on some menu and don't force your users to use it.
About rating, you could count the amount of times your app is used (or for how long) and based on that estimation pop a thing to give the user the option to rate it, but unless the user clicks "Remind me Later" do never show that message again.
edit:
based on the author comment:
nothing special code wise, to rate the app you just start an Action_VIEW to your app link (e.g. for my app)
startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.budius.WiFiShoot")));
and for the share is the same standard share code ( http://developer.android.com/training/sharing/send.html ) just passing your app link and maybe some extra message like : "check out my awesome app!"
I have a few questions regarding android market(Google play). How can I list my published application by accessing from my google account? What I have done so far is using my application package name as a query string to search my application and display all information which I used android market api to do it. Is there another better way to display all my published or installed applications by accessing from my google accounts?
My second question is about detecting number of downloading and installations of my published application. I have found only google analytics so far(for free) which I need to embedded some codes to monitoring my application. Is it possible for me to access those information from android market publish page . I have found that publish page contains information that I need.
Edited: For second question, I would like to obtain statistical information without adding any new code to my application. Is it possible to provide only google account to grant the permission to get those information?
My application is published. If I am using google analytics to monitoring my application do I need to start my counting from zero?
Sorry for my English and my little knowledge about this.
Thanks in advance..
Edited: .. I have found an application, called "analytics" that is what exactly I want to do. But I still cannot figure it out how it works..
The only place you will find this kind of information is on your Developer page. That said, if I were wanting to do what you are, I would put up an app on App Engine that either parsed my Dev page on request, or on a schedule. I mention App Engine as personal preference here, you could obviously use anywhere you can host scripts on.
You can then do what you like with the data you have collected, and your app can request this from your site. Assuming you have no qualms with publicising these numbers, you wouldn't need to scare users by authenticating, and would just need a plain html request.
Edit:
In your language of choice, you would need to request your developer page (the one that lists apps and their install count) and would also need to authenticate as yourself to get it. It's for this reason I would use your own hosting if you can. I can't be more specific than this, as I don't know what language you're most likely to be using. It should be trivial to find out how to do an html request and step through the page in whatever language it is though. App Engine pages are written in Java or Python and deployed to the server, while other obvious options are PHP or Perl. On my own server I would most likely use Perl as it's ideal for ripping up html with regexps.
I am placing an app for free in the Market. I want to restrict the downloads (i.e only 1 download per account). If the person uninstalls my app and tries to download again and re-install it with same gmail account, I want to restrict it.
Is that possible? Please help. I am stuck here. Thanks in advance!
I strongly recommend to skip what ever you try in that direction for the given reason:
you will upset your user!
you will lose user when they had to reset their device or if they bought a new one
and finally: its not supported!
Guillaume Brunerie mentioned the Application Licensing, but that will only work after they have downloaded the app the second time and you will just piss off your user when they can't start the app after downloading it the second time.
Seriously: drop the idea!
You have to create a server.
When you app starts for first time after installation, it should make a request to your server and send some unique information about the user like gmail address, but it is highly recomended that you hash this information to protect user's privacy. The server should check the hash if exists in it`s database and return an appropriative response to the application.
The standard way to do this kind of things is to use Application Licensing, but this is only available for paid apps.
So I don’t think this is possible if you want your app to be free.