I've been trying to work out whether it's possible to do the following sort of thing with Google's Android Market but can't find an answer as all my searches relating to upgrade paths are clouded with results about updating individual apps.
If I have 2 applications, lets call them Application_A and Application_B which sell for $2 and $5 respectively, is there any mechanism by which I can provide an upgrade path so that anyone who owns Application_A already can buy Application_B at a discounted price of $3, but anyone who doesn't own Application_A and just buys Application_B still pays $5?
Best approach I've seen is to sell app b for $2, and use in app purchase ($3) to unlock all it's features.
You can also have a "full" build version and sell that for $5.
You should be able to share almost all of the code in a common code base just fine, and you can even offer this to existing customers (just issue an update with the in-app purchase enabled.)
I've been looking too and it's impossible. :(
As far as I know, you can't provide discounts for your apps in the Android market.
Related
I have two questions about uploading app to play store. First of all I want to upload two versions of my app, the first one is free with adds and the second one is paid without any adds, but is the same app in both cases.
What should I do to upload both apps? I had thought about changing the package name but the problem I think I will have is that if the user downloads the free version and then pays for the premium he will have both applications in his smartphone, the premium won't override the free one.
And this question is more about your experience uploading apps. I have mine in english, spanish and french. I had thought in uploading the app in every country but in the videos I have seen everyone chooses a few countries to upload their own apps. What do you recommend me to do?
Thank you in advance.
There are a few ways you can handle it, though I have to say I'm not sure you should.
My suggestion is to upload your free version first, and later when you have enough users implement in app billing instead.
I know it's not directly answering your question, but I think it's a better approach that will save you a lot of time, and also be a better experience to the users.
Regarding countries, you don't need to upload it to each country, that's automatic (unless you indicate otherwise), and you actually can't upload or create a specific store listing by country, at least as far as I know.
You do need to create a store listing to the languages you want, otherwise they'll get the default language and in some cases see automatic translated listing, which is quite bad in my opinion.
You should have only one app, which is free to download, and implement an in-app payment in that app through which a user can choose to make a payment in exchange for the removal of ads, without the need to download a separate ad-free app. This is the standard approach to the problem you have described.
If you implement separate apps, your ratings will be spread across both apps, to the probable detriment of the rankings of both in the Play store's search results. Also, an upgrade to the ad-free version will require the user to download the paid version, which creates a barrier to selling it. Finally, once a user who has tried the free app decided to pay for removal of ads, they would almost certainly uninstall the free version, which might cause the store to see that app as being unsatisfactory to your users.
I am wondering what is the best way to have two different versions of an android app. I would like to have version of my app with ads and one without ads (the paid one). What is the easiest way to achieve this ? I have found something called version flavours here but since I am new to android development I am not sure if that is what I want. Please any suggestions for addressing this ?
You could have two versions of the application in Play store. However, you would have to maintain these separately and it is frustrating to upgrade from free to paid with this approach. If you chose this way of maintaining your application, you would have to have two projects, one for each version. This would result you into having two copies of almost identical source code.
One approach I've seen people do is that the free version also contains the premium features which are unlocked once the user installs a paid unlocker application from the store. However, this has the same result as the first option: you would have to maintain two applications (this time different, though) and the users would have to install additional software.
The best option is to include the premium version as an in-app purchase. The app would contain all the premium features but would be locked by default. Once the user pays for the in-app product (in this case the premium membership), he would unlock all the features.
You can read more about in-app billing here.
Why not just publish two apps with the free one as this :
MyApp
and the paid one as this:
MyApp(Paid).
And this is how to prepare them:
Get your app working, and add ads and then sign it and generate the apk. Publish it. MyApp.apk
Then go back, and remeove the ads, change the package name, add the Paid to the name, and then sign the apk. MyApp(Paid).apk
Then Publish it.
I've got a quiz app on the Android market right now selling for $1. I would like to offer a free version with limited questions, and include a menu offering the user to upgrade to the full version.
My question is simply what the best practice is here?
The possibilities I can conceive are:
Have a link in the free version that takes the user to the paid
version's url on the android market, whereby they'd just download the full version directly.
Have condition statements in the free version that limit the
number of questions available if VERSION == FREE, enable all
questions upon purchase by setting VERSION = PAID.
Download the additional questions upon the purchase
(would that require my own file server?)
What are your thoughts?
Can't say there is a best practice between these 3 variants, you should just choose the more appropriate approach for you and your application. First variant is the simplest for you as a developer, second offers a better user experience, but you need to implement In-App Billing in your app. And the third approach is the most difficult cause you'll need a server to store your files on. I'd personally choose the first approach, since the second one has a pitfall - you need the locked questions to be inside your demo version's apk and it's just not secure. The much more secure approach is to not put them in your demo version - this is what the first approach gives you. However, it's your choice as a developer. Good luck!
I have a situation that I have not seen addressed elsewhere, so I'd like to ask folks for ideas. Here's what's up:
I sell a relatively expensive (US$25) app that I have sold for 10 years in various forms on different portable platforms. In general it's pretty vertical-market oriented (astronomers, ham radio operators) but in some cases is of general interest and has sold pretty steadily over the whole time it's been around. I have an Android version ready to publish but am not sure the best route to take.
The issues that are troublesome for me are that it must be possible to download a free, time-limited but full-featured version for evaluation, and that I need to be able to sell it to previous customers at half-price (just a long-standing policy of mine.)
Note that I am already set up to sell from my own website - have been doing it with other versions of the software for years, and the app is already set up to run in "trial mode" until a registration code is entered.
I have been assuming that I would publish it on the Android Market as a free app, and add code to it to look for an "unlock key" app that I would publish there as well. The idea being that a person could download and test the app, and if they chose to purchase it could either buy the unlock key via the market, or could go to my web site and purchase a registration code, allowing a path for my "customer loyalty" discount.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure this violates section 3.3 of the Developer Distribution Agreement: "All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market's Payment Processor."
I have a couple of ideas, but I'd really like to hear some other opinions first. Sorry for the length - it's just a long question.
(Oh, and FYI, there is already a published iOS version of this app, and none of this is at all possible for it, and I think it's awful.)
You could get them to buy the app at full price and then send the discount back to them - like a cash-back scheme. It's not very efficient though.
You can use in-app billing to process the purchase. That way you won't violate any agreement.
You can publish more than one APK in the market, with different prices, and validate the install upon first run with a code you send them.
I have a simple database driven app. I'm looking to offer a free and paid version. The only limitation in the free version, is that you're limited to adding 10 records per month.
What is the best way to handle upgrading from free to paid, while maintaining the database?
I had planned on using in-app billing to unlock the ability to store unlimited records/month but I think that is probably beyond complicated for my simple app.
Other ideas were to sell an unlocker app... I don't know if people get confused by this concept though or not.
I could always write the free db to an sd card and have the paid app copy it. But a concern is people without sd cards and it just seems like something would go wrong and somebody would lose their data.
Any thoughts on this?
If you don't want to use in-app billing then you need two separate packages, free/paid or free/unlocker. IMHO free/unlocker is far more convenient than the free/paid. In you choose free/paid you will end with two copies of the same app and you are going to have problems like the one you mention with the databases.
Android LVL is a no go in this case, you can use it to check licence and enable/disable the 10 records per month restriction, but you are limited to one package (meaning you will have the paid apk in the android market but for the "free" version you need to distrubute the application by your own).
I think PowerAMP offers a good solution. They have a free app that acts as a trial of their product and when the trial period ends, they show a dialog with a link to the unlocker app in the android market. You can use the same strategy, when a user tries to enter more than 10 records/month show them an alert with a link to the unlocker app. I think this should solve your concern about people getting confused.