I am currently developing an application where I want to be able to have an option to allow the user to donate money for the app. Is there a particular way about doing this for android. I have tried looking at google but it mainly shows about paypal donation buttons for websites
I think it should be possible.
There's a similar discussion on Google Groups which basically says that donations are allowed as long as you don't offer additional functionality for that money.
Meaning no functionality is enabled after the donation is made.
Like #alocaly said, you're unable to recieve donations through a system different from android market payment or ads inside the application.
However, it is still possible to have your application on the Internet by free and with a donation button. The difference is that you cannot post it on the Android Market, so you'll have to do some extra work:
Upload to a webserver, so it can be downloaded to your phone.
Create a website (or post your application to another "illegal" market), so people can find your application.
Use some sort of advertising to let people know your application (Twitter retweets, community ads, GoogleAds, SEO, whatever)
Manage some kind of update system. Since you don't rely anymore on the Android Market, you don't have an automatic updating method (Android Market updates applications when you post a new version of it), so you should have a small class that checks a website looking for a new version (it's not that hard) and downloads a new version when there's one available.
Make work the Paypal button like #Tim said
However, you are able to do something that I've see out there: create a free version of your application and post it on the Android Market, and post another version of the same application called "Same program name (Donation)", costing some money. When someone wants to donate you, they'll only have to buy this version.
I hope it helps
I don't know what importance it has, but I think that the chart / terms of services we sign as android developers don't allow the usage of this kind of monetization.
As this is a subject that is changing a lot in Android world, with the soon to come API to pay in apps, I'm not sure it still has any importance, but you should still be aware of that.
Maybe you should take a look at this post, which explains how to integrate Paypal payments into an Android App witout leaving the App itself: How to integrate paypal donate in android app?
Related
I have a app created in xamarin forms, I already know how to create the APK, the app is to be used internally, i dont want to publish to the appstore, how can the app be update when is available a new version ?
Depending on your resources at hand and requirements, you have a couple of options. These options include, but are certainly not limited to:
Visual Studio Mobile Center (link): probably the most obvious choice. Out of the box support for Xamarin, and 'just works'. You can set up different groups of users, add analytics and crash reporting, etc. In the future you might be able to take your configuration to its big brother: VSTS. But beware! The product is in preview right now. Preview in Microsoft-land means free for now, but doesn't have to be in the future. While I expect it not to cost much/anything for basic functionality, it is something to be aware of. Not sure on this, but I think you need to invite your users by hand, so you have to know who you want to invite.
Google Play Store (link): It's kind of a mis-use, but you could of course leverage the Google Play Stores capabilites for Alpha/Beta testing. Also here you have the ability to create groups and have some basic reporting options. In terms of delivering your app you have some nice options here like A/B testing and unlike Mobile Center (again, I didn't verify this) you can setup a link with which people can enroll themselves. Depending on your needs, this might be nice. In terms of costs, this will set you back 25 dollars once. And you could develop and distribute other apps if you'd like.
Manual: send the APK file manually or hosting it on a shared location. I would prefer this least of all. People are not notified of any updates and you don't have any insights apart from something you might have incorporated in your app. Also you don't have any control over who installs or sees the app, etc.
But of course the prefered way would be to do it through the Google Play enterprise program. See this website. This provides you and your end-users with a private app store basically. Or as they say:
A managed version of Google Play is used by enterprises and their employees to access a rich ecosystem of work and productivity apps.
You can have private apps, only available for your targeted audience and still leverage the power of the Google Play store. The experience for your end-users will be unified with the regular app store.
I couldn't find a straight answer, but it seems the private apps will also cost just 25 dollars once and is included in the regular Play Store developer license.
You have a good way to do that : Use Beta this a service provided by Fabric, you can upload your app with different versions and get access to different teams in your company. It's easy to use and quick to manage.
Hope it helps.
You have multiple options at your hand:
use Bitrise or Visual Studio Mobile Center (aka HockeyApp) to build and provide a downloadable version of you app
in addiont to Bitrise or VS Mobile Center you can set up your own store. Take a look at Relution for example
build locally on your machine and push it to:
a fileshare
an FTP-site
the user by mail.
Our app uses PayPal to make personal payments for a publishing service, we're finished and in way to publish but when we got to the part of changing from Sandbox to going live with PayPal that's where things got complicated for us.
We're totally new to submitting anything to Paypal, I read the guide on this link and it couldn't be less clear on how to fill the form.
I filled the form to upload the mobile app, but we tripped with several doubts along the way, here I will list them:
our app is cross platform and we can only choose one platform, do we
have to submit both Android and iOS for revision separately? Even
though it's the same app?
we filled the form but there was nowhere to place an ipa or apk, only
a field asking for additional files like ad hoc stuff and such, how
do we submit our build for them to test?
I have to be honest, PayPal guides aren't clear and don't explain deeply many of the processes, as if we have already the knowledge of what to do, we searched the web for guides on how to go live but nothing came across our search.
We developed our app using Titanium Studio and the PayPal supports documents treat every submitted app as if they were natively developed, we are using a Titanium's module to make all the PayPal work, so we have no idea what API calls are made, apparently the module uses Adaptive API calls but we're not sure on this, we only make simple payments, do we still need to submit the app or should we be doing something else?.
As you can see we have zero experience with PayPal and while we wait for a response from PayPal and finish to pass every service we use to Production, we are trying to understand what to do with this submitting app phase.
We contacted PayPal support asking for a detailed explanation on what to do on our situation but no one has contacted us at all.
If the module is using the Adaptive Payments API then you'll need to submit the app for approval to obtain a live App ID for the Classic API's.
Login to your account at http://developer.paypal.com. Click on Applications and that will take you to a page where you manage all of your apps.
You should see "REST API apps" at the top and "Classic API apps" at the bottom. Click the link under the Classic section that says "Create and manage Classic API apps."
Then follow the steps from there.
I would just like to ask if there are any best practices for a shared subscription billing for iOS and Android.
Right now, we are developing a mobile app both on Android and iOS (both native sdk, not cross-platform). And we have this certain feature in the app which you need to subscribe in order to access. But this will be a shared subscription. A one time payment regardless of what device a user is using to subscribe.
Sorry, but I am not really good in explaining things so maybe I will give you a scenario. I hope it helps you to understand what I am talking about.
For example, a user has two phones, an Android phone and an iPhone. He then installed our app in both his iPhone and Android phone. Now, he opens our app in his iPhone and he wants to access that certain feature so he subscribed. With this, what we want as a developer is to make it so that when he opens the app in his android phone, he will already be able to access that certain feature since he has already subscribed when he used the iPhone app.
We are still hesitant to continue since Google and Apple have different billing schemes. But maybe there are solutions for this, or are there?
I am hoping that someone could give us light on how to do this in the best practical way possible.
Thanks in advance...
I am currently facing the same issues. That's what I have so far.
There seem to be cross-platform solutions but none of them seem to work through Google Play or Apple payment methods..
You can use your API/backend service to flag the current user subscription state and sync it across all your platforms (that might violate Apple in-app system conditions).
I'm currently looking for a way to communicate to both Google Play and Apple in-app payment system that the item has been already bought in a different platform. There should be a way but as said, still looking for it.
We'll keep that up to date.
I am trying to deliver some promo codes to some users but I just realized that Android Market doesn't have this feature, like shown
here: https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/android-market/appy-talk-all-about-apps/2m8zvqr_HTo
and here: https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/android-market/feature-requests--suggestions/3Spa5KuMgF4
Some people named the website http://www.twirkz.com/ as a workaround to deliver promo codes. My question is: is it reliable? I know that people who install from there will not receive any of the updates that comes from the Android Market, but is there some problem other than that?
If any of you would know an alternative way to give some free apps from my paid app, I would appreciate.
Simple method:
Looking over the app market, it seems to be a favourite of many a developer to release the free app, and sell a micro application that just unlocks extra features.
Could be advantageous, as people will download free apps before buying, and like this, they don't lose their data (or so they usually hope).
You could offer the unlocking application rather than promo codes at that point in time. Probably easier to manage, and unlikely the app will need many updates later on.
Also, don't forget that it's pretty much a given that you'll include ads in the free app, so I believe most users of the free app won't mind you making a little amount of money on the side.
Another simple method:
Promo codes in-app, again using the system as-above. Offer the free app, then sell the upgrade, but this time via a purchasable code. Then you could generate promo codes yourself.
Annoying method:
Refunds.
Seems to be employed by some developers. Requires manually refunding the user, but then they can receive app updates normally either way.
Hope that helps, even a little bit.
According to Google, if you refund an item you should get the full transaction fee back.
http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138001
Google Play has now native support for promo codes.
From Android Developers blog:
Choose your app in the Developer Console.
Under the Promotions tab choose Add new promotion.
Review and accept the additional terms of service if you haven’t run a promotion before.
Choose from the options available, then generate and download your promo codes.
Distribute your promo codes via your marketing channels such as social networks, in email, on the web, to your app’s beta testers, or
in your app or game itself.
Users can redeem your promo codes in a number of ways, including: a) From Google Play, using the Redeem menu option. b) From your app.
They’ll be directed to the Play checkout flow before being redirected
back to your app. c) By following a link that embeds the promo code
Anything that is not directly from Google will have a chance at failing. I know that you can offer a discount and then put the price up again, but make sure you don't make it free. I don't believe you can go from "Free" to charging.
My app is basically supposed to sell ebooks and need to distribute via Android Market. For payment options, I would like to use PayPal. So, straight to the point, am I allowed to use paypal as payment option for digital goods(in my case Ebooks)? I had googled for it a while. But nothing worth referencing came up to me.
I also read through Android Market terms and didn't quite get it whether they allow such option for in-app billing. All I see from their docs is referring to Google Checkout. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Well, just for information, I refer to http://www.google.com/mobile/android/market-tos.html .
Just to keep up, http://www.android.com/us/developer-content-policy.html#showlanguages this link may well more specific to my situation.
In general, you need to be careful - the TOS of the Android Market generally require you to use Google's payment processing options to charge users (see "Paid and Free Applications").
That said, they name two exceptions, one of which seems to apply in your case - "Where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the application itself (e.g. buying songs that can be played on other music players)". If your app sells ebooks in the form of standard files (like epub or pdf), you should be in the clear.
I believe you can sell digital content using paypal via your app - however I don't think you can use Google's In-App Purchasing system - that has to go through the Market Place, and is linked to a Google Checkout account.
So you'd need a separate delivery and authentication system.