I am writing a slide-show like application for android phone which I am going to sell. it will target very narrow audience and I do not think I will sell more than 1000 copies of it. I was going to buy pictures for it from microstock agencies like istockphoto but it turned out that they require purchase of "extended license" if you want to put their images into apps. And guess what? extended license runs from $70-100 per image!
so my question for you, where did you get images for your apps you want to sell?
You can search at creativecommons.org for images you can use "for commercial purposes".
I'd recommend odesk.com. I used to look for stock art, both free and paid. Then I figured out that you can outsource and hire an artist for very little money. Depending on your needs, you can go cheap and find someone under $5 / hr that can do basic work. I currently employ a team at $18 / hr and it's worth every penny I spend given the quality of the work, and their ability to create themes from scratch and operate with only minimal oversight.
Alternatively, you can put out a bid for a fixed-price contract to create the icons for your app.
I've had better luck with posting positions, interviewing and hiring. I'd recommend putting up a basic description of the type of person you are looking for, and then have an interview question to screen candidates with. I typically do a "compensated interview" whereby any legitimate submission gets a minimum amount of money whether I hire the person or not. I've had great luck with this recruiting artists that have paid off many times over.
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First sorry for my bad English : I'm French and I may make a few mistakes.
I created an app and I uploaded it last month on the Google Play store. You can find it here without problems : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.malerbati.fourInAMine.
The problem is : my app is almost impossible to find with the search engine ! When I search "4 in a mine", my app name, in Google Play, it only appears at the 20th result !
Besides, the app didn't appear at the "Top news" when I uploaded it.
I remember that the last app I created counted 200 downloads 1 day after its release, obviously thanks to the "Top news" thing... whereas this app has only 65 downloads, 1 month after ! And when I look at the statistics, I see that 100% of the downloaders are French (my country), which means that ALL the persons who got my app found it with word of mouth ! That's quite inefficient...
Therefore, here are my questions : why the hell can't we see my app easily, like the others ? Did anyone else encounter the same problem ? I have some suppositions about the origin of the problem :
The last app I created was a big failure : 95% of the people uninstalled it, essentially because the game was too hard. Does Google Play search engine take this into account ?
I created my last app last year. There must be much more apps now. Is my app simply hidden by the (too) big number of other apps ?
My app is very smaller than the last one (only 300 ko, against 3 Mo). Is that taken in account too ?
Thank you in anticipation. I really want to know where the problem is.
Here are a few resources to help:
How Android Developers Can Thrive with Google Play
Maximize search potential in your app title: identify your most successful keywords and make sure to include them in your app title. In fact, this is so critical to success (potentially 80 to 100 places in your search ranking), that you should seriously consider removing your app name from your title and focus your description on the best keywords. Include the app name in the body of the app description – users will still be able to find it by name. Unlike iOS, the body description is searched under Google Play.
Use, but don’t overuse, keywords: try to use the best keywords at five times the body of your app description. This can affect search ranking from 10 to 20 places. Anything over five times has no additional benefit, so don’t overdo it.
Test your search parameters: the above recommendations are guidelines based on accumulated experience, but search results can vary based on many factors.
Steady efforts work best: Google Play’s ranking algorithm is tilted towards long term user acquisition – apps that acquire and retain satisfied users are rewarded with higher ranks. Advertising campaigns should be run over a longer term and sustained over two to three months, as opposed to the short bursts of activity often seen in the iOS market.
Use closed loop attribution and target long term users: since retained users have an important impact in ranking, use closed loop marketing to ensure you are identifying and utilizing ad sources that bring loyal users.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and test market your strategy with Android. You can apply these learnings to your iOS versions and reduce your costs and risks.
Google Play Optimization Secrets - 5 Helpful Tips
The second link contains more information that leans more towards marketing and sales strategy than practical steps.
Your application contains a number of very common words. Some of the most common, smallest little auxiliary words are probably discarded because they return a hit on everything.
If you put quotes around it, then Google Play will search for the whole sequence. When I search 4 in a mine then I basically don't see your app. When I search "4 in a mine", then your app is the only result.
I understand that this information doesn't really help you because, while it answers your question, you cannot control users' behavior. You would do better to make your title unique. That of course also makes it less descriptive and harder for users to remember. It's an unavoidable tradeoff.
Responding to your other questions:
I would be surprised if the success or failure of your other game had anything to do with the search relevance of this one. I could believe the uninstall rate affects the search relevance of the uninstalled title.
The huge number of new apps being published does mean that you want to get onto the virtuous cycle of installs quickly. So, the same day that you upload the app, get onto your social networks and tell all your friends and followers that you have a new game to try out. Make sure it works on most of the devices they are using. :-)
A listing page that describes your app well helps you get some collateral benefit from the "Users also viewed" lists for searches that lead to similar games. You gain a little more collateral benefit by publishing additional apps that appear under "More from developer". It may not be a big boost, but it is a feedback path -- probably the only one that you directly control.
I would be surprised if app size made any difference at all.
To sum up:
I think your problem is your title is composed entirely of either tiny words that get discarded, or common words that match lots of other games. You can easily locate your app by searching for the phrase all in one piece, but users won't do that. So work on combining unique terms that only you use, with descriptive terms that help the search engine determine your relevance in searches. And follow it up with some marketing.
I am looking to use one of the social networks in my Android program.
Most important for me is the ability to build a continuous leadership board in which players move up and down depending their wins/loses to others.
The idea is for players to challenge others head-to-head. The winner gains points and the loser loses points.
Equally important, I want this feature to include the possibility to "charge" the player game coins.
Scoreloop includes the possibility of challenges but they are there in order to win coins off other players. In other words, they are the means to the end.
In my case I need it to be the other way around. The "ends" is to be higher in the leadership board and the "means" are to play others with coins.
Scoreloop do have a continuos leadership board but it is not accessible from the program.
I tried looking at OpenFeint but their site is a real mess. It is impossible to understand from there exactly what is and isn't available.
I signed up and tried to add my program. I ended up adding it four times and cannot delete it!
Check out Swarm, which provides a similar feature set to the others you mentioned (Scoreloop, OpenFeint), but also specifically includes a virtual goods system (coins), that you could use to have users purchase challenge attempts (which sounds like what you're looking for). The docs are extremely well written, integration is a snap :)
Create a leaderboard using either OpenFeint or Scoreloop (we started off with Openfeint but quickly moved on to scoreloop - If you want the details, I'll be happy to explain our reasons).
Once its up, make sure its a leadarboard that allows overriding scores with worse scores.
Implement an ELO rating calculator. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
Each player starts with a certain score (I use 1500, so that ratings will resemble the chess ratings range).
On a match end, you re-calculate each user's new Elo rating, and post it to the leaderboard.
You end up with a leaderboard that ranks each user according to their skill. i.e. the more they win, the higher their score is.
EDIT: per user request - her are some of the reasons that made us move to Scoreloop:
OF documentation looks like it was ported from iOS, and very badly so. For example, the docs gives an example of initializing OF in your Application class. This will cause their "Join / Don't like fun" full screen dialog appear out of the blue, when users are busy using other applications, as android will kill and re-create your application in the background as memory availability change.
ScoreLoop automatically creates a "userId" for the user, without them having to register / login. This allowed us to post user's highscores and display their highscores without having to bother the user for logging in.
Scoreloop have an "offline" mode, which makes it much more robust, efficient, accurate and easy to use.
In flaky network situations, OF login process took a very long time, and affected the game performance. (see #3 above).
OF does not allow you to fetch a score rank. If you want to get your user's rank, you have to fetch the complete leaderboard, cycle through it until you find your user's entry. This "solution" pretty much makes this option not-available.
Scoreloop provided us with grate support. I've opened several tickets, they all got answered promptly and professionally. These guys rock.
I wrote this code a while back, so there might have been other reasons which I forget.
I'm interested in creating companion apps to several current Android apps and was curious if there is a legal issue with using their name and/or icons from the app. Like the companion app being called Angry Birds Companion or something and you were to use a picture of the level or one of the characters, etc (I'm simply pulling from thin air so don't judge the idea, just the question, please). I know there are Strategy guides to video games that use icons and names, but I'm assuming they have prior consent. Does anyone have any factual input on this?
You would be in full violation of copyright (assuming the app owner has one) law if you used their images in your application without their approval.
Using the name is not as cut and dry. You can't use the same image of the name, just like you can't use "Android" in the custom typeface. However, I believe a name needs additional protection (like a trademark) to prevent using the same word like "Windows" or "Google."
Finally, a company or organization may choose to release a statement governing the rules of some types of images and or words of their product which give you specific rights to use their copyrighted work. Just like what Google has done with Android in their attribution policy and branding guidlines, which you can read about here and here.
You really should speak to a lawyer regarding something like this.
Advice will vary on factors such as where you are located, where the company/individual who owns the other application is located, their trademarks, their patents, their claimed trademarks, and many other factors.
I am not a lawyer, but personally I always ask for permission to use any names, logos, icons, graphics, etc before doing so. Be sure to get any authorizations in writing.
The only thing we can say is to read this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Some uses are considered fair use. Some aren't. Without a specific instance, we have no idea. Even so, don't use SO for legal advice.
I had a situation where I built an android app that utilized an ad-supported service exposed through a web site. Before I started I spoke to the owner. Essentially, he said if I wasn't going to charge for my app (which I wasn't) I could use it for free, as long as I provided some link back to his site. If I was to charge for my app, he would want to share the revenue (and I never went in that direction).
Just common sense, but if we are talking non-open source apps, the author of another pay app (or site, or game, or whatever you are gleaning from) isn't going to let you make money from their work without compensating them. Why would they? If you are building something that you will give away that will ultimately enhance the original work, maybe.
If you are truly enhancing their offering, you could potential work out a revenue sharing deal. In most cases, if there's real money to be made, the original author would just take your idea and build it out themselves.
Yes, it would almost certainly violate a trademark if you used the same or logos from the original work, and using their images / icons would be a copyright violation.
Im writing up a business plan and im having some trouble with the finance part. I put an estimate on the cost of developers, web designers and everything but server costs. Im not a programmer so I dont know all the details. But how much would you think servers are going to cost for a complex app. I cant get into too many details but it keeps track of user preferences, stores data about the user and there is quite alot of back-end to it.
As i said in my response to your comment to #mark; this is a tough question as we don't know enough to make good predictions. To help you make your own predictions
As its only a business plan (i.e. not set in stone) think of a number of users that you want to run on a given piece of hardware - for the data / web servers.
Be aggressive but in the real world as the developers will have to code to make this target and make that part of the spec for the software - 200 concurrent users on a web server for example and that 10 web servers needs a dual core xeon database server or whatever the app needs.
Then you can plot a graph of expansion as it goes; they tend not to be linear so have a lying weasel factor to handle that that rolls the graph off as you go.
Then don't forget about backup, load balancers, firewalls, content managers, caching proxies and all the other network kit you will need.
You will also need to budget for someone to run it all... If its a web app probably 3 to handle it in shifts. Either that or make sure your IT people are the most dedicated so that the servers get restarted in the night when it all goes wrong.
Finally ... Does the system need DR? if so that will need to be included.
It really depends upon the complexity of the app, how much traffic you expect and what platform you need. The real cost is in the time managing the thing.
I would consider amazon aws (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/). There's even a free level to get started.
They have system images prebuilt, free and purchasable, that might have the configuration you'll need. You can use one to build an image of your own and deploy it to many servers quite easily if your app takes off.
This heavily depends on the numbers of users that concurrently use your service and of course how much traffic you will have. Without more details it is not possible to estimate any costs.
Edit:
Possibly it is the best if you sit down with a developer, explain her/him what you want to do. There is a good calculation program from amazon webservices (cloud).
You can find it here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
For example if you would need 5 Linux CPU medium instances for one year + Load Balancers (they will spread the load to the instances) + Traffic (50000GB out + 500GB in) (per user out 1GB/month + in 100MB/month)
This would be all together a One-Time payment $2275 and monthly $7101
http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html?key=calc-DE0DC116-63C1-440E-BE15-213263DC4E2B
But this is a too complex question to rely only on guesses. The advantage of Amazon AWS is, that you can grow with the application. Perhaps it would be the best to start small and see what you will need.
Take a look at the Dell, IBM or HP sites, say, and see if they quote rough figures. Compare with the cost for services like Amazon's EC2, or Microsoft's Azure. It's impossible to tell you what you need, without knowing what you're actually doing.
I am developing Android application for the company. They want me to create digital newspaper that would:
Display list of headlines for each category/subcategory
Will have 4-6 categories and 4-8 subcategories for each category
Display article with text and images,
Play podcast,
Save downloaded articles/headlines in db
They already have the web-service almost adopted for this app.
This app will be quite similar to: TechnologyReview or CNET News (but the article will be larger)
I have estimated this project for 160 hours of development. That doesn't include design but includes design implementation.
I would love to hear your opinion on this estimate. Do you think 160h is too short or too long? How much I should charge for this project or 1 hour of development(more or less of course)? I am living in London, UK
I need this estimation by the end of today so I will be really grateful for fast replies.
If you have a similar project, or some similar code files you can bunch together into a folder, you can simply run ProjectCodeMeter over it and get a ballpark cost estimation that will point you in the right direction.
Good luck!
The way to do estimates is to break down the project into each component and estimate each of those. Trying to ballpark one number is inevitably worse than ballparking a breakdown. This also helps you get better on each estimate in the future because you know which estimates made sense and which were wrong.