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Can my free Android app be upgraded to a paid version via in-app purchase AND paid store version? [closed]

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I'm looking into monetizing my first app with a free and a paid version. It seems that the simplest approach would be to use an in-app purchase to unlock extra features. However, I'd also like the customer to have the option to purchase the full version outright on the Play Store (more visibility that way). I could publish a "pro key" app as an upgrade key, but then they'd have to install 2 packages and it seems like a hassle. On the other hand, I don't want to have to support two independently complete packages (one free, one paid).
So I'm not sure what approach to take. I want to let users upgrade from within the app because that would be simplest, but I also want a the customer to be able to buy and install the paid version straight from the store. Thoughts?

I see three solutions.
Add In-app purchase
Add new app "Your app name pro unlocker"
Add new pro version of you app
I think that the first one is the most reliable and easy to achieve. It is harder to crack by pirates too. Pirates can upload your app to their sited but when user will download it he will get normal free version. Of course anything can be hacked ;-) but... it is better than 3rd option (see below).
Second one - in you main app you need to check if "pro unlocker" is installed, maybe you will need to check if certificates are the same and run, custom implemented, android service in this to check if use is allowed to use pro version. It is quite ok and beacuse you will use a quite lot of custom coding it should be safe.
Third - using Grandle you can simply create second version of your app, during building Grandle will create pro/free version automatically. However pro versions which are using Google Licensing are easy to crack by pirates so...
To sum up - you have 3 three solutions. I think that the first one is good enough and it is not requiring too much code or time for maintaining. I hope that this will help you ;-)
Cheers

No. Free and paid apps are handled completely differently on the market.

How easy is it to update an app? [closed]

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Minor background here: not an app programmer here.
If you look at the tags for this post, you can see that I tried to choose the ones that I know (please let me know of any other that I may have missed) of that are wrappers around the native language of the phones, namely iphone and android.
So, someone wants to know if it is easy to update an app once it's been downloaded on a phone?
And how easy/hard is it for the creator to update the app?
Thanks in advance.
edit
the person in question forwarded me the questions as she wanted them to be:
how easy/difficult will it be to update the app? So for example, if we want to add a new restaurant to the list, or a silent auction item, how much time and effort will it take?
Let's say I download the app from the website on Monday. On Wednesday we update the app with new restaurants and other items. Will the version of the app on my phone update automatically?
second edit
is it possible to have an app available via web and not through formal measures via Apple's iTune, etc? It's mostly informational and meant to benefit a charity.
third edit
Ok, normally I don't care about the downvotes. Still don't. But since this question is getting downvoted a little too much, I just wanted state that this is a genuine question. Really. And honestly, do you realize how much information there is online when you're trying to google for specific question on an arena you're not that familiar with to begin with?

The answer is it depends.
I can speak to Android, but for iOS, an update to the source code that's pushed through the store takes an average of 6ish days between submitting it to Apple and the update showing on the store.
This means if you downloaded your App on Monday of week 1, and I pushed an update on Wednesday of Week 1, it's probably Tuesday of week 2 at the EARLIEST that Apple has approved the app and put it on the store.
From here, the updated version isn't automatically the version on your phone necessarily. Some people have automatic app updates, some don't.
But, and this is a massive but... sending source code updates through the app store isn't the only way to "update" your app.
The updates you talk about aren't what many developers would consider updates at all--they certainly don't require source code changes or pushes through the app store. All you're "updating" is your backing data.
A well designed app would grab this data from the web, and in this case, the app can be updated immediately.

For IOS you have to submit the compiled code to apple and wait for them to approve and test your app (for new apps or updates) and it might take some days sometimes 1 or 2 weeks. Android, I think you can upload it almost instantly. And as "nhgrif" stated, you should feed any dynamic info on an app from a web server so you don't have to update frequently.

For both iOS and Android, it is possible to have a file online (APK for Android, IPA for iOS) that allows users to install the app. There are no real restriction on Android, but there are on iOS. apparently you can only install on a max of 200 devices, there might be some certificate issues, etc.
Take a look at this question to see what restriction on iOS are: iOS installing apps without app store
The iOS restrictions might be circumvented with TestFlight (But just maybe).

android app piracy prevention [closed]

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Looking at some postings at stackoverflow, as of writing, there seems to be really no way to effectively prevent app piracy.
is anyone here actually losing money from app piracy?
what's your current solution (free or non-free) against app crackers?
what are some of the popular & reliable solutions for protecting enterprise level apps?

Use the LVL (License Verification Library) provided via Google, its a server side verification that the user actually bought your app.
http://developer.android.com/guide/market/licensing/index.html
Use other techniques to detect if you application has been tampered with, there are a few and they are covered in this blog post and the I/O video. Assume it was pirated if tampered with. (Double extra check to make sure you don't mess this up and annoy real users)
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/09/securing-android-lvl-applications.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnSNCXR9fbY
Use AntiLVL against your own application, attack it like a cracker! This is actually really fun and educational, see how much work it takes to crack your app. The blog/tool go over the known weaknesses and you can make some educated decisions about how to stop the automated tools from working. Stopping dedicated pirates is no ones priority, but stopping people from using a 1-click tool is easily obtainable.
http://androidcracking.blogspot.com/
EDIT 1:
Make a free version with ads and/or less features. Crackers just want free stuff, so make it easy on them :) If you detect they are using a cracked version of your paid app you can try and convert them to using the free version or upsell them to the paid version. Currently about 1/4 of the people cracking one of my apps will open the Google Play for the full paid version (although less actually buy it)

This google IO 2011 video should be your bible: Evading Pirates and Stopping Vampires using License Verification Library, In-App Billing, and App Engine
It talks about many things you can do to defend yourself.

Android google market returns [closed]

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I'm finding a great many people buy my Android app in the google market and immediately return it for a refund. That works fine with physical goods, but for virtual goods, they have now acquired the app for free!
Has anyone else noticed this fatal flaw in the Google Android market for apps? What other markets are there without this problem?
Peter

Yes you are correct. As per Android Market policies if an user uninstalls the application that he has bought with 24 hrs he is eligible for a full refund. I think this policy might be for the benefit of end users. The user is given access to the app only after he pays for it and unlike physical goods he wont be able to examine it before. He may like or dislike it once he starts using it. But in this case he needs to first uninstall the application so that he can ask for refund.
http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134336
I am sure that not all users will take this approach and as a developer i wont be interested in asking money for my application that an user is not happy of.

You're right, but it isn't a market flaw. I really like this feature 'cause I wouldn't like to buy an app and then discover it's totally useless.
If you're experiencing a lot of users buying and then returning your app, you should probably search for the reason of such a behavior. Probably they don't like your app. If I'm right you might get some feedback at uninstall time why the user did such a step. Analyze this feedback to improve your app!

One special feature of my app is that it delivers the source code to the SD card, on first being run. There is no way to recall that on uninstall. I can probably address most of the situation by not writing the source until 24 hours have passed. (Yes, yes, and checking for the clock being moved forward, if I want to inhibit all the cheaters).
I'm going to withdraw my app from the market, until I can implement this protection. – Peter vdL

Why I can't purchase my own application on the Android market? [closed]

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I just uploaded my application in the market, but I'm not able to purchase it (it's a pay app).
I saw here that it seems to be made by design, but then why the error message is Server Error try again ?
Is there a way to bypass that ?

'Please note that it is against Google Checkout's policies to purchase your own application. You will receive an error message when you try to purchase your own application.'
Doesn't look like it. Why are you wanting to buy your own app?

There's definitely validity in trying to buy your own app, simply for the licensing service.
I tried to do the same thing, and received the same error on the server. My purpose for buying my own app is that even when I install the signed .apk file on my phone, the Licensing Verification Library that I use to check License validity does not cache licensing checks UNLESS it is purchased from the market. So there was absolutely no way that I could test the true Licensing experience that users would have on there phones before publishing!
In my case, my brother bought the app right away and tested it, and it worked great coming from the market, where it works a bit differently on my phone. Because of this, I have to wait for it to do the License check every time I run my own app. This wouldn't be bad, except for the fact that I can't run my app when I don't have a connection, such as airplane mode, because it doesn't cache the successful licensing responses!
I would really appreciate Google changing it so you just couldn't rate or comment on your own apps, but that you COULD purchase them. After all, you're actually losing money by purchasing it, since they take 30% for the carrier fees, etc.

Do you have an Android Developer Phone? If so, you can't purchase your own app by design. Since ADPs are unlocked, there's nothing preventing an ADP from easily pirating any app it downloads, so they are purposely cut off from downloading paid apps.

Yes, the Google account associated with your market seller account cannot purchase it's own apps.
Personally I think this is a mistake on Google's part. I found some issues I couldn't solve until I had a market downloaded copy of my app - for some reason the debug version worked with the license service all the time, but downloaded ones didn't. I ended up buying it on my wife's phone.
Personally I wish I'd created a new Google account to use for selling my apps.

Yeah, I ran into the same problem. I uninstalled the APK from my phone so that I could download it from the market. It works fine for my free apps but not my paid apps. I guess there is no need for QA and the customer to use the same process lol