November updates

This is just a quick update on what I've been up to this month. There were a couple of unexpected events that messed up my original plans a bit, but still I managed to move a step forward.

Conferences

I went to Mobilization and I'm going to Droidcon Poland in three weeks. I have to say that I really like such events, not only for the sake of presentations, but also for their networking value. Every time I go somewhere I meet my colleagues and their work mates, and discussing with them often brings me more value than what the speaker has to offer. At some point I was even wondering why someone doesn't organize meetings for people from various companies during which they could discuss how they handle specific programming aspects, like storing data or testing. Perhaps I'll do it some day.

Learning Unity

I got a notification that Udemy had a huge discount on a nice Unity course so I bought it. It cost me 12 €, but the price goes up every day, so you'd better hurry up if you're interested. I haven't started watching the lessons yet, but with the coming Christmas period, I'm hoping to be able to give it a try. I'll let you know how it goes.

Facebook Gallery

Remember my Facebook Gallery template app? No? Well, some time ago I made a couple of apps using the same template that I'd created. Each app was basically a gallery of images from a specific Facebook channel/profile. You could also adjust the theme, strings, icons, etc. for them. See Banksy for example.

My plan for the nearest future is to refresh the project a bit and try to sell the code on some portal. I've already done a bit of refactoring: I updated the libraries, I switched from Picasso to Glide and I started working on Activity transitions to make it look nicer. There's still a lot to be done, but I'm hoping to finish before the end of the year.

For the next part, I did a quick research on where I could try to sell the template. It turns out that there aren't many sites dedicated to it. I found Chupamobile, SellMyApp and CodeCanyon. The first two look somewhat sketchy though, so I'll probably go with CodeCanyon in the end. They check every submission manually, they have user comments and ratings, and they are open about how many people bought an app. The only thing that worries me is that their suggested prices are quite low (<$20). I don't know why people decide to post their apps that required months of work for such a price. Perhaps buyers choose the more expensive extended license?
If you have any experience with selling your code to people, let me know in the comments. I'll be grateful for any advice.

Conclusion

That's pretty much what's going on at the moment. My priority is to finish the Facebook Gallery app. In the meantime, I'll be watching an occasional Unity lesson. Starting next year, I want to commit more time to game development, because that's what excites me the most, even though it might not be the most lucrative choice. I'd like to polish my Blobby Volley, but that's a whole different subject and I won't go into it now.
I hope to see you next time with more progress updates and news. Peace.