Income Report - September 2013

I recently got a message from one of my readers - Aman, asking me how much I'm earning on my apps and if I managed to reach the $1000/month level. I figured that I might share the answer with all of you, especially that the previous income report was published half a year ago.

I guess I have to disappoint you a little. The reason why I don't share the revenue regularly is not that I'm secretive, but it just doesn't change that much from month to month and it would be boring to read. I promise to do it more often though, so you can have a better idea of what's going on. Anyway, I'm definitely still in the junior leage when it comes to income. Let's take a look at the numbers together, to see what I mean.

At the bottom of this post you can see screenshots from my Google Play, AdMob and Airpush accounts. They should give you all the details you need to perform your own analysis. Here's the gist of it.

I earn about $16/month from AdMob (it used to be above $20, but it decreased in the recent days) and another $0.7 from Airpush (right now I only use it with Supermarkets in Milan as an experiment). Then there is paid apps revenue, but it's difficult to say how high it actually is, because I don't keep a detailed track of it. My rough estimate would be around $5/month. I also use LeadBolt for my Ad Showcase app, but its only for demonstrations purposes and it doesn't make me any money. To be totally honest, I should mention my adult apps (obviously outside of Google Play), with a total of around $5/month and decreasing steadily with time. When we add everything up, it gives us about $25-$30 monthly revenue.

If you take a look at the screenshots below, some values might surprise you, so I should probably add a few words of explanation.

CPM in Airpush is $4.82 which might seem high, but it was $2.82 only three weeks ago and it fluctuates a lot because of the small number of impressions, so you should take it with a grain of salt.

CPM in Toothbrush is $3.19 and I honestly can't explain it, since there's only a simple banner and not even a scalable one adjusting its size to the screen type.

My both comic readers have extremely low CPM and that's probably because I only show the banners for a short amount of time and hide them afterwards. In the near future I want to update them, fixing some bugs and adding interstitials.

What's interesting, the app that I spent the least amount of time on - Toilet Sounds, has the most installs and is making me twice as much money as all others in total. Perhaps I should write something more casual and with a larger target to become more successful and stop focusing on utility apps?

I hope this report will satisfy your curiosity and help you with your apps. I'll try to make another one around Christmas, unless some statistics change significantly in the meantime. Feel free to give me and other readers advice in the comments section, if you know how to enhance the app revenue.

Google Play Developer Console

AdMob

Airpush

Android developer interview: Mariusz Płaskowicki

Recently, I interviewed another Android developer with lots of experience in various fields as well as a handful of interesting ideas. He's sharing some of his knowledge with us, so make sure you read carefully not to miss anything. Have fun reading!

Bartek: Can you introduce yourself briefly?

Mariusz: My name is Mariusz and I live in Szczecin, Poland. For many years I’ve been working as a .NET programmer for serious companies doing very serious apps that would help other very serious people do their serious work. But then I decided I would like to do some less serious stuff and started to write funny Android apps. And now I’m the owner of a software company that writes games.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how?

Mariusz: I have been interested in Android OS since its inception back in 2008. But I wasn’t able to do anything for it back then, because I didn’t have a phone and the emulator was really slow. I focused on Android programming in late 2010 when I got my first phone. I spent a lot of time writing a todo app that never got published. In the meantime, I also wrote a few other experimental apps that never made their way to the store either. My first app reached the store in 2012.
I was interested in Android because it seemed to have a great potential and I felt in the guts that it was going be succesful. But frankly I’d never thought that it was going to be that succesful.

Bartek: How did you learn how to create apps?

Mariusz: Mostly by reading the vogella blog and other blogs. I also used the official documentation a lot. And I was experimenting.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use?

Mariusz: The first third party lib I was using was greenDAO. It’s the ORM solution that I used in the todo app. When I started to play with writing games I started with AndEngine but quite soon I realised that this is not the best framework I could use. For new games I use libgdx and I have to admit that I’m really happy with it. I also plan to use Unity in near future but it might as well be a year from now.

Bartek: Why was AndEngine not enough for you and how is libgdx better?

Mariusz: AndEngine is good when you are starting to learn new things, but then it’s more like shackles on your hands. It’s less flexible than libgdx and there is much more additional tools and libraries for libgdx  Not to mention that libgdx is still being actively developed while AndEngine seems to be partly dead now. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying that AndEngine is bad. It’s a nice framework but libgdx is much better. And of course performance is much better in libgdx. It’s also easier to develop for libgdx because you can run the games on your desktop - it makes debugging so much easier and faster. Of course, you have to eventually check everything on an Android device as well but it’s like 1:20 ratio - one run on Android and 20 runs on your desktop.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from?

Mariusz: Well, my crap apps are basically rip offs. There is plenty of such apps. I added some missing features. For instance my lightsaber app uses the phone camera - it gives you a better feeling. I thought it could be nice, so I did it and it looks to me I was right.

Bartek: How do you choose the apps to copy and enhance?

Mariusz: Actually every app has a potential so it’s not that important. If you take a look at some example apps and then decide that they are missing something, or you think you could make them better, whether in terms of features or visual design then it’s a good candidate.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from (graphics, sounds, music)?

Mariusz: At first I was using OpenGameArt as a source of graphics. It’s fine but it’s hard to find consistently looking images so for my current game I’ve created all the graphics on my own. I’ve used Inkskape and GIMP to create graphics and Spine to make animations. It’s a bit hard when it comes to music and graphics but you can find some free sounds on the internet and some really good soundtracks as well. For my current game I bought some sounds from Dexsoft. I got some really amazing music from the incompetech. Kevin MacLeod seems to have a lot of cool music. I also got some music from arteria3d which btw is a really good source of great 3d graphics. I’ve got an account there and I plan to use the models for my next game.

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Mariusz: I use, of course, Eclipse, hg, Inkscape, GIMP, Blender, Unwrap 3d and bits of Unity. And tools bundled with android that you can use to take a look how your code is performing, like monitor and logcat. I also use libgdx, gdx-setup-ui and TexturePacker. And of course an app that’s really letting me make some cool animations - Spine. I can honestly recommend it to any indie game developer that’s going to use 2d animations.

Bartek: I’ve never heard of Spine before. How did you find it and why did you decide to use it? Did you buy the full version?

Mariusz: Well I think I saw something about Spine either on Twitter or somewhere on libgdx site. I’ve downloaded the demo and was impressed how nice it worked. I knew they were going to launch the kickstarter campaign to add some additional features but didn’t want to wait until it ended to get my copy so I just bought it. And it’s a really great piece of software. I will have to update it to the newer version before I’ll start a new project though. They've made a lot of progress since I bought my copy.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Mariusz: It depends. Sometimes it’s a few days, a few weeks and sometimes a few months. On the current game I’ve been working for 7 months now, but I had some side projects, so overall it’s been about 4 months now. And I hope to finish it within the next month.

Bartek: Do you work full time on your Android projects or do you have another regular job?

Mariusz: I had a regular job but since April I’ve been on my own. I started a company and now it’s my regular job to write Android apps :D

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

Mariusz: I’d rather not answer that question ;). Let’s say that’s enough to make a decent living in Poland. I’m hoping that my next apps will bring in some more money though.

Bartek: Could you give us at least a very rough estimate?

Mariusz: Well, I know some devs are getting roughly 15-20$k per month from their Android apps, and that’s my target. But, for now, I’m roughly at 10% of that. Of course there are devs who are getting nearly nothing from their apps so even such income seems to be very high.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Mariusz: Well, all I do is display the AdMob ads. Nothing more.

Bartek: Did you try other ad networks/monetization techniques as well or did you just use AdMob and stuck with it since it worked good enough for you? Do you use banners or interstitials as well?

Mariusz: So far, I’ve been using banners only but for my new game I will be adding also interstitials, and I’m also planning to add some mediation and use other ad networks. Time will tell if that makes sense.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps have been the biggest success and which ones were below expectations? Why?

Mariusz: The biggest although most unexpected success was my broken display app. I was really surprised that people are downloading such crappy apps. At first, I was a bit ashamed that I did something like that, but then I read some nice comments and I’ve come to the conculsion that there’s nothing wrong in making such apps if it makes people happy.What was below expectations? the rest? ;)

Bartek: Why do you focus on making games then if those simple funny apps are so much more popular?

Mariusz: Well, those apps are popular but I have a feeling that games have a much bigger potential. And usually people play the games for a longer time than they use those apps. They might like broken display or lightsaber but they won’t get back to them quite often. On the other hand, they can continue to play games for weeks. Games also have bigger monetization potential. Players are more eager to pay for a good game rather than broken display. It’s also easier to make in app purchases in games. And, last but not least, they are so fun to create. I heard from several people who saw me working on Angry Caveman that the best part of creating the games is that you can just spend some time playing it and still call it your work. And I have to admit it’s true.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or SEO?

Mariusz: No. I use Pocket Change to drive user retention, but that’s all.

Bartek: How does Pocket Change work? Could you give us a short description?

Mariusz: Pocket Change grants their users some small rewards for launching the app or performing specific tasks. When you have enough points you can exchange them for an Amazon voucher, play voucher, Xbox 360, Nexus 7 or anything else they currently have. There is quite a lot of rewards waiting for users, some are cheap and some are very expensive. With Pocket Change users are more likely to get back to your app to get some more points. Broken display for instance grants you points for breaking the screen. You can get points after 1, 2, 4, 6, 10 and 12 broken screens.

Bartek: What are your favourite Android games/apps?

Mariusz: Hard to tell. I play many different games on my android devices. But if I had to choose I would say it’s Retro Racing on OUYA. I play it with my son. And of course my Angry Caveman :D

Bartek: What Android devices do you own?

Mariusz: I’ve got Asus Transformer, Samsung Tab 2, Samsung Galaxy S3, Sony Xperia neo V, and Samsung Ace.

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do you read regularly?

Mariusz: Recently none. I visit vogella from time to time but generally I don’t have time to read anything. I’m too busy.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Mariusz: I’m now focusing on mobile games entirely. I wan to to finish the game I’m working on now, then I’ve got some more ideas for more games. They are going to be simple 2d apps for now, but I would like to make some 2.5D platformer some time in the future using Unity 3D. Time will tell if I am able to make it. I also plan to expand to IOS at the end of 2013 or early 2014. My current game will also make it to the OUYA. I’m also thinking about making the PC version and distribute it on Desura.
If you would like to see what it looks like you can take a look at the early screenshots on my blog. I’m also thinking about building some websites that could bring me some passive income. I even got some ideas but haven’t had time to put more attention to them. For now, I’m concentrating on bringing Angry Caveman to Google Play and to OUYA.  When I’m done with this, I will think about next steps, although I’m almost sure it’s going to be another platformer game - I even started to make simple prototype to test my ideas.

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Mariusz: Don’t write another todo app ;). But apart from that - don’t be afraid. If you want to write a game - just do it. Want to write an app - sit back and do it. If it looks crappy, then scratch it and start anew. Don’t be afraid of failure. Usually only small percentage of apps is succesful and makes any money but if you won’t try, you won’t succeed.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Mariusz: You can find my blog at http://software-workshop.eu/. From time to time I post something on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mplaskowicki . You can check out my apps at https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=SoftwareWorkshop.eu.

Bartek: Thank you Mariusz for sharing your experience. I hope your game turns out great. I'll be glad to post some more information about it when it's finished. Good luck!

My new map apps and what you can learn from them

Some time ago a friend told me about App4Mi - a competition organized by city authorities in Milan. They just published an open data set at that time, including various information about the city, and wanted people to use it in their apps. I decided to make something as well, especially that there was €20,000 in prizes. I wanted it to be rather simple though, so I could complete it on time while having a full time job. After giving it some thought, I chose to create a map based app, showing playgrounds, dog areas, and didactical gardens. You can see the result - Green Milan, on Google Play.

Development process

I started out by analyzing one of the Android API demos featuring a simple map. I pretty much copied the whole thing, registered my app through the Google Developer Console (otherwise the map doesn't show) and learned how to add markers from the official documentation site.

Retrieving coordinates from the open data files proved to be the most difficult step, since they were in the Esri shapefile format I had not been familiar with. Fortunately, thanks to MyGeodata Converter, I was able to transform them into JSON, which I then parsed with a simple Java program, extracting only the pieces of data that interested me and saving them as binary files.

I didn't want to use Google's default markers, so I found a very nice set of pins on Devianart and adjusted it to my needs. Take a look at the thumbnail below. Aren't they pretty? I didn't know that Devianart was such a good place for finding free graphic resources. I will certainly visit it more often from now on.

I also didn't like that when zoomed out, markers clumped together being totally illegible. I noticed that their amount was causing the map to glitch as well. That's where android-map-extensions came in handy. Just look at the example below and you'll now what I mean.

I wanted the icon to look like the one from Google Maps. It's quite obvious that I was inspired by it, but I hope that the similarity will not get me in trouble. I made the colors a little more saturated than in the original one and I put the symbols of places marked on my map. The effect turned out quite nice, as you can see on the right.

What I failed at was providing 7-inch and 10-inch screenshots for the Play Store listing. I don't own such devices and Google Play Services along with maps don't seem to work on emulators yet. I found some hacks on Stack Overflow describing how to get around this obstacle, but they seemed outdated and complicated, so I decided to just wait for Google to update the emulator. I hope they will fix it in the near future. If you know a simple method of making tablet screenshots of map applications without using physical devices, please let me know.

Please vote

At the time of writing this post, there are still 10 days to vote for the best submission. If you feel like helping me a little, go see Green Milan on the Ap4Mi site and hit the "vote" button. You might want to register on ChallengePost anyway, because they host some interesting challenges with even more interesting prizes. I'll be infinitely grateful to everyone who supports me.

Yet another map app

While working on the App4Mi submission I liked the idea of a simple map app so much, that I decided to make another one based on the experience I already had. Thus, Supermarkets in Milan was created, doing exactly what its name says - displaying location of supermarkets in that Italian city. It might seem silly, but judging on my own observation, it is often quite difficult to find a food shop here. More than 50 people seem to share that view with me, because they decided to download it. It's not a stunning result, but the app didn't cost me almost any time and I found it helpful myself. I expect it to get to the level of a couple hundred active installs, which is not too bad. I took the coordinates and addresses from Risparmio Super, but their data was somewhat erroneous and I had to correct it by hand, which I think took the biggest amount of time.

Other than that, I decided to give Airpush a try and display interstitial ads on start and close. My CPM right now is $2.84, which is much better than most banners ever reach. We'll see how it goes when the paytime comes, but they seem to be rather reliable. The only thing I didn't like was their API, which doesn't allow loading ads before showing them (it's all done in one step). Because of that, the ad may appear a couple seconds after closing the map and I don't like it at all. I expect that they will change it in the near future.

I hope you liked this short postmortem and that it will help you with your struggles with similar apps. Once again, I want to thank all of those who went to Green Milan on the Ap4Mi site and gave me their votes. You are the reason I'm doing all this.

Is making Android apps for everyone?

If you were wondering if you are the right person to start making Android apps, you should probably watch the video below. Thomas Suarez is only 12 years old and he can call himself a developer already. Are his apps super good? Probably not, but they do well enough to get him a lot of attention and a TED talk. Check it out and if you want to read more about him, go see his site carrotcorp.com or his Twitter profile. If you are a lucky iPhone/iPad owner, you might want to try Thomas's Bustin Jieber game as well.

What I'd strongly suggest to all those who want to start their Android adventure is:

Start small

You won't create another Angry Birds at your first try and, let's be honest, it won't probably even be a very good app. Think of something really simple or use an existing idea and try to make it better. Be it another cracked screen, farting app, soundboard or quiz, at least you'll finish it and belive me, that's already a huge achievement.

Learn as you go

Reading all the books and tutorials you can find might seem necessary, but too much information at once only messes up with your head and makes you discouraged. Learn while working on your small project and you will acquire just the amount of knowledge you need. Apart from that you'll have a piece of working code to publish or go back to later.

Get some help

There's a reason why when you go to school they don't just give you books and materials and tell you to study them yourself. It's great to have someone help you when you get stuck and explain more difficult aspects of a subject. If you know some Android developer, ask them for help or advice. If you can't find one, team up with a friend who also wants to learn it or at least search for similar people on the Internet. Unless you want to cope with the same problems others had when they started and which are easily solved.

Show off your apps

Don't just throw something away because it's not perfect. It will almost never be. Internet trolls can be annoying, but there will always be people who will like what you do and let you know about it. Don't be ashamed to publish your apps. There aren't many things that excite me more than seeing new downloads every day, even if there are only a couple of them. You also want feedback from people with different devices, resolutions, and expectations. Make sure you use them to improve and avoid future mistakes.


Now, if you're still not sure if you can create apps, go rewatch the video and think again.

Google Play Developer Program Policy Update

On 23 August Google released a policy update concerning Play Store apps. Its most important points are:


Apps and their ads must not add homescreen shortcuts, browser bookmarks, or icons on the user’s device as a service to third parties or for advertising purposes.

and

Apps and their ads must not display advertisements through system level notifications on the user’s device, unless the notifications derive from an integral feature provided by the installed app. (e.g., an airline app that notifies users of special deals, or a game that notifies users of in-game promotions).

It basically means that icon and notification ads are from now on banned. If you have any existing apps that utilize them, you have to post an appropriate fix in 30 days or you can get suspended.

All major ad networks offering icon and notification ads are working on changing their API appropriately or they have already done it, having predicted this moment to happen sooner or later. I got emails from Airpush, TapContext, Leadbolt, and Tap For Tap ensuring me that they are prepared for this situation and will publish new APIs soon.

So, is this change good or bad? From the user's point of view it's great. I hated those invasive ads and I'm glad they're gone. On the other hand, I know that some developers used home screen icons and notifications as main monetizaion techiniques. Without them their revenue will probably plummet and they might be less eager to create anything new in the future.

Fortunately, my only app that uses the banned techniques is Ad Showcase, which presents all kinds of ads offered by LeadBolt. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to simply unpublish it (since it was an experimental project anyway) or reimplement it using the new API. I was also considering adding notifications and/or home screen icons to my live wallpapers, since I couldn't find a good way to monetize them, but now I guess my dilemma resolved itself.

What do you think about the change? Is it going to influence your income? Let me know if you have something to share and remember to update your apps so that they don't get suspended.

Android developer interview: Johannes Borchardt from Droid-Blog

Here's another interview from the series. I hope you're enjoying them as much as I do.


Bartek: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do in life?

Johannes: My Name is Johannes, I live in Munich, Germany. I'm a professional Android developer and founded an Android-only company, ANDLABS.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how? Why did you decide to do it?

Johannes: I had my first contact with Android in 2008, when the first of my fellow students started experimenting with the SDK. When the HTC Dream, the first Android phone came to the markets, I was impressed and started focusing more and more on Android. At the first Droidcon in 2009, I then had my first public Android-related talk. I decided to go for Android because it was no risk at all. At that time it was obvious to us that Android was going to change the mobile game.

Bartek: How did you learn how to create apps?

Johannes: By using the web. At that time, Nicolas Gramlich's from anddev.org was (maybe it still is) the biggest Android developer forum. Since the documentation wasn't that good at the beginning, it was great to have this resource. I also read some books to fill some gaps.

Bartek: What books did you read?

Johannes: I used Android 2: Grundlagen und Programmierung by Arno Becker and Marcus Pant and Professional Android 2 Application Development by Reto Meier [Bartek: BTW there's an updated edition titled Professional Android 4 Application Development]. I didn't read Android books in the last year because they all cover more or less the same content. I prefer Reto's books though.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use?

Johannes: Since I already mentioned Nicolas, who is a friend of mine and also the maker of AndEngine, it's obvious that I have some experience using AndEngine. At ANDLABS we also use LibGDX though. For non-game projects, we use the usual set of libraries, such as the support libraries, google-gson and some Apache Commons stuff.

Bartek: Why did you switch from Andengine to libGDX? Could you make a quick comparison?

Johannes: We didn't switch, we use both. Our employees are more familiar with libGDX and it's easier to support multiple platforms with it. A comparison is difficult because AndEngine is an engine and libGDX is a framework. That's why we are currently also building an engine on top of libGDX.
I would say if one is trying to build a 2D game for Android only, it is very likely that AndEngine is the way to go. If it gets to lower level optimization or 3D, libGDX may be better.

Bartek: Where do you take app/game ideas from?

Johannes: Usually ideas occur when discussing with my co-founders, our workers and designers. They almost never come up when I'm alone.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from (graphics, sounds, music)?

Johannes: The graphics in our games are usually hand made. Sounds are mostly taken from several free or paid resources on the web. If we don't find something suitable and have enough budget, we hire a sound designer.

Bartek: Where do you find a sound designer and how much do they cost?

Johannes: I never found a sound designer or a UI/UX designer using the web, in fact I also never tried. It's all about contacts.

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Johannes: git, GitHub, Jira.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Johannes: About a year.

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

Johannes: We are a development and service company. Taking into account the revenue coming from this services, it's about 10k.

Bartek: Is 10k profit in dollars/euro? A month/a year? How many people share it?

Johannes: It's the EBIT in USD a month that arrives on my bank account.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Johannes: My currently published apps all are ad supported, some also offer in app purchases. My advice is that there is no silver bullet.

Bartek: Which ones of your apps have been the biggest success?

Johannes: I'd say it's been the AL Voice Recorder in terms of downloads, lessons learned and exceeding expectations.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or SEO?

Johannes: Yes. Again, it's crucial to know the right people. For example knowing your country's developer relationship manager may be of great help when you want to get your app featured.

Bartek: How exectly knowing the right people helps?

Johannes: Whatever it is. If the person in charge knows you, she or he will open your mail. If then you are showing a convincing product, it's likely to get reviewed or featured.

Bartek: What are your favourite Android games/apps?

Johannes: I think my most favorite game so far is Wind-up Knight. I think it shows how mobile games should be made in terms of monetization.

Bartek: What Android devices do you own?

Johannes: A Nexus one, Galaxy Y, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, Huawei Ascend 330, some other mdpi Huawei whose name I forgot. And a Google TV box. We have some additional devices in our company like a Galaxy note 10.1 and a Nexus 4.

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do you read regularly?

Johannes: I think, for time reasons, the only blog I read on a regular basis is the Android Developers Blog. I like to look through Stack Overflow every now and then. Everything else is problem related research.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Johannes: We are planning to release one new game this year and, if we are lucky, another one will follow.

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Johannes: Don't rush.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Johannes: Droid-Blog (blog), ANDLABS (services), Google+.


I want to thank Johannes for his time and patience. It was great to learn the details of his professional approach concerning everyday work. I hope it was helpful to you as well.

As a quick update, I'm working on two small projects right now and I'll show them to you soon. There might be a little break from interviews for some time or they'll become less frequent, because other things that I want to write about have accumulated and I can't wait to share them as soon as possible.

See you next time and wish me lots of fun on vacations, because I'm leaving tomorrow for a sunny place with a nice beach.

Android developer interview: Martin van Zuilekom from Cubeactive

I promised to give you another interview and here it is. I really like this kind of posts and I'll definitely try to get some more people to talk in the future. In the meantime enjoy your meeting with Martin- he definitely has lots to share.

Bartek: Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do in life?

Martin: I’m Martin van Zuilekom a 32 year old software developer from the Netherlands. I’ve been developing software for the last 12 years now. Started as a junior developer and progressed doing just about everything related to software development like UI designs, programming and giving customer support. That reason behind that is the fact that I’ve been working in small teams where everyone has several tasks to do aside from their main job.

Bartek: When did your Android adventure start and how? Why did you decide to do it?
Martin: I’ve always liked to do hobby projects in my spare time. I just got a new phone and it was my first Android phone. I really liked Android and thought it would be fun to create a small app for it. The first app I made had to be something I wanted to use myself, the result was my app Wish l!st.

Bartek: How did you learn how to create apps? What resources were you using?

Martin: I actually had never programmed Java before. I had experience with a lot of other languages like C# and Delphi. But the hardest part of writing for a new platform is learning the framework. I’m one of those guys that learns best by starting to code, so I looked at the samples from the Android SKD and looked up some tutorials from the Internet and started making a few test projects.

Bartek: What libraries/frameworks do you use if any? Why did you choose them?

Martin: I tend to limit the use of libraries. Currently I’m using ActionBarSherlock, the Android support library and the Admob SDK. The reason behind those are backwards compatibility for my app. I try my best to make the app look the same on all of the Android versions I support. Of course the Admob library is for displaying ads.
I also use one of my own open source libraries called Inscription. I like to share useful code with other developers and put some of my code from my own library into this one. It’s a simple library to display information about your app, I use it for my credits dialog and change log dialog.

Bartek: Where do you take app ideas from? 

Martin: Well this depends. A lot of my ideas come from myself. I like to write apps that I would actually use myself. Sometimes an idea can come from using another app and missing features or wanting it to work a little bit different. Other ideas come from my users, they can give good feedback and help me decide future development of my apps.
For design I like to look at a whole range of designs. Ideas can come from books, posters, websites or other apps. They don’t have to be similar to my own apps or they don’t even have to be an app to give inspiration. For example I can look at books on architecture to look at patterns, the use of colors or shapes. And sometimes this will give me an idea for a design and I will get pen and paper and start sketching.

Bartek: Where do you get resources from (graphics, sounds, music)?

Martin: I create a lot of resources myself. For the more common resources, like action bar icons I will first look at the action bar icon pack from the Android developer website. If I can’t find a good icon there I have a nice royalty free icon pack I found on the internet from brankic1979. If those packs don’t have the icon I’m looking for I will make it myself. I think I’m lucky that I can do that myself. Although it can take me a long time to get an icon exactly right. Sometimes it takes a few minutes, but sometimes I will be working on it a few hours, tweaking until I’m happy about it. Other resources like the app icons, logos, banners, etc. I create myself. I Want them to be unique so I will not use stock graphics for those.

Bartek: What other programming tools do you use?

Martin: At the moment not many actually. I use GitStack and Sourcetree for source version control and I use the monitor tool from the Android SDK for working with the Android emulator. I also really like Notepad++, I use it for searching files and other tasks.

Bartek: How long does is take you to make a single app?

Martin: Well this depends. Because I work alone, I like to use small development cycles. Most of the first versions of my apps took about 6 to 10 weeks to develop. But those first versions were very basic and I keep adding features with every update. My goals is that every release should work fine on its own. Yes there might be features that can improve the app, but it should be a useable app on it’s own. For updates I take schedule about 2 to 3 weeks for programming and a few day’s for final testing an preparing the release (things like creating screenshots, artwork and writing a blog post about the update) If an update needs more time testing sometimes ask people on Google plus or other communities to test the next update. This will take some more time.

Bartek: How much are you making on your apps?

Martin: I’m not going to write exact numbers here. But it’s not much at the moment. I’ve started publishing my apps at the beginning of 2012. For most of the months in 2012 I earned less than $30,- each month. It a bit better this year but it’s still more about the fun of writing apps than actually earning money from them. I’m still working hard to earn enough money to buy an Android tablet so I can use it to test my apps on an actual Android tablet instead of an emulator.

Bartek: How do you monetize your apps? Do you have any advice on it for others?

Martin: My advice is, if you want to earn a quick buck do not start developing apps. Like I said before I’m not making a whole lot of money with my apps. Most of the money I earn goes back into my hobby, for example hosting costs for my domain, etc. At the moment I use Admob banners in my apps, have in app purchases for disabling ads and I have a paid pro version of my app. I get about the same amount of money from purchases on Google play as I get from in app ads. I am looking for other ways of monetizing my apps, I would like to be able to have all of my apps ad free in the future.

Bartek: Which one of your apps have been the biggest success and which has turned up below expectations?

Martin: My most successful app is Note l!st. People like the design and how easy it is to use. My widget linear clock is a bit of a struggle. I thought I had a cool unique idea for a widget and it took a lot of work to develop. But for some reason it just does not get the downloads I had expected.

Bartek: Do you use any marketing techniques or SEO?

Martin: A lot of my time goes into marketing my apps. I think it’s about 10-15% of my time working on my apps. I usually take a whole afternoon to get the word out when I publish a new release.

Bartek: Can you give us more details?

Martin: Marketing wise I try to limit my spending's. I don’t have much resources aside from the income the apps generate. When I release an update I will usually write a post on my blog, post the information on the Facebook pages for my apps and inform my followers on Google Plus. If it’s an important update I will also post on some Google Plus communities. I have also several treads on various Android forums about my apps. But to be fair aside from the XDA developers forum most of them don’t attract many new users. When I publish a new app or a big update I will try to contact Android blogs and inform them about the apps. Although 9 out of 10 will not write back, the ones that do will likely write a nice post on your app and can attract a lot of new users. But to avoid them being spammed on updates of my apps I limit writing to these blogs only for very important updates (once or twice a year).
Other marketing techniques I have tried are paid review and advertising on Android devices (Admob, etc.) I have mixed results with these options. They cost money so they need to give a return for your investment. I can say that the paid reviews have not attracted any significant new amounts of users in my case. When using ads I can see a rise in the number of downloads, but I still pay more money per user than I would earn with my current monetizing options.
I find it very important to care for my users and to keep their experience with my apps as good as I can offer. So I have always refused to add any questionable ads to my apps just for more revenue. I never used push ads or other advertisements that I feel uncomfortable with. I always ask myself if I was the user would I be ok with the way I monetize my apps. I feel that I create a trust relation with my users and that trust must be earned and maintained.

Bartek: Could you tell us what blogs you contact to promote your apps?

Martin: Well most of them don’t respond back. I do try Android Police sometimes, Droid-Blog etc., but I have not yet got a review on those sites (and a dozen or so more). Droid App of the Day did a review after contact, and AppEggs as well. Also AppsZoom reviewed my apps after my request. My apps also get reviewed by other bloggers from time to time, but usually they do this because they liked the app, I did not contact them for a review.

Bartek: What are your favourite Android games and apps?

Martin: You can find them on my blog:
http://martin.cubeactive.com/android-top-5-games/
http://martin.cubeactive.com/android-five-great-android-apps/

Bartek: What Android devices do you own?

Martin: Just my phone, a HTC desire Z.

Bartek: What Android blogs/sites do you read regularly?

Martin: Android Police, Wolframs blog and the Android Developers Blog. I also have a lot of great people in my Google+ circles that post the latest news and useful links.

Bartek: What are your plans for the future? What do you want to create/achieve?

Martin: I would love to be able to earn a bit more money from my apps to keep continuing spending a lot of time developing updates and ideas.

Bartek: What advice would you give to other developers (something that you wish you had known before yourself)?

Martin: Be aware of the amount of work it can take to get your app known to the public. That is the hardest part of developing apps. Be critical about the quality of your apps. This is the only way you can stand out from the crowd.

Bartek: Where can people find you on the Internet?

Martin:
My blog: http://martin.cubeactive.com
My G+ profile: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108238734975008671651

Thank you Martin for sharing your experience. It's a great learning resource for me and others as well. Keep up the great job with your apps. Good luck!

I have to say that I get really excited every time I interview someone. They say that 90% of what you learn is watching great people and I totally agree. Getting to know other Android developers and their work techniques is invaluable and I hope it can give a boost to your work as well. I promise more great content is going to come soon. If you have a question you'd like to ask, post it in the comments section and I'll try to incorporate it in my next interview.

May the force of the green robot be with you!