Increase Mobile Ad Revenue by Avoiding These 5 Common Mistakes

This is a guest post written by Richard O’Connell, Global Marketing Director for PapayaMobile and AppFlood.

Money wadsWhat we’ve learned from the thousands of Android developers that we’ve helped is that there is always a way to increase a developer’s revenue. Improvements to their mobile monetization strategy might be as complicated as A/B testing ad formats and encouraging advertisers to propose direct deals. But optimization can also be as simple as avoiding these five basic mobile monetization mistakes.

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Introducing: Making Money With Android Wiki

Over the past few years, the blog and forums have facilitated some great discussions about Android development, monetization and marketing. Today I’m excited to announce a brand new addition to this website – the Making Money With Android Wiki.

The purpose of the Wiki is to collate the information people are discussing on the forums, and make it easily accessible and useful. Are you looking for a database of indie-friendly multimedia resources? Or clear and concise info about popular ad networks? How about implementation guides, or mediation adapters? Instead of having to dig through pages of old forum discussions, you’ll now be able to find all this information easily accessible on the Wiki.

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Hacked

As you may have noticed, the website was down for about 24 hours earlier this week. This is because some lovely person decided it would be fun to hack the site. So What Actually Happened? On Tuesday morning I woke up to find the homepage for the Blog, Forums and Gigs website replaced by a … Read more

How to Sell Hundreds of Paid Android Apps a Month With ZERO Marketing

This is a guest post written by Jason Haddad, who works as a tester for wellresearchedreviews.com.

Often I have been asked whether or not it’s possible to really make a living from Android apps alone as an individual, and always my answer gets a surprised response when I give it. Not only is it possible to make a full income from Android apps alone, but it’s also actually pretty easy and you don’t even need any marketing. As overly simple and straightforward as it might sound, it’s actually entirely possible to release a paid app onto the Play Store, do nothing to market it or advertise it, and then just watch as the money pours in. I’d even go as far as to say that it’s unnecessary to bother with other more complicated forms of monetization (such as in-app billing, or ‘freemium’ apps) and that in this case the most straightforward approach really is the best, since people is always is trying to make and save some money, also using some other resources as credit card debt consolidation could be really helpful to improve your financial condition.

How do I know this? Simple: because I released an app on the Play Store about 10 months ago and have so far racked up nearly £15K from it (that’s roughly $30K – I’m a Brit y’see). I never did any advertising, I’m not exactly what you’d call a ‘pro’ and I didn’t even own an Android until 6 months before. But I have managed to repeat the process since then, and with this project I have invested and gotten personal loans to manage it, I’ve obviously gotten plenty of advice from professionals like the ones at SoFi.

There are several things to consider when applying for an instant loan approval bad credit and some of these can significantly improve your chances of getting your application accepted without unnecessary delay.

You can therefore get your cash quickly and avoid the stress and worry of being unable to pay your bills and put food on the table.

Of course though to make this work you also need to know what you’re doing and you still need some strategy. Fortunately I’m about to share with you what made my apps a hit and what some of the secrets to success are. Follow these tips and you too can start earning a living from Android apps.

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Why Android May Soon Be The Dominant Platform for Mobile Advertising

This is a guest post written by Michael Essany, senior editor of Mobile Marketing Watch.

Android PhoneRarely stated but universally accepted, mobile apps have played a pivotal role in creating the market duopoly that iOS and Android now enjoy.

Without their enthusiastic and prolific developer communities, it’s unlikely that iOS and Android would collectively account for a staggering 93% of worldwide smartphones today.

Curiously, the exceedingly important factor of developer platform preference is almost never taken into consideration when the future of mobile advertising is discussed. Instead, the headlines continue to reflect the present edge iOS retains over Android on mobile advertising revenue. You can also how to use the spy app spybubble iphone spy app review and learn how to use it for your advantage.

Alas, we are simply expected to believe that what is true today will somehow still be true tomorrow. But if you look closely at what developers have communicated to us with their actions, particularly during the last twelve months, a cogent argument can be made for why Android may soon emerge as the dominant platform for mobile advertising.

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Opening For Guest Authors

Over the past couple of years this blog has documented my personal journey developing and monetizing Android apps. The initial goal of $1000/month seemed lofty at the time – but since October 2011, I’ve continued to exceed this target every month. Now it’s time to move on to a new stage in the site’s evolution. … Read more

Reply To Comments Enabled For All Google Play Developers

A few months ago we heard that Google had started enabling “reply to comments” for selected Android developers on Google Play. Unfortunately I didn’t get access at the time, and have been waiting for a chance to try it out ever since. Well it seems like today is the big day. According to the official announcement by Google, all developers can now reply to comments on Google Play.

Screenshot of Google Play developer feature - Reply To User Reviews

This new feature is a big deal for many Android developers. Anyone who’s released an app on Google Play knows what it’s like to receive a negative review, complaining about problems which have already been fixed, or are simply the result of a misunderstanding by the user. This kind of thing happens all the time. And up until now, it’s been impossible to follow up with these users.

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Making Money With Android On IRC

Hi everyone! Forum member Gabriele (megasoft78) recently posted a thread about creating an IRC channel for this website. This would provide an avenue for realtime discussion, and another way of exchanging ideas with the people who already frequent the blog and forums. The feedback so far has been very positive, so we now have a new … Read more

Android Income Report #8 (November 2011)

Euro CashOverview

In my October report, I described how this one simple app turned into an overnight success. Fake iPhone 4S brought in over $700 in October alone, helping to bring my total earnings for that month over the nominal target of $1000.

In November, these already fantastic results improved in every way. Total Active Installs went from ~140,000 at the end of October to over 400,000 by mid-November. By the end of November, I’d reached about 1.2 million total installs. This boost in downloads seemed to be mostly self-propagating. By reaching the top Trending charts for the Android Market, it was noticed by a lot of people, which in turn helped keep it in the top charts.

It still amazes me that an app which I created as a casual idea in my free time would reach this level of popularity. There’s no way I would have predicted this number of people could be interested in downloading a Fake iPhone. But I tried it – and apparently a lot of people do want this kind of app.

Anyway, this torrent of new users brought a proportional increase in revenue. In fact, during November I brought in an average of over $200 per day! This was an incredibly exciting month for me – and busy too, as I released a number of updates.

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New Android SDK Tools and ADT Revision 17

Android with Screwdriver and Spanner InlaidThe Android Developers blog just announced an update for the Android SDK Tools and ADB. This new release, version 17, brings many improvements to the build process. Here are some of my favourite new features:

  • Added check for Android API calls that require a version of Android higher than the minimum supported version. This will save you from having to test your app on Android 1.6 for example, only to have it fail due to an API call that was introduced in Android 2.1
  • Added a feature that allows you to run some code only in debug mode. Builds now generate a class called BuildConfig containing a DEBUG constant that is automatically set according to your build type. You can check the (BuildConfig.DEBUG) constant in your code to run debug-only functions such as outputting debug logs.
  • Added feature to automatically setup JAR dependencies. Any .jar files in the /libs folder are added to the build configuration (similar to how the Ant build system works). Also, .jar files needed by library projects are also automatically added to projects that depend on those library projects.
  • Updated the resource chooser to show the resolved value for resources. For example, when selecting @string/hello the chooser displays a resolved value such as “Hello World”). The resource chooser also now allows you to edit the chosen value directly.

There are plenty more changes to be found in the SDK Release Notes and ADT Release Notes. The Android Emulator can now run x86 system images at native speed, thanks to contributions from Intel. Lint has also received a major upgrade, with 40 new rules checking for performance and code issues.

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