App almost ready

Gazzmonkey

Starting to feel a little excited at the prospect of getting an app on Google play for the first time.

But I haven't had much time to look into Google merchant accounts or submitting the apk for approval yet.

One thing I can't decide on.. do I sell for cash or make it free with add banners? I'd love to hear from someone with direct experience in this.

salamanca22

Gazzmonkey wrote: »

Starting to feel a little excited at the prospect of getting an app on Google play for the first time.

But I haven't had much time to look into Google merchant accounts or submitting the apk for approval yet.

One thing I can't decide on.. do I sell for cash or make it free with add banners? I'd love to hear from someone with direct experience in this.

Can you tell us what the app is about? Can't really give advice on how to monetize unless we know about the app. Is there any similar apps on the store? How are they monetised?

I find that interstitial ad's are good earners and IAP's definitely are depending on the app.

Gazzmonkey

The app is targeted at competitions as a tool to record board games, haven't looked on Google play in a while but last time I looked there was nothing similar, just board game apps.

salamanca22

It's hard to say. Apps that have a price tag aren't really earners anymore as less and less people like to pay before they get to check out the app.

You could add interstitial ad's and a banner somewhere in the app and offer an IAP to remove the ad's. I think that would be a good way to go.

Seems the target market is going to be really really small though as well so I would not expect much income from it.

If you feel that your app will be really popular in the boardgame niche though you could put a price tag on it instead of the ad's as I feel if it's gonna be used in tournaments then people will not want to have ads taking up real estate.

It's a tough one OP. Niche apps always are.

Good luck with it!

The Corinthian

Honestly, were I you, I'd probably not bother releasing it as anything other than a free app.

Why? Because without proper marketing you'll almost certainly get SFA downloads in the grand scheme of things. The vast majority of indie apps have under 1,000 downloads (and a fraction of those remain installed for long), leaving them with an advertising audience of SFA - not even enough to reach the minimum balance necessary to receive a payout from AdMob or one of the other Ad networks and essentially you'll be spending time and effort integrating adverts, for which you'll almost certainly never see a penny.

Same goes for in-app payments or separate paid / free. There's integration work in the former and the latter would necessitate creating a free version which is 'crippled' enough to encourage people to pay, but not so crippled that they will just uninstall it.

Of course you could be one of the lucky ones; the Flappy Birds or Yo's that go viral because they're so good. Back on planet Earth though, you'd probably have better luck making money with the Lotto and whether all of these 'lucky ones' are really succeeding on their own merits, has been put into question.

So my advice is either invest time and money in a marketing campaign for your app, so you'll get the numbers that will make advertising viable and failing that, if you can differentiate your free and paid version sufficiently with minimum effort, go for that. Realistically you'll probably only ever see less than 10 Euro in sales (of which you'll only get 70%), with the latter, so don't spend too much time on it.

Gazzmonkey

Thanks for the pointers guys, I was never expecting to make much cash out of this anyway. It's more like practice for the next app which I would say will be a game of some sort.

But back to the present, what exactly do I need other than a merchant account to get an app published?

Quazzie

How about releasing it as free and having the video of the game with your logo in the corner, that way if it's ever put on Youtube at lease the name of you app will be getting out there. Not really a moneymaker but might look better on your portfolio.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

Gazzmonkey wrote: »

Thanks for the pointers guys, I was never expecting to make much cash out of this anyway. It's more like practice for the next app which I would say will be a game of some sort.

But back to the present, what exactly do I need other than a merchant account to get an app published?

Not much. A merchant account is a $25 lifetime fee. You need to create and sign it with your own key to upload. Don't lose this key or forget password! Or you won't be able to upload new versions under the same package name.

You're required to have a 512x512 version of your app icon, 2 screenshots and now a 1024x500 feature graphic before Google will take your upload.

Definitely release it for free if it's your first app. You'll be more excited by the downloads count increasing and reviews flowing in than money.

You can also add ads in a futureversion, or have an IAP to unlock features.

Barginhunter01

Price low and aim for volume.

phishcakes

Sorry for hijacking your thread, Im almost about to release my first app but i don't know much about EULAS or how to write one from scratch, the examples ive seen online are fairly long, could somebody point in the right direction with these??

Cheers

salamanca22

phishcakes wrote: »

Sorry for hijacking your thread, Im almost about to release my first app but i don't know much about EULAS or how to write one from scratch, the examples ive seen online are fairly long, could somebody point in the right direction with these??

Cheers

A solicitor.

phishcakes

salamanca22 wrote: »

A solicitor.

really? is it that necessary?

The Corinthian

phishcakes wrote: »

really? is it that necessary?

No, but you asked a question for which a basic Google search would have gotten you an answer, so he put the same level of effort in to his response.

Gazzmonkey

phishcakes wrote: »

Sorry for hijacking your thread, Im almost about to release my first app but i don't know much about EULAS or how to write one from scratch, the examples ive seen online are fairly long, could somebody point in the right direction with these??

Cheers

I just took an android app EULA template from the google android site and edited it to suit.