World Map App Update

World Map App continues to gain users, and the cost of maintaining the app is fully covered by revenue generated by the advertisements. I plan to fix a few bugs and improve the app soon, but I have not had time recently to work on the app. As far as I know, World Map App is the only map in Russian that offers maps with Russian labels. I believe this is the main reason for its popularity.

About 2600 people have app installed. The app has experienced steady growth since release of version 6. Version 6 was exactly the same as version 5 except that the app would automatically download all the maps in the user's language. The whole idea in version 5 was to allow users to pick and choose which maps they wanted rather than forcing them to store unused maps on their phone. However, as soon as I release version 5, the number installations suddenly slowed down dramatically. I believe this was because users did not want to spend the time to download new maps, or users couldn't not figure out how to download new maps. To combat this, when the app is run for the first time it automatically downloads all maps that are in the user's language.

Russian speakers continue to be about 70% of the users.

Not surprising, the top three countries where World Map App is installed are Russian speaking countries

I've included advertisements in the app to help cover server costs to host the SQL database and generic storage containers for the images. Originally, I was hoping to make a significant income with the World Map App, but it is very difficult to make much money on advertisements developing apps for Android that are free.
I've shown about 36000 advertisements, and users have clicked on ads about 550 times. I've generated about $30 on advertisement clicks.  The image below shows the earnings on a daily basis starting in August 2013.

I average about 300 advertisement impressions per day, and I average about 4 clicks per day.

My server costs include both the SQL db on Windows Azure and the image storage on Google Blob Storage. Azure costs (not including December) are shown in the image below. As of the moment I'm writing this,  December 2013 is estimated to cost $3.79.

My Google storage costs for Map App have been about $4.84.

Based on the cost and expense, I've made $2.09. Not much, but at least I'm not losing money, and the experiencing of developing an app has been invaluable.

World Map App Version 3

I finished version 3 of World Map App. The new release includes a new set of icons, and removal of the menu in the about activity. Also World Map App is now available in Russian!!! My wife was kind enough to do the translation for me.

Users should expect to receive the update in the next 24 hours.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.worldmapapp&hl=en

I'm working on a CAT bus app right now. The app will show the current location of each bus on its respective route. The app is much more complex than "World Map App" because I'm doing something besides just showing images. I'm using a sqlite3 database to store the bus stop information, and I'm creating nice complex SQL statements to select the exact bus stop time information for the correct season, day, and time.

World Map App Version 4!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.worldmapapp&hl=en

I finished up version 4 of World Map App. Key updates include the application size so that it takes up less memory but has the same high resolution maps. Also version 4 includes a Spanish Translation of the app. Users can expect the update in the next 48 hours.

Version 3 included a Russian Translation that drove downloads since it was released. The pie chart below shows the language distribution when I released version 4 a few moments ago.

As you can see, Russian users make up 60% of the user distribution. The next graph shows installations by country. 

As expected Russia has the most downloads followed by the USA and Kazakhstan (which is right underneath Russia, you can look it up on the "Russia" map on the World Map App).

Why all the growth in Russia? I suspect that the English World Map type app market for Android is saturated, but in other languages it is not. Also, I included a nice Russian map in the app.

Time will tell if the new Spanish Translation in version 4 of World Map App will also spur downloads.

 What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment about the best strategy to get your app into different languages?

Spanish Google Play listing.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.worldmapapp&hl=es

Russian Google Play listing.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.worldmapapp&hl=ru

World Map App v.2

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.worldmapapp

World Map App took a step forward today by receiving its first incremental app update. Everyone who has it installed should receive the update on their Android device in the next few hours.

You can read about World Map App on my previous post.
http://stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.com/2013/08/world-map-app.html

World Map App

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stackingblockstopreventoverflow.blogspot.worldmapapp

My newest attempt at supporting myself, my wife, and my little baby on the way is to use my computer programming skills to write Android apps and use the Adsense network along with paid apps to generate money. My strong history in C# programming allows me to switch over to Java without to much trouble. After working on learning the Android API and other Android issues for about a week, I published my first app today on Google Play, World Map App.

The inspiration for app came while Shari and I were in China. We were at a restaurant eating our food and trying to carry on a conversation with the owner using Google translate on my phone. Like any good conversation we wanted to the owner where we were from, but we wanted to tell him in more detail than just saying "I'm an American" (我是美国人, Wǒ shì měiguó rén). Of course the easiest way to show someone where you live is Google Maps and just point at where you live! As I zoomed out I suddenly ran into a problem; Google Maps only caches the maps for the country you are in so if I wanted to show him the United States than it would need to download new map data over the mobile network. Unfortunately my phone's mobile network at that location was pretty slow (actually really really slow), so as I zoomed out on Google Maps almost everything outside of China was blank and it wasn't going to show up any time soon. So Google Maps was not a good way to show someone where we live, and hence the need for a simple offline world map app arose. Another consideration for the app is that it is really simple, and allows me to get my feet wet with programming for Android. 

Key Features:
- offline world maps
- simple

Ideas for Future versions of the App
- More maps
- Higher Resolution maps (probably make a paid version for these because HD maps cost me money)
- Work on the zoom in feature to actually show it in more detail
- Possibly use AdSense 
- Add Translations