Contest: Win a Free eBook on Android Marketing! "Genius Android Marketing: Get Rich by Outsmarting the Android Market"

Ok I was approached by somebody asking if I wanted to give away some copies of his Android marketing eBook. I was a little skeptical  at first because I had seen some eBooks out there from people claiming they were making their living off Android apps, but when you looked at there income 80% was from eBook sales and website advertising for their blog and 20% from actual android apps. I always thought that if they were so smart on how to market an android app then wouldn't most of their income come from apps that they have successfully marketed?

But this guy is actually making decent money from his apps. And has gotten a whole lot of downloads. Way more income and downloads than I have been able to get with my apps. So I thought he must know something right?

Well the only way to find out is to read his book. So over the weekend I read his book. Annoyed my wife a little because I had my phone screen on while she was over there trying to go to sleep but that was the only time I had free to read it. Was the book even good enough for me to want to give away some free copies of it?

As it turns out is was actually a pretty good read. It made some interesting points and got me thinking. Was there anything groundbreaking in the book? Some magical secret to make you rich from android apps? Well no. But it was very well written and although some of the tips may be things you already thought about or common sense would tell you. The book stressed these things and made you see just how important they can be.

If your like me you spend hours and hours making an app and then just put it on the market and hope for downloads. Your a developer and not a marketer so you spend way more time thinking about how the app should work as apposed to thinking if there is a market for that app and how to go about promoting it. This book will get you thinking more about the other side of making android applications and not just about the development side.

I've actually thought of some interesting things to do for the launch of my new app and will probably push the launch back a week or two so I can promote it better. Stay tuned for an article on what I do to promote my new drinking game app in the next few weeks.

Now on the the important part of why you are reading this post: The Contest. It will be open for one week.

Prize:
3 pdf copies of the book "Genius Android Marketing: Get Rich By Outsmarting the Android Market" by Jason Van Buiten.

How to enter:

1.  Follow @fiveHellions and @geniusandroid on Twitter.
2.  Tweet the following message:

• Win a free Android Marketing eBook "Genius Android Marketing" from @fiveHellions and @geniusandroid - http://goo.gl/ODgRs #AndroidDev

3.  In the comments, tell us why you decided to get into andriod programming.


Winner:
At 9PM Central on 1/16/2012, I will randomly chose 3 winners from the comments on this post.

You can find out more about the book here [amazon link]

Many thanks to Jason for giving away copies of his book.

Promoting Market Comments and Sharing

In an attempt to promote my apps a little this month, I've adding a couple of things to one of my apps. I want to encourage users to rate the app in the market.  I also want to let them easily share the app with others.

Accomplishing this is very simple and only requires a few lines of code.

First the code to open the market page so users can rate and comment:

Intent rateIntent = new Intnet(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
rateIntent.setData(Uri.parse("market://details?id=your.application.package.name"));
startActivity(rateIntent);

I created a place in the settings screen and placed the above code in the onClick. I also show a dialog after a user completes their 3rd activity asking them if they would like to rate the app. I figure by then the users has used the app enough to give helpful feedback.

Next I created a way to let the user share the app with others. I use android's built in ACTION_SEND intent that the user should be familiar with since its the default way of sharing everything in android.

Intent sareIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT,"Check out this app! https://market.android.com/details?id=your.application.package.name");
shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT,"Check out this app!");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareIntent,:Share..."));

I created a place in the settings screen just like above. I also show a dialog after the user completes the whole 30 day challenge and ask them if they would like to share or rate application.

Maybe this will help the app get more ratings and more downloads. We will see. I will put the same thing in my Bealse Street Music Fest app once I update it for next year's festival.