The one big thing that fanfiction.net is lacking I think, is some sort of ranking/# of views stat. Kinda like youtube. I’m going to add a section that will allow users to rate a story and also add a section of that to the app. I think it might be helpful. What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Version 1.27 of Fanfiction Reader Available
2. Version 1.23 of Fanfiction Reader Available

• Fanfiction Reader, the idea that got me started writing Android apps. The reason I wrote this was simple, I’ve been a Android user since the very beginning, but never really had a data plan, so was stuck downloading the Fanfiction, remembering the names, and then copying it over to the phone via cable. Not very good. Anyways, this app made lots of unexpected revenue. To the point where I may port this app to IOS if I get enough interest. I do know that there are some apps already on the IOS that may do similar things. I will continue to update and improve on this app as we go along. One thing to comment on though, I’ve read reports of crashing, but I really don’t have enough data to work on here. I use the app myself every night, and rarely do I get a crash if at all. That’s why any feedback that you can provide me is critical to me fixing the issues quickly
• Ball Drop, my first attempt at writing a game. This was a epic failure, I mean its still making a bit of money (very very little), but I was bored myself after playing it a couple of times. The concept sounded much better than the actual game. This game made me realize though the amount of effort required in making the graphics
• Water Photo, I was interested in trying to replicate the effects of water in a simple manner. I probably spent the more time initially on this project than any of the others, since I played with everything, open GL, builtin drawing libraries and the NDK. Great learning process, and it still makes a bit of money, does about as well as Ball Drop if not slightly better. I think the stuff I learned from this app can probably be used to make better apps in the future, so the revenue produced is small, but a good learning experience
• Square Dot, simple puzzle game that I wanted to do. This was a quick game done with little fore thought, and the results definitely showed this. Worst of the bunch in terms of revenue. I event paid to do some advertising for it. Really a epic failure. Lesson to really think about what the end results should be before starting the project.
• FictionPress Reader, well this was just kinda a gimme. The sister site of fanfiction.net uses the exact same website layout, making much of the code needed to parse their website the same. Apparently though, the desire for original fiction is much less than the desire for fanfiction.
• This Blog started out as just a way for me to write about the Android programming experience. After that I tried to add more content to attract more readers, but somehow my writing lacked the ability to stimulate any comments. I’m going to rethink the blog, and possible make some changes to what I write about. Almost no revenue has been generated from the blog

So there we have it. Lots of failures, a couple of mediocre apps and one good one. Regardless of anything, I want to thank all my users for putting up with the errors in my applications. I’ll try to clean things up as we go along this year. I’m working on a new idea right now, as well as working on the Fanfiction Reader. I would love to partner up with someone who is good in graphic design for these new projects as I know they will do well as long as I can get them off the ground. Let me know of any ideas or suggestions. I already have a nice long feature list waiting to be implemented for the Fanfiction Reader. Hopefully I’ll be able to do them sooner rather than later.

Related posts:

1. Market Review: GetJar
2. Month 2 Status Update
3. Version 1.02 of Ball Drop Released

 
June         629
July          1710 (+ 172%)
August    4320 (+ 153%)
September 6605 (+ 53%)
October 5260 ( – 20%)
November 6530 (+ 24%)
December 8000 (+ 22.5%)

Here are the download counts for my other reader app:

 
Fictionpress Reader:
October 261
November 430 (+ 65%)
December 610 (+ 41.9%)

 
So there’s the download side, onto the income and Ads report. Here’s the table clicks/requests/revenue for the last several months for the fanfiction reader:

The main numbers to go up here were the click through rate and the revenue per click. Like I said, its probably due to the holiday season as I saw 50% increase in clicks with only a 17.6% increase in requests. I expect the numbers to drop in January in this case, but the high month is quite welcome.

 
Next up is the stats for the fiction press reader, not very high, but still meaningful to track as I hope it will grow more later. Growth has been steady, but not as good as the fanfiction reader when it first came out.

Like with the fanfiction reader, increase in revenue and clicks outpaced increase in requests, so again it is a high that’s probably not sustainable.

With this being Christmas, I also had a pretty decent month on the paid apps side, so here are the sales of my apps(profits is total sale minus Google’s cut):

Overall a great month with decent growth. Hopefully things won’t drop too much in January.

Related posts:

1. November Income Report
2. October Income Report
3. August Income Report

Now, I know I said that I would update the premium app earlier than the free app, but for this update I need to do both at the same time. The reason is that I’ve finally added the export/import ability for the app, but of course the import for the premium would be useless without a export being available on the free app. Anyways, to use this, just hit export DB on the free app, and then hit import DB on the premium app and voila it copies over the database. Note that if you are switching SD cards, you will need to manually copy the files over.

Other changes include a resume reading option on the main menu and also fixes for several crashes. I’m also halfway to implementing custom grouping into the app, but decided to do this release first.

Related posts:

1. Version 1.34 of Fanfiction Reader now Available
2. Version 1.35 of Fanfiction Reader now Available
3. Version 1.22 Fanfiction Reader

June         629
July          1710 (+ 172%)
August    4320 (+ 153%)
September 6605 (+ 53%)
October 5260 ( – 20%)
November 6530 (+ 24%)

Here are the download counts for my other reader app:

Fictionpress Reader:
October 261
November 430 (+ 65%)

So there’s the download side, onto the income and Ads report. Here’s the table clicks/requests/revenue for the last several months for the fanfiction reader:

Overall, the numbers were going to be around the same as last month, just a little higher. Near the end of the month though, all the numbers just double up, and it really brought up the total numbers. Hopefully that will keep on going for some time.

Next up is the stats for the fiction press reader, not very high, but still meaningful to track as I hope it will grow more later

This month was the first month for the premium version of the Fanfictoin reader, so here are the sales of my apps(profits is total sale minus Google’s cut):

Overall a good month of growth, and it looks like December will be a even better month.

Related posts:

1. October Income Report
2. September Income Report
3. August Income Report

• The database file name for now will be: tables.db
• We’ll just create two tables: Alpha and Beta
• Beta will have a foreign key to Alpha

I think that will be enough to get most of us started. First off, we should implement the interface:

android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper

This will help us create and update or database. Here’s a sample implementation:

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private static class OpenHelper extends SQLiteOpenHelper {
	private static final String DATABASE_NAME = "tables.db";
	private static final int DATABASE_VERSION = 1;
	private static final String ALPHA_TABLE_NAME = "alpha";
	private static final String BETA_TABLE_NAME = "beta";
 
	OpenHelper(Context context) {
		super(context, DATABASE_NAME, null, DATABASE_VERSION);
	}
 
	@Override
	public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) {
		db.execSQL("CREATE TABLE " + ALPHA_TABLE_NAME
			+ "(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, intValue INTEGER, name TEXT, content TEXT)");
		db.execSQL("CREATE TABLE " + BETA_TABLE_NAME
			+ "(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, intValue INTEGER, title TEXT, alpha_id INTEGER references "
			+ ALPHA_TABLE_NAME + "(id), content TEXT, content2 TEXT) ");
	}
 
	@Override
	public void onUpgrade(SQLiteDatabase db, int oldVersion, int newVersion) { 
		Log.w("Example",
				"Upgrading database, this will drop tables and recreate.");
		db.execSQL("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS " + ALPHA_TABLE_NAME);
		db.execSQL("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS " + BETA_TABLE_NAME);
		onCreate(db);
	}
}

 
So a couple of things to note here. The constructor will try to open the named database, if it does not exist, then it will be created and will call the onCreate function. If it already exists, it will compare the version numbers and if the existing database is a older version, then the onUpgrade function will be called. So here is where I create the Alpha and Beta tables. As you can see in the create table statement, a foreign key to the alpha table was created as alpha_id.
 
So now we have this interface implemented, how do we use it? Well, its used to help with opening a database, but we still need functions to read/write to the database. In my code, I created a DBHelper class to do this stuff. So then the constructor of the DBHelper will call the OpenHelper to help with opening the database. It looks like this:
 

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private static final String INSERT_ALPHA = "insert into " + ALPHA_TABLE_NAME
	+ "(intValue, name, content) values (?,?,?)";
private static final String INSERT_BETA = "insert into " + BETA_TABLE_NAME
	+ "(title, alpha_id, content, content2) values (?,?,?,?)";
 
public DBHelper(Context context) {
	 _context = context;
	 OpenHelper openHelper = new OpenHelper(_context);
	 _db = openHelper.getWritableDatabase();
	 _insertAlphaStmt = _db.compileStatement(INSERT_ALPHA);
	 _insertBetaStmt = _db.compileStatement(INSERT_BETA);
}

 
So you see here how we use the OpenHelper. By calling the function getWritableDatabase, it will trigger to loading/creation of the database. Another thing to note here is that I pre-comple the insert statements for inserting into the table, this will make the actual inserting of data much quicker when you actually do it.
 
So now we can create and load the database, we need to know how to read/write from it. I’m just going to show a set of functions for doing this with the Alpha table for now:

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public long insertAlpha(int intValue, String name, String content) {		
	_insertAlphaStmt.bindLong(1, intValue);
	_insertAlphaStmt.bindString(2, name);
	_insertAlphaStmt.bindString(3, content);
 
	long res = _insertAlphaStmt.executeInsert();
	return res;
}
 
public void updateStory(int id, int intValue, String name, String content) {	
	ContentValues values=new ContentValues();
	values.put("intValue", intValue);
	values.put("name", namet);
	values.put("content",content);
	_db.update(ALPHA_TABLE_NAME, values, "id=?", new String[]{id + ""});		
}
 
public Alpha getAlpha(String id) {
	Cursor cursor = _db.query(ALPHA_TABLE_NAME, 
			new String[] {"id", "intValue", "name", "content"}, 
			"id=?", new String[]{id}, null, null, "id asc");
	Alpha alpha = null;
	if(cursor.moveToFirst()) {
		alpha = new Alpha();
		alpha.id = cursor.getLong(0);
		alpha.intValue = (int) cursor.getLong(1);
		alpha.name = cursor.getString(2);
		alpha.content= cursor.getString(3);
	}
	if(cursor != null && !cursor.isClosed()) {
		cursor.close();
	}
	return alpha;
}
 
public Vector<Alpha> selectAllStories() {
	Vector<Alpha> alphas = new Vector<Alpha>();
	Cursor cursor = _db.query(ALPHA_TABLE_NAME, 
			new String[] {"id", "intValue", "name", "content"},
			null, null, null, null, "id asc");
 
	if(cursor.moveToFirst()) {
		do {
			alpha = new Alpha();
			alpha.id = cursor.getLong(0);
			alpha.intValue = (int) cursor.getLong(1);
			alpha.name = cursor.getString(2);
			alpha.content= cursor.getString(3);
			alphas.add(alpha);
		} while(cursor.moveToNext());
	}
	if(cursor != null && !cursor.isClosed()) {
		cursor.close();
	}
 
	return alphas;
}
public void deleteAlpha(int id) {
	_db.delete(ALPHA_TABLE_NAME, "id=?", new String[] {id + ""});
}

 
So that shows how to insert, update, delete and read from the database. A couple of things to note, the database uses Long’s for ints, so you’ll notice that instead of getInt or putInt, we use getLong and putLong for the values.
 
So that’s it, that should give you a quick overview of how to implement your database. There’s lots more you can do, but I won’t go into that for now.

Related posts:

1. Introduction to Android Persistent Storage Part III – Internal File Storage
2. Introduction to Android Persistent Storage Part II – Preferences
3. Introduction to Android Persistent Storage Part 1

June         629
July          1710 (+ 172%)
August    4320 (+ 153%)
September 6605 (+ 53%)
October 5260 ( – 20%)

There’s not much of a point for me showing the chart here as the bump really ruined the trend. Here are the download count for my other reader app:

Fictionpress Reader: 261

So there’s the download side, onto the income and Ads report. Here’s the table clicks/requests/revenue for the last several months for the fanfiction reader:

The beginning of the month was really weak, continuing where it left off from the last month. Incredibly, numbers started to pick up again in the latter half of the month. With new users and more usage, my impressions count really went up, but sadly the number of clicks did not. That is to be expected a bit though as September had a higher than average CTR, and this was more a reversion to mean.

Next up is the stats for the fiction press reader, not very high, but still meaningful to track as I hope it will grow more later

Finally, I’m starting to get a few more sales from my paid apps, so here are the sales there (profits is total sale minus Google’s cut):

Overall a pretty decent month and a sign of better things to come. Now with the high number of impressions I’m getting, I’m contemplating moving ad providers slightly as it seems some people are getting much better results from other ad providers.

Related posts:

1. September Income Report
2. August Income Report
3. Ads, Income and Click Through Rate

Admob is annoying me as it still says that the stats are delayed. I’ll give it another day before I just post the numbers anyways.

Related posts:

1. Fanfiction Reader
2. version 1.26 of fanfiction reader available
3. Version 1.22 Fanfiction Reader

Related posts:

1. August Income Report
2. September Income Report
3. 1 Month Status Report

Related posts:

1. Fanfiction Reader Version 1.20 Out
2. Update to Fanfiction Reader
3. Fanfiction Reader