[Journey] Bring my dead android app to life

babiguling

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Hello, this is my first post here and I’m not a native english speaker so apologize if I made mistake.

I’m a former android developer for 2-3 years (professionally work in a company), interested in security and hacking that made me learn and change profession into security engineer, actively doing bug bounty hunting and made decent amount of money from that.

Back when I’m still an android developer, I bought a google play dev account and made some apps to sharpen my development skill. There are around 10+ apps that I uploaded in playstore, some of them even won a local coding competition.

I like to do experiments, one of my experiment is making a ‘local’ version of a popular app. And boy oh boy, people loves it.

Thousands of people downloaded my app, with literally no marketing involved. There are always some new users install it everyday (well until it got taken down). Users is a bit dissapointed due to the lack of contents but still give me good ratings anyway :D in hope I update the contents soon.

Unfortunately, this app is a unique ‘content’ based app. I Can made it and update it daily but there’s some problem :

1. No CMS, I literally update the content via firebase’ json editor. And that seriously sucks.
2. Too tired, I’m still working in a company and not enough time to make content.
3. Can’t hire content creators, because I have no money and due to the nature of this ‘unique’ app, even if I have money, it will be too hard to find creators of this specific niche.

One day the app got taken down by playstore because I forgot to put a privacy policy page. And I’m too lazy to fix it because I haven’t solve the ‘content’ problem. Until now.

Around three years later (now), I’m intrigued to bring it back to life.

My plans are :

1. Refactoring the code into kotlin language for easier maintenance, and updates what needs to be updated (minsdk, compiledsdk etc)
2. Make a web-based CMS for the content so I can input the contents much easier
3. Migrate the backend from firebase realtime database into firestore because why not.
4. Enhance the feature (UI/UX, etc.)
5. Hiring content creators to make hundreds of contents to be filled inside the app, fortunately, after years passed, this kind of content is getting more popular and i found some content creators able to make such content. I already hired them.
6. Put admob ads inside
7. Throw some money (maybe around $500) for contents and gplay ads to drive more users.

My targets are not that much:
I’m not targeting for crazy revenue like $100/day style (doesn’t mean I didn’t want it tho). My target is getting admob revenue per month, enough to pay for expenses (adding content and server, although firebase free tier is mostly enough) and scale from there.

What motivates me to revive this app is that there is a new ‘similar’ app in play store targeting my local country, and already have millions of downloads. It looks like this kind of content is getting more popular.

Why did I post it as a journey? because I need motivation and I wanna keep track of things. I also crave your ‘wish you luck’ thingy, because it’s very meaningful to me. :)

Thanks for reading this garbage guys, I’ll update when any thing is done or achieved.

Oh, and also I welcome any tips, trick or anything valuable you may be willing to tell me regarding my journey.
 

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Good luck mate.. i really too should get back to this business soon
 
Great and nice with different journey but i want to see your results. Good luck mate
 
Millions of downloads seems to be a profitable app.
Most likely you are on your way to success mate.
 
Good luck mate.. i really too should get back to this business soon
Thanks mate. Haha yeah let’s go dominate the market >:)
Good luck mate.
Thanks a lot, really appreciate it.
Great and nice with different journey but i want to see your results. Good luck mate
Thanks a lot, really appreciate it. Hoping for the best results!
Good luck with the journey
Thanks a lot!
Good luck brother, wish you the best
Thanks brother, amen.
Millions of downloads seems to be a profitable app.
Most likely you are on your way to success mate.
Yeah I hope so. Amen and thanks!
 
Updates!

1. I have refactored the code into kotlin, some of the function is not implemented yet, but it’s enough for now.
2. Changed and migrated the database to firestore.
3. Implemented the backend cms, turns out there’s an awesome CMS named fireCMS for firebase/firestore database and it only needs some quick setup.
4. Since the app has been died for a long time, after I update the app, the rank is not good. So I decided to wait and focusing on enhancing the feature for a while until play store re-index my App.
5. The results is good! after awhile, I ranked second for a keyword I targeted and it receive some daily organic installs, still the retention is bad because lack of content, many users uninstall the app after they finish enjoying the content.

My next plan :

1. Start to insert the content I got from the content creator I hired.
2. Implement the rest of the app’s feature to make user retention better.
3. Start boosting it with ads.

Also, I have ideas to develop other apps, so let’s make this journey into reviving my google play developer account!

Thanks.
 
4E04DF0D-2733-4FB9-A788-539BA56EF2D1.jpeg

Oh, and here’s the firestore statistics for the last 30 days. It ain’t much but it’s honest works.
 
Can you share what type of content it is? Are you providing instructions of some kind, is it pictures/images/videos or text based content? Your journey super interesting, keep it going!
 
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