ZaidiSoft

Monetize Apps | Best Ad Networks to Monetize App

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Zaidi Comments Off

Monetizing an app is a challenge many average developers face everyday. Either they don’t know what mobile ad networks to go to or they are frustrated with the payout they get. There are many mobile ad networks out there that you can sign up to monetize your app. With few apps I have in the market today, I have signed up with several ad networks that I am fully satisfied with. It does not cost any mone and you can simply sign up today and start making money right away.

Before I start you might ask, “Is it necessary to have more than one?” My answer to that question will be resounding, Yes. The reason is very simple and you should always remember this, “Never keep all your eggs in one basket”. Now I have answered your question, here are my most profitable ad networks.

LeadBolt Ad Network

Very easy to integrate into your app. You can display different ad format depending on app layout as well as device screen size. LeadBolt ad runs Cost Per Click (CPC) as well as Cost Per Action (CPA) ads. Both CPC and CPA offer high paying amount if users take action by clicking the ads, fill out forms, call a phone number or provide email address depending on what type of an ad they are presented in that moment. The other thing that impress me about LeadBolt is their high fill rate. It it always above 90 percent.

The standard payment schedule is monthly. To receive your payment on the 15th of the month for the previous month, you need to submit your payment request seven business days before the 15th. They refer this process as Net 15. To be eligible for Net 15, you need to have a minimum of $100 balance in your account. If your balance is below $100 or you did not submit payment request seven business days before the 15th, your balance will roll over to the following month’s payment. LeadBolt pay through PayPal, Wire or Payoneer.

Creating LeadBolt account as a Publisher or Advertiser is free. Try LeadBolt ad network today and let me know your experience.

AdMob Ad Network

AdMob ad network which is now owned by Google is one of the great mobile ad network that has been around since the inception of mobile ads. I started using AdMob about two years ago to this day without any problem or disappointments. Since taken over by Google, the network has improved in many different ways. Compared to two years ago, the fill rate range between 98 to 100 percent most of the time. You can literally intergrate AdMob SDK in your app in less than 30 minutes. The SDK instructions are very easy to follow and you need less than 10 lines of code, you are done.

The ad format AdMob offers is mostly 320X50 banners that display at a set rate in your app. AdMob Mediation is another cool tool that has been introduced recently. What this tool does is, if you have account with other ad networks that are currently supported, AdMob Mediation will serve ads from these networks. Doing so you can drive traffic from specific country or region or even from a highest eCPM network.

Earnings base on Cost Per 1000 (CPM) impressions. The more impressions you have, the more you make depending on that day effective Cost Per 1000. Payments are processed the first week of each month if your account balance is $20 or more. Any accumulated earnings that are below $20 rolls over to the following month. As a publisher, you can receive your payment through PayPal, ACH or Wire transer if you are outside US.

AirPush Ad Network

AirPush ad network was my first ad network that uses Push Notification Ads, Icon Ads and AppWall. The idea was new to me but I was really impressed with the revenue I was getting compared to other in-app ad networks. AirPush also pays on weekly basis if your earnings are over $400 a week which is big deal for developers rather than waiting 30 to 90 days. If your account is below $400 weekly balance, your payment will be processed at the 30th of each month as long as you meet a $50 threshold for the previous month. The payments are sent directly through ACH, Wire or your PayPal account.

Developers are paid on a Cost Per 1000 impressions (CPM) basis. You might wonder how they define CPM on Push Notification Ads and Icon Ads? Don’t worry. Anytime an ad is pushed to a device it counts as an impression. For Icon Ads, impressions are on new SDK installs basis. Very simple and it makes a lot of sense. Some users do not like these types of ads but from my personal experience, these types of ads a non destructive compared to in-app ads especially when you are playing a game or reading something. You can easily integrate AirPush into your apps by following their step by step instructions after downloading the SDK.

If you are looking for ways to monetize an app or best ad networks that offer higher CPM or CPC, try them and see the results for yourself. Just remember the golden rule, “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”. That’s all I have for today and you can find more about each mobile ad network from their sites.

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How to Create Drawable Background in Android

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Zaidi 1 Comment

Did you know that you can create drawable background in Android? I bet you didn’t? Creating drawable as background can make your life very easy. As you all know, compared to iPhone, Android devices come in different screen sizes not to mention fragmented operating system. If you are planning to use an image as background in your app, you will have to scale it to fit all screen sizes. You don’t want to have users who like your genius idea but at the same time you failed to present to them.

Scaling images alone can take a long time reducing development and app production time. By using XML resources, you can create custom backgrounds with different shapes and never worry again about screen sizes. Drawable background can be as stylish as you want them to be by defining different shapes like oval, ring, rectangle, or line. To spice up drawable background even more, you can apply rounded corners to rectangular shapes, border around the shape, as well as solid or gradients with different colors.

First, create your project as you normally do. If you are are using Eclipse like myself, it will create an XML layout for you. To create a drawable background, create an XML file and save in res/drawable folder. To create one, right-click drawable-hdpi, go to File ->New ->Other-> Android XML File, click NEXT -> name your file, [mine is roundbg.xml] -> select shape as root element and click Finish.

Rounded Corners Drawable Background

In this example, I will show you how to create a rectangle drawable background with border and rounded corners.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
  android:shape="rectangle">
  <solid android:color="#00F" />
  <corners android:radius="16dip" />
  <stroke android:width="8dip"
    android:color="#FFF" />
</shape>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

android:shape="rectangle">

<stroke android:width="8dip"

android:color="#FFF" />

</shape>

Only few lines and you are done. Very simple and easy. As you can see, <shape> is the main tag in our XML drawable background. First we need to define what shape our background is going to be. In this case I defined a rectangle on line 3, android:shape=”rectangle”. Line 4, android:color define blue as our background color. To style our rectangle with rounded corners, I added android:radius with 16dip on line 5. Last but not least, I added a red border with 8dip stroke using android:color and android:with respectively.

Other shapes you might be interested to know about that can be defined in XML drawable are android:shape=”oval”, android:shape=”oval”, android:shape=”ring”, and android:shape=”line”. I will cover these in the future unless I receive a lot of request from you.

Once you have created a drawable background, you can easly reference it as you would for other resources like strings or even images in your drawable folder. Simply reference your drawable file without .xml extention in your layout using android:background=”@drawable/rectanglebg”.

Here’s the project’s main XML layout.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:background="@drawable/rectanglebg"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:paddingLeft="40dip"
        android:paddingTop="40dip"
        android:textColor="#FFF"
        android:text="@string/hello" />

</LinearLayout>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="fill_parent"

android:background="@drawable/rectanglebg"

android:orientation="vertical" >

<TextView

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:paddingLeft="40dip"

android:paddingTop="40dip"

android:textColor="#FFF"

android:text="@string/hello" />

</LinearLayout>

Hope this helps and you have learned something today. Check out these two great books, Professional Android 2 Application Development and Beginning Android 2 to learn more about app development. Till next time!

Android Development Tutorials, Android Layouts android radius, android rounded corners, android shape, xml drawable background

How to Customize Displayed Text on Return Key | Android Input Method

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Zaidi Comments Off

Default imeOptions Dispaly

The “Action” text displayed on the return key or enter key in Android soft keyboard can be customized with different action values using IME or android:imeOptions in your XML layout file. Some of the action values that. I am sure you have come across especially when entering text in EditText widget are “Next”, “Go”, mirror image for “Search” and few more.

As developer, sometimes we do not pay attention to cosmetic details like this. Certainly, users who use your app appreciate if they can quickly figure out how to use it once they download from the market. If the input method is not specified, the default displayed value will be set according to the phone or device.

Here’s an XML layout with and without custom input method options declared for the return key.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TableLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

    <TableRow
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="First Name:" />

        <EditText
            android:id="@+id/name1"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="1" />
    </TableRow>

    <TableRow
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Last Name:" />

        <EditText
            android:id="@+id/name2"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="1"
            android:imeOptions="actionDone" />
    </TableRow>

    <TableRow
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:text="Your Zipcode:" />

        <EditText
            android:id="@+id/zipcode"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="1"
            android:imeOptions="actionSend" />
    </TableRow>

</TableLayout>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<TableLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

<TableRow

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

<TextView

android:layout_width="wrap_content"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:text="First Name:" />

<EditText

android:id="@+id/name1"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:layout_weight="1" />

</TableRow>

<TableRow

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

<TextView

android:layout_width="wrap_content"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:text="Last Name:" />

<EditText

android:id="@+id/name2"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:layout_weight="1"

android:imeOptions="actionDone" />

</TableRow>

<TableRow

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

<TextView

android:layout_width="wrap_content"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:text="Your Zipcode:" />

<EditText

android:id="@+id/zipcode"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="wrap_content"

android:layout_weight="1"

android:imeOptions="actionSend" />

</TableRow>

</TableLayout>

After creating an XML layout with customized action display on return key, we can focus on each EditText widget and see the results.

Emulator images:

Going through the layout, android:imeOptions is not declared on name1 EditText widget. When in focus, the displayed text on return key is by default determined by the emulator, see the first image. On the other hand when focused, the customized name2 and zipcode EditText widget respectively display “Done” and “Send” on enter key.

To finish it up on Android Input Method or IME, I have listed android:imeOptions below that can be used to customize return key with their respective action events.

Text to Display	imeOptions	Action Event
Send	actionSend	IME_ACTION_SEND
Next	actionNext	IME_ACTION_NEXT
Done	actionDone	IME_ACTION_DONE
Go	actionGo	IME_ACTION_GO
Search	actionSearch	IME_ACTION_SEARCH
Default	actionUnspecified	IME_ACTION_NULL

Hope this is what you have been looking for and good luck on your next app.

Android Development Tutorials, Android Layouts action event key, android ime options, android imeOptions, android input method, custom input method, ime action event

How to Display HTML Content in Android

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Zaidi Comments Off

To display HTML content or browse a website in Android you need to use WebView widget which is packaged in Android WebKit. Depending on your application, you can develop a very powerful app with impressing functionality.

Here’s a simple example on how you can use WebView in your Android application. First, lets create an XML layout that will include a WebView widget.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
>
<WebView android:id="@+id/webtest"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
/>
</LinearLayout>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

android:orientation="vertical"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="fill_parent"

<WebView android:id="@+id/webtest"

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

android:layout_height="fill_parent"

</LinearLayout>

Now we have our XML layout file with WebView widget. Before we jump into the Java code, we need to know how to display HTML content. There are two ways we can get HTML content into WebView.

loadUrl() – takes a web address as a string or a file in the assets folder. Also make sure you add access internet permission in manifest file.
loadData() – takes MIME type and the encoding. This will be your text/html file and the encoding will be the UTF-8 for HTML.

Here is the code that elaborate both ways:

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.webkit.WebView;
import android.app.Activity;

public class WebViewTest extends Activity {
WebView webtest;
String myData;
String path;

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
super.onCreate(icicle);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
webtest=(WebView)findViewById(R.id.webtest);

//Using loadUrl()
webtest.loadUrl("http://zaidisoft.com");

//OR displaying a file saved in your assets folder
path = "file:///android_asset/myfile.html";
webtest.loadUrl("path");

//Using loadData()
myData = "<html><head><title>Welcome to ZaidiSoft</title></head>"+
"<body><p>There is a new game called Traffic Officer.</p>"+
"<p>Check it out please</p></body></html>";

webtest.loadData(myData, "text/html", "UTF-8");
}
}

import android.os.Bundle;

import android.webkit.WebView;

import android.app.Activity;

public class WebViewTest extends Activity {

WebView webtest;

String myData;

String path;

@Override

public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {

super.onCreate(icicle);

setContentView(R.layout.main);

webtest=(WebView)findViewById(R.id.webtest);

//Using loadUrl()

webtest.loadUrl("http://zaidisoft.com");

//OR displaying a file saved in your assets folder

path = "file:///android_asset/myfile.html";

webtest.loadUrl("path");

//Using loadData()

myData = "<html><head><title>Welcome to ZaidiSoft</title></head>"+

"<body><p>There is a new game called Traffic Officer.</p>"+

"<p>Check it out please</p></body></html>";

webtest.loadData(myData, "text/html", "UTF-8");

}

As I mentioned above, remember to add access internet permission in your manifest file to be able to open the website provided in loadUrl() method.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

1	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

Note, if this was a real application, you will have to decide what method to use or create options with if or case statement otherwise this will not work. Read more from chapter 13 on Beginning Android 2 by Mark Murphy. It is a very easy book to read with full details on how to make a fully functional app using Android WebKit package.

Hope this helps and will give you the answer you were looking for. Good luck!

Android Development Tutorials android loadData(), android loadUrl(), android webkit, android webview, display html android, display html webview

Traffic Officer – Road Rage Android Game

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Zaidi 1 Comment

Traffic Officer is a new Android game that is now available for Android user with phones that support android 1.6 to 4.03. Panic is not an option when playing this game. Although the game gives you a real time adrenaline rush, you will need to stay focus to keep all the drivers calm. You can download the game today by visiting this Google Play link!

Game Idea

The traffic stop need to be manned due to bad drivers. Your job as an officer is to direct all cars including emergency vehicles. Try to imagine a police officer who does that when the traffic lights are out on one of the busiest intesection in cities like New York, Chicago, Joburg, Paris, London or any other city. It is not easy! Now it is your turn, go earn your badge! Any mis-step will make drivers angry and cause a chain crash.

How to Play

Like any other traffic stop, the principle is the same, first in, first out or FIFO. That rule ONLY stands when there are no ambulance and/or police car. Your job as an officer is to direct all cars including emergency vehicles. If there are emergency vehicles, you need to direct cars in the following order according to these these scenarios:

- Ambulance + police car followed by FIFO on other cars OR
- Ambulance followed by FIFO on other cars OR
- Police car followed by FIFO on other cars OR
- FIFO if no emergency vehicles.

Traffic Rate – Cars/Min:

Dubai – 30, Nairobi – 32, Sao Paulo – 34, Joburg – 36, Tokyo – 38, Toronto – 40, Barcelona – 42, Paris – 44, London – 46, Chicago – 48, Los Angeles – 50, New York -52.

Score:

The rate of traffic is different from one city to another. Some cities have much higher traffic compared to other cities. For example, New York traffic is much higher compared to Nairobi. The game is not timed but to receive a star, you will need to play for atleast 1 minute and score more than 50 percent. You will earn 5 points every time you tap the right car and the highest score will be saved after playing for a minute or more.

What’s Next:

Expect more! The next update will include 6 lanes. It will be more challenging and fun. So stay tuned for that. Don’t forget to rate this app and give us your feedback so that we can improve this game or our other apps that are on the market.

6 Lanes Update:

Now you can play 6 lanes modes after a recent update. It is more fun and challenging than ever before. You will have cross eyes but I am sure you can overcome that without any crashes. Play safe and hope you will enjoy it.

Get Traffic Officer today by visiting Google Play and I guarantee that you will like it!

Android Apps android game, angry drivers, bad drivers, road rage, traffic officer

Monetize Apps | Best Ad Networks to Monetize App

How to Create Drawable Background in Android

How to Customize Displayed Text on Return Key | Android Input Method

How to Display HTML Content in Android

Traffic Officer – Road Rage Android Game

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