Developing an Android app from an Idea
I was in Bangalore on a business trip. As I sat in my hotel room on Jun 9, 2017, I was skeptical to push a button to publish my app on the Google Play Store.
This was my second Android app. The first one had failed miserably within 6 months of its launch. So I wanted the second one to succeed. Desperately!
The idea was simple. An app that gives you information about all latest available DevOps, Automation, Machine Learning and Performance tools. But 2 years before the launch date I had no idea how to make one!
Convincing Myself!
I had to convince myself that my second Android App, called “Tools” (couldn’t find a better name) can work. I mean why would someone need an app like mine? This was a fundamental question I asked myself. Well, I always needed an app that helped me to know what are the latest trends in the market. So I decided to make one to help others like me. It would send a notification every day about a new tool. That’s it!
I started with a Simple Material Design example app using the Android Studio.
Platform?
I was a big fan of Firebase and Google was heavily promoting it. I liked the idea of a simple json file as a database. Nothing came closer to Firebase in terms of ease of use and features. I mean you were using something created by Google! This platform was already 4 years old.
Why waste time, creating APIs on Amazon AWS EC2 machines and thinking of ways to consume those APIs?
So Firebase was the obvious choice because it was free. (it also has native SDKs which makes integration a breeze)
Since I was using Firebase, Crashlytics was a real blessing. You get to know about crashes as they happen.
As I started adding features, Google launched FireStore, which is nothing but a No SQL database like AWS Dynamo DB. So I ended up using Firestore and all other features of Firebase except Firebase Predictions.
Analytics?
How do you measure if your app is succeeding or failing? You need to define and measure the business metrics that are important to you. You have tons of tools and services that help you.
I decided to use Firebase Analytics, Google Analytics and also Amplitude. Amplitude is just like Mixpanel, but their free plan is way to generous.
Revenue?
As the number of users increased, I ran into Firebase Spark plan’s limits. So I decided to buy the Flame Plan plan which is 25 dollars a month. Now I needed a source of Revenue as I was burning money. I decided to show ads inside my app. I use a combination of Facebook Audience Network and AdMob ads.
What’s Next?
As I work on my app on weekends, it gives me tremendous joy to add new features and make it useful for my app users. I have received positive feedback from people all over the world. I am really lucky that my idea came to life and people found it very useful.
So on June 9 2017, I pressed that button which made my app live on the Google Play Store. The first person who installed my app was me as I had to make sure it worked as expected :) Now it has 5K plus downloads!
