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Hi all,
First of all allow me to personally apologize for the state that this has been in for too long now. Even with the little time I had, I could have done more. I guess have a problem motivating myself if I know I cannot make something perfect.
Secondly, I have the pleasure of announcing a long-needed and overdue hardware upgrade which happened today and which should have made things much faster for everyone. I certainly notice a dramatic speed increase. More and faster processors are a Good Thing (tm).
Thirdly, and probably most importantly: Since I was so frustrated with being so time-constrained that I was not able to deliver perfection, I have taken the liberty to silently hire someone else to take care of the site full-time. Flar (username "Flar") had her first day at work today. I've had the opportunity to work with her on previous occasions, and I can tell you that she is one capable professional young woman. She'll need a little time to get rolling, but she and I will soon be managing the migration the system to yet better hardware, switching from phpBB to vBulletin, creating a new structure, cleaning up the ftp site and migrating the wiki to Mediawiki. She will then take care of daily moderation of the forums and all the other daily and weekly tasks that go with properly maintaining this site.
Fourthly, we will in future have ads. I don't like ads much, but there's simply no way around it if we want to make this thing rock again. We get quite a bit of money in donations. (Thank You! You pulled us through even when we did not deserve it...). But even if donations were to increase significantly after the upcoming improvements, they will still never pay for the combined costs of hardware, colo, bandwidth and Flar's salary. We will (ofcourse) make sure the ads are never of the in-your-face, moving-over-the-content, audio-at-full-volume kind, and we will most certainly not dare to have ads until the rest of the house is much, much, much more in order than it is now.
For now, feel free to fantasize about what XDA-developers could be, since we will now have both the machine-power and woman-power to do something with these ideas.
Peter Poelman
(who is looking forward to spending some more time with y'all soon)
Thanks for the post, keeping us updated - it is very highly appreciated
I can understand what you mean with finding it hard to get motivated when you know you can't reach the level of perfection that you'd like, so thanks for keeping up the good work anyway
Peter Poelman said:
(who is looking forward to spending some more time with y'all soon)
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Thanks Peter for the system update - we all look forward to seeing you and your expertise
Was wondering why I couldn't log on earlier... This is great now! Thanks Peter!
one word : THANKS
Thank you very much Peter :lol:
This really *is* fast now, thanks a lot!
much quicker now !
Thanks
Its a lot quicker, and I don't mind Google ads if you wanna use them I know how painful it is to run a site with no money!
btw, it seems that the database, which had some hickups before, now can't stand the speed of the site. I get frequent phpBB messages about failed DB connections. It only gets annoying when you press the submit button after writing a lot of text
Much faster now and looking forward to the future developments. I'm fairly new but have found this site really valuable and users are very helpful. And welcome to Flar
Why don't you set upa a shop to help keeping up with the costs? You could sell accessories like BT headsets, MMC/SD/memory sticks, extended batteries etc. and of course HTC phones.
I think the people here would prefer to buy at shop.xda-developers.com than anywhere else, especially knowing that it will help to offset the website's costs.
XDA Shop
I most definately agree. I would buy all my stuff from the xda site!!!!
I think I'm starting to get a little moist!
Good job! 8)
I love this site! My wife reckons that i should have married it instead of her (i spend alittle too much time on my laptop).
Welcome to Flar hope you enjoy us :lol:
Last thing i agree if you set up shop where we could all go and buy a good lil tiddley bits i would do my shopping here.
But ads are ok and i guess both would be even better from the site's point of view!
Good luck and thanks for the fantastic site!
Great news!
The site is indeed much faster to load
Don't apologize about the ads, try to get as much money as you can to make this site even better
Welcome onboard, Flar
Thanks and great job, Peter
Hi.
Just wanted to say that I personally wouldn't mind a few adds if I know they help to improve and maintain the site. I am sure others will agree.
I am also glad to hear about the upcoming improvements, but a bit worried about switching the system type.
Hope you wouldn't accidentally loose anything from the database or the users listing in the process.
Any way,
Good luck!
This is a great site.
thanks, it's a lot faster now
this is a great resource site and even though i don't like ads, i completely understand the need for them
Hey guys (mostly the senior/mod/admin folks, but anyone feel free to chime in). Could XDA implement vBulletin's (I think there is an official plugin/option... I may be wrong about this though; I cannot say for sure since I am not an admin on any site that uses vBulletin, $user = phpbbWhore reputation system? If it's not built into the latest version of the code, I'm sure there is a 3rd party plugin available from VBulletin's official site (I know of at least a few of those that exist and would help if needed).
My thought behind this is that sometimes someone posts some really useful information and adding a reply that says something like "+1 thanks!" almost seems like a waste of a post to me (I really dislike "filler"/OT threads, but I still want to give the person credit). However if I was able to give a person a point (+) or if someone was just being a jerk for no reason (-), I think more people would take the time to think before they posted. Plus, since we know "post count" mean nothing in terms of someone being a helpful person or not, this would allow new users to spot trustworthy/reliable folks.
My only qualm is that I don't know if XDA as a whole is mature enough to use this kind of system responsibly, but I have faith that any real abusers could be weeded out fairly quickly. I think it would be cool to at least trial run this. Thanks for your time .
Hi DeeBG,
Yeah, it's good idea generally, thou i'd prolly advocate XDA going a step further right off the bat, and implementing a point trading system as a supplement to the donate buttons, especially for those without easy access to paypal credit.
Reputation has issues when someone on the fringe of the group is battered down for being different. Like imagine someone says "Let's make an iPhone section!". They might lose a years reputation in like a day. At least with a point trading system you're dealing with actual assistance or virtual services, rather than base emotional responses or crowd bullying.
I'm still learning about XDA's donate system, which seems fairly arbitrary or opaque. Maybe someone can explain how well that system is working out so far.
Cheers.
Reputation is built into vB, looks like they opted to turn it off. Good thing, every forum I've been a part of / admin'd, it's been abused.
I7redd said:
Reputation has issues when someone on the fringe of the group is battered down for being different. Like imagine someone says "Let's make an iPhone section!". They might lose a years reputation in like a day. At least with a point trading system you're dealing with actual assistance or virtual services, rather than base emotional responses or crowd bullying.
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The reputation system only works through "thanks", doesn't it? So your reputation cannot get worse, but only better.
I7redd said:
I'm still learning about XDA's donate system, which seems fairly arbitrary or opaque. Maybe someone can explain how well that system is working out so far.
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It's not much of a system - you can donate directly to xda, which will help cover costs of running the servers, or you can donate to individuals (like me ) whose work you like.
Well there are really two types of systems. One is where you can give a thumbs up or thumbs down on a comment (sometimes represented by a [+] or [-] sign), and then there is the "Thanks" system, as seen on such sites as http://androidforums.com.
I agree that the first system can and sadly usually is abused (I think I saw it work well on one private torrent site I used to belong to a long time ago). There is a somewhat "pack mentality" that some users can fall into, whether someone is "outed" (falsely or not) for being an abuser of the forums or sometimes members are found "guilty by association".
I would like to see at least a "Thanks" system in place, again the folks at androidforums.com (which I'm sure at least some of you are also members at or at least have been directed to a post there before) have this successfully working within their vBulletin-powered site and would happy to help XDA admins if needed (not that I don't have faith in the XDA site owners/coders, you guys are pretty awesome yourselves =p). Of course I would be happy to lend my ~10 years of PHP/MySQL/etc experience to the process if it'd help.
I would start a public poll, but I think it's really in the interests of the site owners (also they can probably setup a more wide-spread poll than I can if they want public opinion).
Your friend in code,
DeeBG =)
I think it would be good to show appreciation to other users but It would be abused knowing that you can knock down someone's reputation (last thing we need is more flaming)
Captainkrtek said:
I think it would be good to show appreciation to other users but It would be abused knowing that you can knock down someone's reputation (last thing we need is more flaming)
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Yeah, that's why I think a system where you can ONLY give thanks would be cool. Again, forum admins, let me know if you need any assistance getting it up and working (it shouldn't add a performance performance hit to the backend database/system... the php code would be very light and the mysql db would maybe grow a few hundred kB since users without thanks wouldn't have any data).
Developer Bidding...
Livven said:
The reputation system only works through "thanks", doesn't it?
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Still open to cheating using multiple accounts to "Thank" themselves here and there and everywhere.
It's perhaps harder to gain anything with requests from yourself, and gifting points to yourself, while offering up public solutions. Thou i wouldn't put it past someone to try.
It's not much of a system - you can donate directly to xda, which will help cover costs of running the servers, or you can donate to individuals (like me ) whose work you like.
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Hmm... There seems to be a growing trend on XDA towards "donation requests" or "developer bidding" in certain forums. (see Xperia x10 Froyo request topic for example).
It involves people collectively posting that they will each donate a small amount to their favorite cause. (Android on Samsung Wave being another good example)
The current running tallies of offered donations is also interesting idea, thou there is some concern that those who have offered to donate $10 or $20 dollars will actually do so once the developers have done their magic.
Again, the opaque or arbitrary nature of hidden donations is a problem here.
Without going as far as escrow payments system (for requests that could likely need time limits and a refund), a basic "pre-paid" point system should work pretty well. For instance, once a task is completed the points could then be traded back for paypal dollars, completing the "circle of trust".
Any other ideas on this?
(or is there already an active "services" marketplace here somewhere that i've perhaps overlooked?)
for sure you have heard about the new "XDA Developers' Android Hacker's Toolkit"
It is certainly a good idea to regroup all the forums method inside a book,wrote by hackers and geek.
the only thing I think is strange is that XDA focused on idea sharing and hacker philosopy.
So why do we have to pay for this book? It should be free, because it is not "original", all of us in some way wrote it...I don't want to pay it not because i don't want to spend money, but because I think it should respect the hacker philosopy.
what do you think?
meccaandroid said:
for sure you have heard about the new "XDA Developers' Android Hacker's Toolkit"
It is certainly a good idea to regroup all the forums method inside a book,wrote by hackers and geek.
the only thing I think is strange is that XDA focused on idea sharing and hacker philosopy.
So why do we have to pay for this book? It should be free, because it is not "original", all of us in some way wrote it...I don't want to pay it not because i don't want to spend money, but because I think it should respect the hacker philosopy.
what do you think?
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I think that XDA provide us with a great place to come and learn and share our knowledge. In order to achive this their is going to be costs and if they can make some extra money from selling a book. To then use the said money to make this service even better, i can only see it as a good thing. Also a lot of people find it easier to read from a book than a computer screen.
Edit - I have just read the portal artical, and all the profits are going to the EFF, although the money is not going directly into XDA, it will directly help and benifit XDA, as they have done in the past.
All revenue earned through purchases of the book on Amazon will be donated to the EFF, which has given assistance to members of our community in the past. It’s available in both physical and eBook formats. Without further ado, here’s where you can get it right now:
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Profits go to a good cause.
Don't want to pay, just read the forums instead.
Simple.
conantroutman said:
Profits go to a good cause.
Don't want to pay, just read the forums instead.
Simple.
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Yes the profits are going to a very good cause. And to be honest with you I don't have any problem spending the $23 USD plus tax for the book. I really don't see why anyone would have a problem with it. But you just can not please all of the people no matter how hard you try.
I ordered mine in October, 2011. After many delays (like the Galaxy S3) I received my copy from amazon on Tuesday. I will use this weekend to read it. Learn some pointers.
As mentioned, profits from Amazon sales are donated to EFF.
All other profits (as anyone knows that has worked with a publisher), will be minuscule. We didn't do this to earn revenue, but to give people a great way to learn about Android development.
Keep on eye on the Portal...we'll be giving away a batch of free copies in the near future.
svetius said:
As mentioned, profits from Amazon sales are donated to EFF.
All other profits (as anyone knows that has worked with a publisher), will be minuscule. We didn't do this to earn revenue, but to give people a great way to learn about Android development.
Keep on eye on the Portal...we'll be giving away a batch of free copies in the near future.
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Thanks for the tip, another good reason to go to the portal besides when the forums are down for maintenance.
svetius said:
As mentioned, profits from Amazon sales are donated to EFF.
All other profits (as anyone knows that has worked with a publisher), will be minuscule. We didn't do this to earn revenue, but to give people a great way to learn about Android development.
Keep on eye on the Portal...we'll be giving away a batch of free copies in the near future.
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Thanks for the tip, i will keep an eye out for that, stay at home dad = Poor
Good things come at a price..'nuff said.
I know that advertising, CPC, CPI platforms, and in-app purchasing are the typical monetization tactics, but these seem like several steps off from where many developers (including myself) are. I know that networking and meeting the right people may land you an opportunity to pitch an app for potential VC/angel funding, but other than that, would love to hear people's experiences and lessons learned with these types of opportunities.
generalu said:
I know that advertising, CPC, CPI platforms, and in-app purchasing are the typical monetization tactics, but these seem like several steps off from where many developers (including myself) are. I know that networking and meeting the right people may land you an opportunity to pitch an app for potential VC/angel funding, but other than that, would love to hear people's experiences and lessons learned with these types of opportunities.
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I am in the same boat here...I would love to hear some resources or ideas for funding that people have actually used, that doesn't involve things like kickstarter/etc. I have 10 App ideas sitting on a back burner now. I don't think all of them are money makers, but after testing the ideas on a sample audience, I firmly believe 2-3 of them are. All of the layouts, planning, theory, and even some artwork is done for multiple of them, but just need more resources to full get going.
Again, would love to hear what real people have done to get going.
asmocon said:
I am in the same boat here...I would love to hear some resources or ideas for funding that people have actually used, that doesn't involve things like kickstarter/etc. I have 10 App ideas sitting on a back burner now. I don't think all of them are money makers, but after testing the ideas on a sample audience, I firmly believe 2-3 of them are. All of the layouts, planning, theory, and even some artwork is done for multiple of them, but just need more resources to full get going.
Again, would love to hear what real people have done to get going.
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You should submit to this competition: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2355446&highlight=samsung+s+smart+app
I was reading up on the details, and the Venture Capital potential is intriguing to me - the grand prize wouldn't be so bad either. Are you working on these ideas by yourself or with a team? I'm lacking a lot of the programming end of the spectrum.
VC might be difficult
I'd say, looking at the current climate in the industry, it would be very difficult to land even a seed round (less than $500k) without a significant previous experience and a good team. Most of the investors perceive mobile gaming as a hit-driven business and I think they are right, it's high-risk and requires skills, cash and the right team to deliver any kind of decent results. I've seen teams raising seed / A rounds and just burning money.
As for personal experience - last year we've raised a seed round, it was quite difficult and I'm quite sure it would be even more difficult now.
Anyway, I'd love to hear more from others.
tom.mleko said:
I'd say, looking at the current climate in the industry, it would be very difficult to land even a seed round (less than $500k) without a significant previous experience and a good team. Most of the investors perceive mobile gaming as a hit-driven business and I think they are right, it's high-risk and requires skills, cash and the right team to deliver any kind of decent results. I've seen teams raising seed / A rounds and just burning money.
As for personal experience - last year we've raised a seed round, it was quite difficult and I'm quite sure it would be even more difficult now.
Anyway, I'd love to hear more from others.
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Honestly, if cash is a commodity for you (and to who is it not), crowdfunding is your best bet. If you can come up with a good trailer and and effective pitch, the money will start rolling in, to which you can THEN start attracting the VCs. That's what happened when I started my business.
JeffM123 said:
Honestly, if cash is a commodity for you (and to who is it not), crowdfunding is your best bet. If you can come up with a good trailer and and effective pitch, the money will start rolling in, to which you can THEN start attracting the VCs. That's what happened when I started my business.
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Yes, crowdfunding is a very important, and potentially the quickest, source of cash. Thing is not each and every product is suitable for crowdfunding. Just to give you an example - my project is a B2B type of thing and its main clients are F2P mobile game devs. I guess it would be hard for us to crowdsource enough money to start the project. Crowdfunding is great for B2C, not so sure about B2B.
tom.mleko said:
Yes, crowdfunding is a very important, and potentially the quickest, source of cash. Thing is not each and every product is suitable for crowdfunding. Just to give you an example - my project is a B2B type of thing and its main clients are F2P mobile game devs. I guess it would be hard for us to crowdsource enough money to start the project. Crowdfunding is great for B2C, not so sure about B2B.
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Be sure to get your apps in all of the app stores including Amazon (the name), GiveMeApps (no developer fees, get to keep 100% of your profits), GetJar (large network) and all of the others.
JeffM123 said:
Be sure to get your apps in all of the app stores including Amazon (the name), GiveMeApps (no developer fees, get to keep 100% of your profits), GetJar (large network) and all of the others.
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Good general advice but our project is not an app
Coastal Shows and The App Show
generalu said:
I know that advertising, CPC, CPI platforms, and in-app purchasing are the typical monetization tactics, but these seem like several steps off from where many developers (including myself) are. I know that networking and meeting the right people may land you an opportunity to pitch an app for potential VC/angel funding, but other than that, would love to hear people's experiences and lessons learned with these types of opportunities.
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Investors, Ventures and Angel Funds are waiting to hear about your new business - go to the Funding, Discovery and Monetization Conference Sept 12 and 13, coastalshows.com, and don't miss theappshow.org
Investment share
I have some investors for my app and we're at the stage of drawing up contracts. Not sure how to figure out percentage of profits (if we're lucky enough to get any) for myself and investors.
Any thoughts.
Thank you.
Mondo33 said:
I have some investors for my app and we're at the stage of drawing up contracts. Not sure how to figure out percentage of profits (if we're lucky enough to get any) for myself and investors.
Any thoughts.
Thank you.
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Tough question. Are they funding the whole development, marketing, etc.?
tom.mleko said:
Tough question. Are they funding the whole development, marketing, etc.?
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Yes they are.
My idea and sweat equity by providing content.
Mondo33 said:
Yes they are.
My idea and sweat equity by providing content.
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In fact they are investing on a seed stage, right? If so, I would expect to give them up to 20% of the equity. We got lucky and got away with single digits
generalu said:
I know that advertising, CPC, CPI platforms, and in-app purchasing are the typical monetization tactics, but these seem like several steps off from where many developers (including myself) are. I know that networking and meeting the right people may land you an opportunity to pitch an app for potential VC/angel funding, but other than that, would love to hear people's experiences and lessons learned with these types of opportunities.
Click to expand...
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Couldn't help but see this thread and try to help out some fellow app developers. I understand monetizing an app can be extremely difficult if you can't find the right person to pitch your product too. I'm an app developer myself and I attended the funding, discovery, and monetization conference hosted by The AppShow and CONNECT in San Diego, CA and learned a lot about monetizing my product there. I'm now going to be attending The AppShow in San Diego early January, 2014 where I can talk to investors face-to-face and hopefully get my app funded, I'm so excited!!
I want a developer that will make/help add on to my app ideas i have a few that are really good and i think can be big if made right.i want to be able to pay the developer a % of money made from the app/apps.so if you will built a great app idea and will take a % made from the app as payment i would love to hear from you so email me and ill tell you my ideas. [email protected]
i will like to try...
but it seems you email id is not real
PM you. Cheers.
so you have and IDEA and need us to develop for you.
Then you will be so kind to give us crumbs from that profit !?
It looks to me like capitalist exploitation. You know that we are no slaves any more ?
jalle007 said:
so you have and IDEA and need us to develop for you.
Then you will be so kind to give us crumbs from that profit !?
It looks to me like capitalist exploitation. You know that we are no slaves any more ?
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I don't understand the necessity of your outlook on this??? Capitalism is about supply and demand, pricing is what you determine your skill to be worth and what the market is willing to support-not that I really needed to state that. The issue has to do with your negotiation skills. If your skills are worth the measure you think they are worth then that is your negotiation start point, right? If you are offered and accept crumbs then you have only thy good self to blame if you get capitalistically exploited. And should that happen don't lose the lesson. Good luck!
Looking for Dev for Paid Project
jayinc11 said:
I don't understand the necessity of your outlook on this??? Capitalism is about supply and demand, pricing is what you determine your skill to be worth and what the market is willing to support-not that I really needed to state that. The issue has to do with your negotiation skills. If your skills are worth the measure you think they are worth then that is your negotiation start point, right? If you are offered and accept crumbs then you have only thy good self to blame if you get capitalistically exploited. And should that happen don't lose the lesson. Good luck!
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Well said:
Hopefully your tech skills will par with your negotiations....Speaking of negotiations I am also looking for a Dev. I am only just now beginning my research so have some basic questions on how to find one and what kind of costs I am looking at. (I realize that some will be dynamically different according to complexity.
If you can shed some light on this for me I would much appreciate it.
If you are interested in the project maybe we can talk a little turkey.
Peace
JOe