My Business plans for this year 2020

Past few days I was putting significant effort to set my business plans for this year 2020.

Initially, I thought of taking many new business initiatives this year. But after doing a lot of analysis I finally decided to stick with a few things.

Based on my analysis, it seems I am interested in below 3 things.

- Software Development
- Motivational Quotes
- Emerging Technology News

In the case of Software Development,  I have a good opportunity to earn from our Timesheet software. 

I already have good SEO done for the timesheet software landing page and have enough supporting materials (Demo, Video, Screenshots). So I can easily earn money by simply running Google Ad campaigns which I already set up and optimized.  Mostly the cost of running ads will be more than the timesheet software price as I set a very low price. But in the long run, I will be able to achieve positive revenue by doing custom changes to the sold copies and from organic sales. i-e I will be able to earn from this approach only if I spend time doing custom changes. I will not have enough time for doing this.  Previously I had a small Development Team to support me for doing this. But currently, I don't have any Team member. I found difficulty in hiring/training/retaining the Team members.  So, I will keep this plan on hold until I get any suitable Team members.

In the case of Motivational Quotes,  it is an opportunity to earn passive money by showing Quotes in various formats, like Website, Android App, and Books.
I had spent a lot of time and effort in collecting good quotes and putting them in various formats. And, I had spent a lot of money on promoting them.  But currently, I am not earning from it. But still, I continue putting constant efforts to promote them as I feel dealing with Quotes and other motivational stuff is personally keep me encouraged, and daily I am learning a lot of new things from these efforts.

In the case of Emerging Technology News, I earn significant money from my YouTube Channel which I primarily used to upload news Videos  related to Emerging technologies like Biotechnology, Robots, IoT, Virtual Reality,  Drones, 3D printing, Nano Technology, CRISPR Gene Editing, Material Science, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Bionic tech, autonomous vehicles, new Batteries, Wearables, Computer vision, and other Gadgets. As this Channel is growing very fast, I am planning to give high priority to run this channel effectively.  I would like to make this channel as a bridge connecting the Scientists and Business People. I am planning to do live discussions frequently. And, I would like to invite Technology experts to join me on the Live discussions. Before doing that I am planning to increase the number of subscribers so that many Technology experts will be more interested to accept my invitation by hoping to reach more audiences for their speech. So, I started running Google Ads for promoting my channel.

In short, developing my Youtube channel will be the primary focus for this year 2020. But this decision is having some risks. For example, previously YouTube disabled monetization for my Channel 2 times. So, I am exploring some options to manage this risk. For example, publishing the technology news on some other places (E.g RtoZ.Org website) also.

Apart from these things, I have a key reason for choosing this option. Comparing to other business opportunities, running a YouTube channel will require less, flexible and stress-free work time which will be helpful for improving the quality of life.

I welcome any suggestions and tips for improving the quality of my YouTube Channel.  I believe in a win-win approach. So, contact me (rajamanickam.a@gmail.com) if you believe that your technical experience and passion for technology can be helpful for the viewers of my YouTube channel. Especially I prefer People living in and around Tuticorin so that we can meet personally. In return, my Channel can give you the needed exposure and I can provide the guidance for making use of your passion in the right way by using my experience of doing online business and software development.

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Kindle Count Down Deal for promoting Motivational Quotes Book.

Around one year back, I had published a Motivational Quotes Book. Now I am planning to promote it by spending significant efforts as this Book has started getting some good reviews.

As part of the promotion efforts,  I am running a Kindle Countdown Deal so that People can buy it for just $0.99 during this Offer period which will end on Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 12:00 AM PDT.

So, if you are interested, you can buy it from Amazon.

If you are looking for a good Christmas gift, you can consider this book. In this case, you can check it by reading the Kindle book first, and then if you like it you may buy the paperback version for giving as Christmas Gift.

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Updated our Motivational Quotes App to include "Night Mode" feature and to add Author Links.

I have released new version (versions 1.11) of our Motivational Quotes App  with below features.

• Added Night Mode /Dark Mode Option.
• Added Clickable Links to Author Names.
• Optimized the Code to reduce file size.

A lot of people downloaded our Quotes App from Google play store. It is good to know that more than 20K people installed it in their mobile devices. But the DAU (Daily Active Users) and Active Installations are very low.
Based on the users' feedback, I thought adding Night Mode option can fix this user retention problem.

I had provided navigation buttons, shuffle button and Rate button at bottom of the screen for this App. Since there is no space available for adding any additional button, I decided to add Tool bar / Action bar menu for including Night Mode feature.

I added the Toolbar by including below piece of code in the layout xml file of the main activity.

<androidx.appcompat.widget.Toolbar
android:id="@+id/my_toolbar"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
android:background="?attr/colorPrimary"
app:theme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Dark.ActionBar"
app:popupTheme="@style/ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light"

/>

Then changed the Apptheme as Theme.AppCompat.DayNight.NoActionBar


And, then called setSupportActionBar at the starting of the onCreate in the main activity.

//for showing Toolsbar/Action bar
Toolbar my_toolbar = findViewById(R.id.my_toolbar);
setSupportActionBar(my_toolbar);

Then I created, menu.xml to include the menu items.  I added few other menu items in addtion to the Night Mode menu.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">

<item
android:id="@+id/menuNightMode"
android:title="Change Night Mode" />

<item
android:id="@+id/menuBooks"
android:title="Quotes Books" />

<item
android:id="@+id/menuVideo"
android:title="Quotes Video" />
<item
android:id="@+id/menuPrivacy"
android:title="Privacy" />
</menu>

Added below function for creating the menu by populating the menu items.

//For showing Tool bar menu
@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
MenuInflater menuInflater = getMenuInflater();
menuInflater.inflate(R.menu.menu, menu);
return true;
}

For implementing the menu action, I added below piece of code.

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {

switch(item.getItemId()){
case R.id.menuNightMode:
if (AppCompatDelegate.getDefaultNightMode()==AppCompatDelegate.MODE_NIGHT_YES) {
AppCompatDelegate.setDefaultNightMode(AppCompatDelegate.MODE_NIGHT_NO);
}
else {
AppCompatDelegate.setDefaultNightMode(AppCompatDelegate.MODE_NIGHT_YES);

}
this.recreate();
break;

case R.id.menuBooks:
open_url("https://www.thequotes.net/motivational-ebook/");
break;

case R.id.menuVideo:
open_url("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pfwBa9Ibvw");
break;
case R.id.menuPrivacy:
open_url("https://www.blog.qualitypointtech.com/p/android-app-privacy-policy.html");
break;


}
return true;
}

I used AppCompatDelegate for setting the Night Mode option. I came to know that the Night mode change will come into the effect only after restarting the Activity. I spent a lot of time in adding code for restarting the activity without losing the state.
Finally, I found that it can be done by just using recreate() method.

It was working properly. i-e The current page was brought back while restarting the activity. But I found a problem when using Shuffle button. It was not keeping the shuffled order after the restart. So, I included the suffled data into the savedInstanceState bundle by overriding onSaveInstanceState.

protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onSaveInstanceState(savedInstanceState);
savedInstanceState.putStringArray("pagedata", pageData);

}

And, within onCreate(), I included below piece of code the load the shuffled quotes when restarting the Activity.

//Get the data to be swiped through
if (savedInstanceState != null) { //reload the quotes to keep the same order when restarting the activity
pageData=savedInstanceState.getStringArray("pagedata");
}
else //load data first time only
{
pageData = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.quotes);
}

Now I hope everthing is working fine. Let me know if you find any error.

As I explained in my previous post, I added clickable links to the Authors. It will help the App Users to know more about the Author of the Quote and read more Quotes of that Author.

I had to work really hard to add the Author links to around 900 Quotes. Let me know if you find any incorrect or broken links.

And, I optimized the code to reduce the file size as explained in my previous post. I replaced the Android support libraries with equivalent AndroidX libraries

You can install/update the app from Google Play Store here

Let me know if you have find any error when using this App. And, if you like this app, Review/Rate it and refer this to your Friends.

I am planning to add the Night Mode feature to my other apps also.

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Released an Android App to show Famous English Proverbs

I had published this Proverbs Video many years back, and more than 40K People watched this video. But reading Proverbs on Video may not be convenient as everyone will be reading the text at a different speed.

So, I released an Android app to read these Proverbs conveniently. You can freely download it from the Google Play store.

This Proverbs app provides a lot of Famous English Proverbs. We can read them simply by swiping them or by tapping the Right/Left arrow buttons. And, read a Random Proverb by pressing the "Shuffle" button.

It is a very simple App. So, the download Size will be less. And, it won't occupy more space on your device, and it will work offline.

Download it now and if you like this app, add your Rating and Review comments at the Play Store page.

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Updated our Business Quotes Android App

Recently I released an Android App for showing Motivational Quotes for Business People.
The aspiring Entrepreneurs can freely download it from play store and share your review comments.

After publishing this App, I have noticed a small issue. When sharing the quotes to social media using the Share button, the app was showing the HTML code of the link. It was not looking good and occupying more space.

I fixed this issue by striping the HTML using below code as suggested here.

public String stripHtml(String html) {
if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
return Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY).toString();
} else {
return Html.fromHtml(html).toString();
}
}

And, Google play console suggested me to set the Android Target API version 28 i-e Android 9 (Pie).
So, I updated the target version and updated the related dependencies.

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