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Comment by dev_at | Hacker News Reader

I made an app last year that lets the user track virtually anything. Most notably, it is possible to track prices from any website.

The app has made me a fair amount of money, but I don't really mention it to my friends or family. The thing is, I am Norwegian, and most people here use iPhones. Since the app is only available for Android, the conversation usually ends in an -oh, anyway.

The app (AnyTracker):https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shervinkou...

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Judging from many of your most recent reviews which claim that the product is buggy to the point of not working as describe, do you think it's possible a lot of that revenue might be due to the fact you're making it from in-app purchases which (at least, from the perspective of the user) appear to be non-refundable?

I don't think so. The user can test the app for free as much as he/she wants. The user only has to pay if he/she wants to track from more than one website at a time. Also, all Google Play purchases are refundable within 48 hours (everyone might not be aware of this though).

The bad reviews usually come when people try to track from websites that are JavaScript heavy, where the app does not work so well. Maybe I should have been more precise; it works on most websites, not all.

Nice. How do you "track" pages? Do you open a browser and extract the response?

Thanks.

Hi, the parsing is done with Jsoup. So it parses the Html content of the website, without opening a browser. Also it has a neat feature that lets you select the number you want to track by simply highlighting it.

The tracking by just selecting is magic for me. Congrats

Thanks!

Nice. There's many website versions of this out there. Big enough market?

Thanks. So far (8 months in) 30,000 have downloaded it, so I think the potential is there. It is more convenient to have an app, as it provides widgets and notifications.

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