209 karma · joined July 30, 2012
The earlier episodes of this show were easier to handled then the latest. It seems they are running out of content and are stretching very far.
Relying on one system for getting revenue from your site is always risky. In my case, the problem is that Amazon was the only affiliate that would convert. People trust buying from Amazon. So essentially in my case, I only relied on one affiliate to generate revenue also. Again, sorry to see it go. :-(
One nice thing about it is that all the methods/classes are named almost the same thing as native android. If you want to know how to do something, you can find the android solution and just change a few small things.
So my vote would be to not do Xamarin and to choose a different cross platform development environment. Cross platform is the key. If you do choose Xamarin, I would spend some time and do a little bit of training before jumping in. It's not like the ease of building windows applications in VS.
As for the 100 visitors saying "Hi, is anyone around here?" The chicken and the egg problem is a very common problem with social sites. The most common way I've seen this solved is by the owners of the site "faking" responses or filling in their site with fake content to look like it is active. They do this just until the site takes off. But it sounds like your project is not that large yet and needs to be built up larger. I'd say for you to keep at it or start another project that you can get more traction in.
For what it's worth... In my experience, only working a couple hours a week on a side project won't get you anywhere fast. I usually spend around 15 on my side projects a week. Otherwise, nothing will get done on them. You just need to make the time. As Gary Vaynerchuk puts it... go to work, go home, kiss the dog, and between 9PM and 1AM you need to crush it.
I wish you the best and hope you can make something happen.
Edit: Here's that keynote where Gary talks about having a side project and working 9-5. https://youtu.be/EhqZ0RU95d4?t=11m50s
In terms of getting more $, affiliate income makes lots of money. In the old days when we used to run sites with adsense and affiliates, the affiliate income accounted for about 70% of the revenue. If you had a good place on your site for it, I'd start by looking in to the amazon associates program. FYI. The amazon affiliate pays out from 4% - 10% of the sale of the product.
They also just started getting Tynker at school. I think it's optional at school though. https://www.tynker.com/minecraft/
From programming aspect, Minecraft makes perfect sense. From a math/geometry perspective, I'd have to see it to believe it. But one thing is for sure... the kids will line up to take that class.