Getly
Android App Templates holds 139 active listings, measured 19 September 2026. It is a small shelf by catalogue standards, and it behaves differently from every other one because of a single property: the buyer cannot evaluate what they bought until they have opened it in an IDE, and by then they have already paid.
Everything below follows from that. A template is not judged on the day it is downloaded — it is judged the first time it fails to build.
What belongs in the zip
A template is a repository someone else is going to inherit. Ship it as one:
- A project that opens. The root of the archive is the project root. An archive that unpacks into a folder that unpacks into another folder is the most common avoidable complaint in code categories.
- Gradle and AGP versions stated, not implied. A wrapper pinned to a version the buyer does not have is a five-minute problem if they know which one it is and an afternoon if they do not.
- minSdk and targetSdk in plain text. These decide whether your template is usable for the buyer's project before anything else does.
- No keystores, no API keys, no service-account JSON. A committed key is not just a leak of yours — it is a key a hundred strangers now share, and the first support message will be about the quota it burned.
- No absolute paths. Anything containing your own home directory is a path that exists on exactly one machine in the world.
- The licence file, matching whatever the listing declares.
The second file is the documentation, and almost nobody ships one
85.76% of listings in the catalogue deliver exactly one file. The listings that ship two or three carry the highest median price of any attachment count — $9.99.
The most reused filenames across the catalogue say what that second file usually is: product-info.txt (190 uses), how to use.txt (71), prompt.txt (69), examples.txt (67). Sellers who add a second file are adding instructions, and the price follows.
For a template the README has to answer four questions in its first screen: what you get, what you need installed, how to run it, and what to change first. Screenshots of the running app belong here too, because this is the file the buyer opens before the code.
Say what you tested against, because the platform moves
This is the uncomfortable measurement for a code shelf. Across the catalogue only 9 listings have ever shipped a second file version, while 89.94% of listings are edited after publishing. Sellers revise the description constantly and the payload almost never.
For a coloring book that gap means nothing. For an Android template it is a promise problem: every SDK release, every AGP bump and every Play Store policy change ages the archive while the listing page stays confident.
Two honest ways to handle it, and both are better than silence:
- Date the claim. "Built and tested on Android Studio 2026.1, AGP 9.2, compileSdk 38, September 2026" is a statement that stays true. "Latest Android" stops being true without anyone editing it.
- Say what updates mean. If you intend to ship a new version when the SDK moves, say so and then use the file-version feature rather than editing the description to claim it. If you do not intend to, say that instead — a buyer who knows they are purchasing a snapshot is not a buyer who feels misled six months later.
The preview is what replaces "trust me"
12.33% of listings carry a preview asset. On a shelf where the product is source code, that number is the whole conversion problem, because the buyer has no other way to look inside.
In order of usefulness: a short screen recording of the running app, a runnable demo APK, and a screenshot set covering every screen the template ships. The recording wins because it proves the thing builds and runs — which is the only claim a buyer actually doubts. A gallery of mockups proves you can make mockups.
Payload band and price
The median listing in the catalogue carries 1.68 MB of payload and the median single file is 1.33 MB. A template repository is far heavier than that, so do not anchor on the catalogue middle.
Median price by payload band:
- 10–100 MB — $5.00
- 100 MB – 1 GB — $11.00
A source-only template without bundled media usually lands in the first band; one carrying sample assets, fonts or video lands in the second. Neither band is a rule — they are what buyers are used to paying for that weight, and a price far outside your band needs a reason visible before payment.
If the archive is heavy because of demo assets, consider shipping the code and the assets as two files. It costs one upload, it puts you in the two-to-three-file group that prices highest, and it lets a buyer take the part they need.
The licence, which for source code is the product
Across the catalogue 22.29% of listings declare commercial use, 19.16% personal and 4.91% extended. Most declare nothing.
For a template, "nothing" is unworkable. The buyer's entire purpose is to ship your code inside an app they publish, possibly for a client, possibly more than once. Say whether one purchase covers one app or many, whether a client project counts, and whether reselling the template itself is out — which it should be.
Setting the field costs a click and it lets you charge a studio differently from a student, which is the cleanest way to price above the five-dollar band.
Getting started
Publish one template that builds from a clean clone, with the SDK versions in the first paragraph, a README as the second file, a screen recording as the preview and the licence set. Then open the archive on a machine that is not yours and build it once. That single check catches more defects here than everything else combined. Open a shop when the archive passes it.
