In 2018, developers made roughly $38 billion from their apps – and that’s just on the App Store!
If you’re looking to make a bit of money on the side, you may be interested in starting an app business. But if you’ve only ever downloaded apps, you might not know what it takes to sell them.
This post will show you how to start an app business. Take action on these tips, and you’ll know what it takes to turn app downloads into dollars.
Let’s begin!
Who Will Build the Apps?
You can build the apps yourself, or you can outsource development.
If you want to build the apps yourself, you’ll need to decide which platform you want to build the app for – iOS or Android. You then need to take an app development course for the platform you’ve selected.
If your app is relatively simple, you may not even need to take a course. That’s because you can just use an app creator to get the job done.
That said if you want to get things moving as quickly as possible, outsourcing the development process is probably a good bet.
If you’re going to outsource the process, you can use a company that’s based in the US or an international one.
Using an international firm can often be cheaper than using one that’s from the US. But, there may be some difficulties in communication that make the app development process more challenging than it needs to be.
For instance, the language barrier might lead to miscommunication about the features you want in the app.
Thus, when the final product is delivered to you, it might not meet your needs. This may mean the app has to go back through the development process, and this can all take a lot of time.
What Kind of Apps Should You Design?
It makes sense that you’d want to create an app that’s going to be successful.
But, predicting the success of an app is difficult to do, and this can make it difficult to come up with a ‘winning’ app idea.
Sure, you could create a better version of something that’s already selling. But this doesn’t mean success is guaranteed.
Especially since the existing company could just implement your ideas into their app. This would then allow them to build upon their current dominance in the market, while you trail behind.
The best thing you can do is think about a problem you struggle with. You then want to take a look at the App Store or Google Play store and see if there’s an app designed to help with this problem.
If there isn’t, it’s a chance for you to swoop in and capitalize on this opportunity.
After all, if you have this problem, there’s a good chance other people will have this problem too.
Since you’re part of the target audience, you’ll know how to create an app that meets the needs of these other people too. Your ability to do this will be the driving force behind the success of the app.
How Will You Monetize Your App?
One way you can monetize your app is through the use of ads.
These ads might come in the form of a banner that’s at the bottom of the screen. Your ads could also be a video that users are forced to watch at specific time intervals.
You can also monetize your app by making people pay for access. You can adopt one of two models here.
Either you get people to pay a subscription fee, or you ask them to pay you a one-off price.
If you’re going to adopt the subscription model, you might want to provide people with a discount, should they pay for many months of use. For example, you might offer a discount if someone wants to buy 6 or 12 months of access to your app.
The subscription model works well because it provides you with a recurring form of revenue. This revenue can then help you pay for the month to month server costs, as well any extra work you might need to do on the app.
It’s because of this, that many app developers prefer the subscription model over the one-off payment approach.
Getting People to Download Your App
Having a great app will count for nothing if nobody knows about it.
If your app is designed for the iPhone, you can make use of ‘App Store Search Ads.’
With App Store Search Ads, you can set things up so that your app appears, whenever people type in certain keywords. So, if you’ve created a podcasting app, you can make it so that your app appears should someone search ‘podcast app.’
If you have an app that’s made for Android phones, you can use Google Ads to help promote your app within the Google Play store. When promoting your app within the Play Store, you can use a similar strategy to the one described above.
If you’re going to run ads to generate app users, it helps to figure out how much each user is worth.
When you do this, it becomes easier to figure out how much you should spend to generate an app install. For example, $10 might per install might sound like a lot of money. But if a user ends up generating $20 of revenue, then that $10 doesn’t seem so bad.
Do You Know How to Start an App Business?
By now, you should understand how to start an app business.
Keep in mind that your first app might not be a success. The app after that one might also be a dud. Sadly, failure is just part of the process, and it’s something you’ll need to go through before you find yourself with a hit app.
The ability to get through these failures is what separates the successful app businesses from the ones that never make it. As long as you keep churning out apps, despite an initial lack of success, you should eventually come up with a winning app.
Think you’ll need the help of a developer to turn your app idea into a reality? Check out this post to learn how you can find an app developer.
