'Appreneurs' can make good money but the marketplace for apps is crowded and cracking it is tough, writes FIONA REDDAN
IF PRE-TEENS like Harry Moran and Jordan Casey can do it, maybe it’s time you considered creating and selling your own mobile phone application? After all, the use of smartphones continues to rise, and the average number of apps owned by a smartphone user is about 40.
To date, there have been some 20 billion Android apps downloaded since their creation, with about 30 billion on Apple’s iTunes store. And developing applications for iPhones and Androids is not just for the tech geeks.
So could you do it? And more importantly, could you make any money from doing it?
“Appreneur” Elaine Heney caught the buzz when a friend used a novel she had written Ozzie, The Story of a Young Horse for content for a book app he had developed. When she saw it for sale in the iTunes store, she wanted to know more about the technology, and so took advantage of some down-time over Christmas to figure out how she, as a non-programmer, could make apps without knowing how to code. By New Year’s Eve she had her first app published on Android, and a few weeks later, on iPhone.
Now, some 30 apps later, Heney’s best-selling app has been her Palm Reading Booth, which was the number one free iPad entertainment app in the UK and Australia. She has also had success with her household budgeting app, which made the top 10 of the paid finance segment of the Apple App Store in the US. The app, which tracks everything from coffee purchases to lunch and petrol expenses, sells for $0.99.
While app development is now a full-time career for Heney, she says it can work well as a part-time project as well. But you have to be prepared to put in the hours.
“It’s most important to put in the work, whether it’s late nights, before you go to work in the mornings, or at weekends,” she says.
Vinny Coyne got his big break through EirText, an app that lets users send free/cheap text messages. It has been “extremely popular” both at home and abroad, according to Coyne, and was a joint-winner for Best Mobile Application at the 2010 Irish Web Awards.
Thanks to the success of this app, he was able to set up a company, App Sandwich, and develop apps full-time. While a lot of his time is now spent working on consultancy projects for other companies, he is still busy developing his own, including Muud.io, which retails for €2.99 and automatically builds playlists to suit any mood; and Comet, which allows Meteor billpay customers to view their usage at a glance. It sells for €0.79.
Sounds good, but how can you build an app that people will actually want to pay for?
“You can look for niches, or you can see what are already the best sellers with proven demand, and then improve on them,” says Heney, noting that the latter “is a less risky route”.
Searching through the best-selling charts will help in this task, although you will probably find that the biggest selling apps are games, which can be more difficult to develop.
Across the US, UK and France, Angry Birds is the top selling iPhone app, while in Ireland, it is another game from Rovio that makes the top – Bad Piggies.
Once you have your idea, you will then need to develop the app. If you have a background in programming – or even if you don’t – there are plenty of online manuals and guides offering step-by-step directions on how you go about creating an app. For Apple products, you will need to acquire knowledge of Objective-C, or Java for Android apps.
But the other option is to outsource the technological work. Indeed the secret to Heney’s success is that she doesn’t make the apps herself. She researches the market, draws up the design of the apps, and then outsources the coding work to other people.
"I do not make any of the apps myself," she notes, adding that the cost can vary but typically comes in at around $500 for development and graphics work. She uses online contracting website odesk.comto find developers.
To launch, you will then need to get a developer account ($99 with Apple, and $25 for Android). And wait for the money to roll in. For example, if you managed to sell 10,000 of an app that costs €1.99, you could be looking at a gain of almost €17,000 once Apple and Google take their cut of 30 per cent.
If you don’t think your app offers enough for people to part with their cash and buy it, the other option for monetising your app is to make it available for free, and then hope to earn revenue by offering advertising on it. To do this, you can link up with an advertising vehicle such as Google AdMob – everytime someone clicks on the ad which is displayed as part of your app, you will earn money.
Alternatively, you could consider going down the “in-app purchase” route. In this scenario, the app is initially offered for free, but add-ons or upgrades are sold once the person starts using the app.
And typically, the more your app is downloaded, the more popular it will come, as it will start appearing in best-selling charts. To get into the Top 25 in the US Apple charts, you will need about 38,400 daily downloads for free iPhone apps and 3,530 for paid ones, according to data provider Distimo.
But making these targets is challenging. A recent global developer survey showed that about two-thirds had made less than $5,000 from their efforts. As Coyne notes, marketing apps for Apple’s App Store can be quite difficult, with traditional methods of advertising not that effective.
“To add to that, Apple provide no statistics to developers relating to sales referrals, so tracking your marketing efforts can be very hit and miss,” he says, adding that he has found “consistent engagement” on social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, which provide a noticeable return on time invested.
And he also strikes a note of caution about future growth prospects for the sector.
“There’s always huge potential for growth,” he says, but adds, “the business of selling apps is a lot more complex now, the standards are a lot higher, and the marketplace is much busier than it was in 2008 when I started.”
'APPY LEARNING: TRAINING FOR APPS
READ
App Empire: Make Money, Have a Life, and Let Technology Work for You, by Chad Mureta £10.19 ( amazon.co.uk)
ONLINE TRAINING
How to Make and Market iPhone Apps in Three 3 Weeks, $297 Stanford University course iPad and iPhone App Development ( itunes.com, free)
SOFTWARE
How to create an app on buzztouch.com
GUIDES
Android developer guide: iti.ms/T5b73L
Apple developer guide: iti.ms/VE09Hk
