If you are like me, lazy, who is not game programmer, doesn’t have great ideas, unambitious and still want to make good money out of app store then there few things that I have to share.
1. Be really lazy: If you already are not, then be. Laziness leads to smart work. Bug free code. Fool proof design. Extendable architecture. Basically you think more and code less.
2. Scale it: If you cant make iShoot that will earn you a fortune in 2 months, then you need to make something that will scale and eventually will make you sustainable source of income over a long period of time. Basically make something that is useful and then scale it. Example: If you have a grammar application for English, then see if you can use the same code base for Japanese, French, German etc. Content based apps are easy to scale.
3. Out source it: Outsourcing is important for couple reasons. First, you are lazy so cant do all the work yourself. You cant scale unless you outsource. Eventually you will move to new ideas, so someone still need to maintain and support your legacy apps.
4. Partnership: As they say, you cant do the whole banana yourself. So partner. Partnership is also important to diversify your app portfolio and ultimately, scale it.
5. Marketing: I dont need to say much about marketing. But you know what, they need to know that your app also exists in the ocean of 95K apps. So, make a SEO optimized support webpage, blog it, youtube it, lite version it, PR it, advertise it.
6. Analysis: If you are watching the app store space closely, then you probably already analyzing few things. Check what kind of apps make it to the top. What kind of apps live longer on the charts. Find out all the details about your audience (age, usage, devices, OS versions etc etc), keep checking Admob’s mobile matrix. Just make sure that your app’s gonna sell well, if its not gonna be a hit.
7. Dont fix if not broken: Being a developer its easy to get excited about new APIs and trying to integrate new features in existing apps. If your app is selling well, if your users are not explicitly asking for new features then hold on. Don’t be over enthusiastic. You will eventually end up breaking something. Sometimes, one bad review is good enough to destroy your app.
Akshay Ashokrao Rudraksha on January 20th, 2010 at 4:59 pm says:
Hi eknath
I really like the way u make u r path in the app world. I m big fan of one of u r app batamya mata. I just want to devlop similar kind of application for deshonnati. Could u pls show me right path for this… I dnt have any exper in app devlopment