The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Introducing myself and my latest App

Twopro

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
133%
Sep 28, 2014
48
64
35
Texas
I graduated May 2014 with a Computer Engineering degree and got a job 4 months after earning 34/hr. During the first 2 months I barely had anything to do so I would browse the internet and just read things. I stumbled upon the Fastlane Millionaire and honestly thought the name was a bit meh, thinking it was going to be a cliché book about making money. When I read it though, almost everything seemed to be exactly the way I felt about having a 9-5 job and wanting to free myself from this type of lifestyle even though I was making pretty good money for my age. I had tried making websites years ago for passive income, but I think I gave up too easily not knowing how to promote them and such. Still have about 5 websites that I haven't touched in a while.

Fast forward and I got laid off a bit over 1 month ago. I decided I was going to work on some app ideas I had been writing down. Last week, I finally released one app and now I need some people to test it and give me feedback on improvements and maybe ideas to promote it.

The app idea came about when I would go out to eat with my girlfriend and she was always super indecisive and wanted me to pick, so I made an app to pick for me.

It's currently only for Android. You can find it by searching for "EatingOut" with no space in the Google play store and it should be the 3rd or 4th result when you click more apps.

Also in case someone suggests things I probably can't do with this app. I'm using the Yelp API to search for restaurants so there is a lot of limitations. I wanted to add hours a restaurant is open, a nice picture, distance and things like that but Yelp does not provide it and it would be impossible to add them for every restaurant manually.

Currently trying to add a way to share the restaurant you pick to social media and getting the refresh button to actually refresh instead of having to go back and choosing again.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Unknown

Fastlane-ish
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
177%
Mar 31, 2014
600
1,063
I'm not sure I see how you'll monetize this, but don't rely on yelp. Create an algorithm to search Google and parse through for the data you need. If it takes off for you then pay some people to collect data for you.

Put those programming skills to use. Don't rely on other websites. If yelp is missing info, then be a better yelp.
 

Twopro

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
133%
Sep 28, 2014
48
64
35
Texas
Yeah I know there isn't many ways to monetize this app other than ads, I was thinking as the app grew maybe Yelp would want to advertise their deals on it and pay me. Also wanted to see if this would be something people would like before spending too much time on it, so consider if an MVP
 

Choate

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
243%
Mar 25, 2014
640
1,557
Boston
During the first 2 months I barely had anything to do so I would browse the internet and just read things.

Fast forward and I got laid off a bit over 1 month ago.

Glad you stumbled on the Millionaire Fastlane , but when you work for yourself I hope you use your time better than you did as an employee.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Rinzler

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
98%
May 21, 2014
125
122
31
Northern California
BigBrian is on to something. I read this and thought, why not give users some incentive for posting their own reviews, complete with photos of the restaurant and it's information, through the app? This would drive users to use the app to make a decision for them, then report back with how it went!
 

Twopro

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
133%
Sep 28, 2014
48
64
35
Texas
Thanks for the ideas guys, hadn't checked back in a bit cuz I was working on the social media integration. Got that finished yesterday and it works for Twitter and others but for some reason Facebook is different so I will have to find a workaround.

Glad you stumbled on the Millionaire Fastlane , but when you work for yourself I hope you use your time better than you did as an employee.

Well I think I used it wisely, read more books during those 2 months than I ever had my whole life, 2 of those books were programming (C,Java) and the rest misc topics such as The Fastlane Millionaire, How to Influence People, The Lean Startup, and more
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Twopro

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
133%
Sep 28, 2014
48
64
35
Texas
Update: working on a Twitter for the apps I develop right now trying to follow and get followers. First time using Twitter but it doesn't seem so bad other than difficulty getting followed back. Any tips on that?
 

Stan.Geek12

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
9%
Mar 10, 2015
11
1
42
This looks cool. Think you will need to improve on it and add more skills into it. You can surely take it to the next level.
 

Twopro

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
133%
Sep 28, 2014
48
64
35
Texas
Update: I have been reading on how to rank better on the Google play store. I improved the description of the app and it moved from rank 33 up to 28 then fell back to 30 and it's been there for a few days. I will continue messing around with that to see if I can get it in the top 10 for "Eating Out" since not too many people will look for "EatingOut"

BTW, anyone with apps on Google have success ranking your app for certain keywords? If so, what did you do?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kevin Peter

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
38%
Jun 2, 2015
261
98
35
Awesome! Initally do not spend more on the app marketing. Try to get your app reviewed by industry experts and write about it online. Try to have the viral wave created on social media under an relevant app category. You already have initiated the publishing part on app stores.
 

Julio Andres

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
128%
Dec 9, 2014
40
51
38
I have an app for movies showtimes on my country. One good optimization I did was to add the name of my country at the end of the app name. First it was just "[name of the app]", then "[name of the app] - [country]" and boom! went to number one in days. But my app is very locale, I don't know if yours is, maybe you can try with some localization in the name.

Good luck!
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top