How to Outsource your App: My 5 Step Guide

[Walker411]

Step 4: Testing the App

Within a couple of weeks, my developer had the framework laid out and he told me he was ready to start testing. This is where the Basecamp app becomes most useful. He uploaded the file for me to download and I immediately started playing around with my new app. I didn’t quite understand what we was referring to when he called it “testing,” but it soon became apparent that the user interface would need tweaking.

It is hard to tell a developer exactly what you want your app to do before you even have a prototype to play with, so naturally the first version is not exactly what you expect. I found that some screens were hard to navigate and some functions weren’t working how I had pictured them. Once again, this is where you have to jump back into being the leader. I now had some experience with the team from building the graphics, so I was prepared to spend as much time as needed to get this app working perfect. I started by “beating up” the app as much as possible. Tapping on screens like crazy, moving into new screens as fast as I could, and messing with features until they couldn’t handle it. This is where you need to force the app into showing you bugs.

One by one, I found bugs and weird glitches that needed to be solved. I would take screen shots of each bug as they happened, and write a detailed report back to my developer so he could do his best to fix them. The user interface started to feel more professional with each reiteration, and it became much harder to find bugs. This shouldn’t stop you from trying to find them though, because if you can find them, chances are your user is going to find them too. During the testing phase, you want to massage every quirk out of the app that you can find. You want it to be perfect.

Step 5: Publishing

Although a lot of the publishing depends upon the developer, there is a TON of stuff for you to do. iTunes Connect is where you make everything happen, and it is actually fairly easy to use. In Connect, you can Manage your apps, view download and sales info, and manage iAd campaigns. Editing all of your apps information and app store content is available in the app manager and MUST be taken care of before you submit your app for review. I learned the hard way.

Once you and your developer have worked out all of the bugs, you can give him the OK to upload your files to iTunes connect. This is a pretty exciting stage because you start to feel like your app might actually make it in the store soon. There are 2 major things to prepare once the files are uploaded.

Firstly, edit your metadata. Metadata includes an app summary (the one you will see once it is in the store), app title, keywords, website links, and screen shots. I spent a decent amount of time studying how successful apps write their summaries and tried to implement their strategies into my own. I wrote a short, simple paragraph on what the app was about, and then listed all of its best features. I also took my time preparing good-looking screenshots to upload. I put my phone on airplane mode to simplify the top of the screenshots (eliminates the signal bars) and made sure every screen shot was on the same time (I choose 4:11 but it could be anything you want).

Secondly, you want to edit all of your contractual information. This includes contact information, tax information, and bank information. This is the first time I have tried doing anything business related, so I had to apply for my Employer Identification Number and set up an LLC. If you are missing either of those last two things, Apple won’t allow your app to enter the store, even if it has been approved!

It took me a while to get everything finished, but once I did we submitted the app for review. I knew that it was purely a waiting game from there, so I focused on my studies and let Apple do their thing. The review process took about 3 weeks, and then I finally received an email that stated my app had been approved.

So how did I learn the hard way when it came to publishing? Keywords. The only thing I had forgotten to edit before we submitted the app were keywords. Not only does this keep anyone from ever finding the app once it’s in the store, it’s also impossible to edit the keywords until you submit an updated version of the app! I still got downloads since it was a new app, and it was crazy to see how many people in different countries bought it.

I won’t go into a whole lot of detail when it comes to selling the app since this is a developing tutorial, but hopefully I will post more on that in the future. My developer and I are working on an update so I can get my keywords fixed and hopefully I will see an increase in downloads.

Overall I had a blast working with my little team on Elance, and now I have my own app in the store that I use on a daily basis. I want to thank MJ and the whole Fastlane community for providing the endless amount of information entrepreneurs can use to make this all happen. Hopefully you guys will enjoy my write-up and feel more motivated to move forward on your own projects!

If you guys have any questions, feel free to comment and I will do my best to answer.

Thanks for the read,
-Tim

 

[Walker411]

Hey everyone my name is Tim and I am a senior in mechanical engineering at the University of Toledo. I didn’t post on here much after my introduction because I never felt that I had much value to add. I had an eye-opening freshman year and somehow stumbled upon The Millionaire Fastlane landing page while searching the web on how to get more out of life. I read about MJ’s story and felt compelled to read the book. A few weeks later I finished it and my journey of entrepreneurship began. I started reading dozens of business books after that and eventually got tired of not taking action. Coming into 2013, I felt that I needed to get my feet wet in some sort of project that would help me learn the process of creating value.

After spending hours browsing the forum and learning as much as I could, I decided to enter the world of mobile applications. Why? The ability to outsource, produce products in digital form, and build a mostly passive income once published. As a full time student with no coding experience, outsourcing my development was ideal and having my product sold in digital form meant no shipping costs and little overhead. I am also an Apple fan and the thought of using my own product on my phone was exciting.

In September of 2013, my first mobile app officially got approved to sell in Apple’s App store. It took a little longer than I expected and I learned a TON along the way, but it was an awesome experience and my confidence to accomplish bigger projects and ideas has grown. With all the knowledge I gained searching the forum I figured the least I could do was show you guys what I learned and hopefully motivate you to get your own app in the store.

Let’s begin with Step 1: Finding a developer.

To start my app building journey, I first had to come up with an idea for an app. I won’t go into a huge amount of detail on this since this post is focused on developing, but it is a big part of the process. Basically I had been using the “Notes” app to keep track of my schedules because it was easy and fast, but it didn’t have all the features I wanted. I figured there was a better app out there but after numerous downloads I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I decided to make a better one.

I had listened to the podcast by Pat Flynn where he goes into detail about creating your own apps, so I knew that drawing sketches and detailed screen maps would help me in the long run. I printed out some iPhone templates found on Google images and began with light sketches. These eventually turned into fairly technical drawings with labeling of buttons and even color.

I was pretty content with how my hand-made renderings turned out, so I knew it was time to find my developer. There are quite a few options out there for outsourcing projects, but at the time the only two I knew of were oDesk and Elance. I created accounts on both sites and tried to get comfortable on each one. I found that Elance seemed more user friendly and also had the option to pay “per-project” where oDesk required hourly rates. I knew that paying hourly might make me go over budget so I decided that Elance would be my weapon of choice.

Finding a developer on Elance is easy. The first step is to post your job. Elance has you fill out some simple forms such as the name of the app or idea and then a summary of what you want it to do. They then have you narrow down your search by selecting what type of developers you are looking for (in this case iOS developers). Elance gives you the option to pay hourly or pay by project, so making sure you have the right options selected makes a big difference when developers start bidding on your project. Lastly, you submit your project and start waiting for bids!

Within a day or two I had over 20 developers who had bid on my project. It was a bit overwhelming at first but I liked having options. I started sorting through the proposals and began weeding out the bad ones. Most of the developers give summaries of what they can do based off of your app description and then list their price. I knew that I would be working with these developers for a long time so I started by deleting any proposals with poor communication skills. Many developers are overseas and if they can’t communicate an idea to you, it’s going to be rough road of development. Some were out of my price range, and others were priced so low that I feared a poor quality product. I ended up narrowing it down to two or three guys and then finally picked the developer I use to this day (he turned out to be a great choice).

Step 2: Creating Graphics

When a developer begins work on a new app, the graphics are the first thing on their to-do list. This is how they will determine where to put buttons, options, and areas for gestures when writing code later on. My developer asked if I had a graphic designer or if I was going to do it myself. I had to tell him neither, since I have no experience in the field, and he gladly offered a team of his own. I jumped at the opportunity and began sending more detailed renderings of each screen. I can’t stress enough how important the renderings are! And you don’t have to worry about lack of computer skill… all of mine were done by hand with a pencil, paper, and some markers.

A few days later, my developer got back to me and started sending screen shots of what the app was starting to look like through an app called Basecamp. This is an app that you will use extensively during the testing phase and is pretty fun to use. Basecamp allows you to chat with the team members, look at renderings, and even test the app on your device before it is released. The first iteration of graphics were okay, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. At first I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to turn out to be the app I envisioned, but quickly I realized that I needed to take some control and make sure it was exactly what I wanted.

This is important if you are trying to make a high quality app. Even though you are the one with little experience, most of the time YOU are in charge. This is your team and they want to do the best they can for you, and if you don’t like something, fixing it is as easy as telling them to make a change. It actually becomes more fun at this point because you can feel yourself getting creative. Maybe you want the background to have a gradient or words to have different font types. Maybe the buttons he put on a certain page need tweaking and you have a better way for them to work. You are the only one with the vision, so getting your message across is crucial. This is all up to you and it’s so cool to see your vision come to life with each remodel of the graphics.

Step 3: Developing the framework (Coding)

After the graphics have been finalized, it’s time for the developer to make the app real. Coding is the main reason why I outsourced the app, so this step was mostly in the hands of the developer. I found that I didn’t have to do much during this phase, but it is still an important step. Keeping up to date with your inbox is important too. Every once in a while your developer might have questions about how you want a certain feature to work. Responding to the team as soon as possible will help keep everything moving along smoothly.

You may also use this time to think of new features you may want to add that your developer can easily install early in the coding process. Don’t go overboard, though. You paid him to build a certain project and they may get frustrated if you start throwing new things at them. Try to picture yourself using the app and think of small things they can implement that might make the user experience better. Sometimes thinking through how the app will work can actually make the coder’s job easier, as they can produce more efficient framework.

 

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[frieden70]

Great write up.

I'll add my .02 as I'm about to submit my first app to the app store as well (like literally tomorrow).

Just to give some context, my app is a much bigger app than Walker's (I'm assuming, just based on price alone) and it took me about 5-6 months to complete development. There was a lot of time wasted I feel dealing with negotiating with my developers on changes, etc which in my estimation, delayed the project by about 2 months. It sucks that the project got delayed but I learned a shit ton through the process.

That's also one of the downsides of working with people overseas, it's pretty difficult to get things done in real time with them...

Anyway, here's the process that I highly recommend after going through 2 development teams and 3 different designers.

1) Writing stuff on papers/napkins/whatever is awesome but my recommendation is to create an actual wireframe for your app. Use a program called balsamiq to do it.

It's super simple to use and it gives you basic mocks of what the app could look like and you literally lay out the entire flow of your app. Every single button, screen, etc.

2) Before writing a single line of code, take that wireframe and put it into invisionapp.

It's free for most single projects but paid down the road if you want to do more/have larger projects. What's awesome about this is that you can literally hyperlink every button and screen together so you know exactly what the flow of the app is going to be. You literally tap each button like it were a real app on your phone so you get to experience the app. Go through your flow a minimum of 100 times, seriously... You'll be amazed what stuff you could miss. Also, I highly recommend sending the invisionapp link to friends to play with as they'll probably think up stuff you didn't.

3) Hire your designer first.

My first go around I thought I could design and develop at the same time and that turned out to be an absolute disaster.

I'm a stickler for design and was super anal about finding the right designer for the job. At first I just wanted it out so I hired a dev team that had a designer. Well, he sucked and I fired him midway through the project. Hired another designer who unfortunately got cancer in the middle of the project so I had to find another one. On top of all that my dev team sucked (I guess that's why the designer sucked too) so I fired them, but I digress...

Good designers IMO make or break your app. You can have a somewhat shitty app that looks pretty and people will be drawn to it.

There are tons of places to find designers but I found the best place was to dig through dribbble and see people that have done design stuff along the lines of what you like. It's truly an amazing community there with super high quality designers. Just find like 30 that you like and message them. You'll get about 10 responses probably and then go from there. They range in price big time too... I had one guy quoting me $700 and then other guys quoting me like 40K LOL.

But remember, my project is pretty massive with about 50 different screens...

4) Take all your designs and put it back into invisionapp. Do the same process as #2. Give it to friends and make sure that it is EXACTLY how you want it. I recommend going through the whole process at least 100 times but probably more. Sounds crazy but I can't tell you how many things I thought up after development started that I should have seen before from this process.

5) Hire your dev team.

This is obviously an incredibly important step and you have to be careful cause there's a ton of shitty devs out there just trying to make a buck. After getting burned the first time around, I decided to take the process into my own hands and handpick the teams that I was interested in working with rather than post a job on elance or odesk.

I literally put in all the qualifications of what I wanted out of my team. I personally look for teams with no worse than an average rating of 4 stars and for my project, they had to have a minimum of 1000 hours logged on odesk or elance. From there I just literally went through the pages, looked at examples of work and decided who I would message and invite to take a look at the project.

While this probably takes longer than just posting a job, I knew the quality of my guys at this point. At the end I got teams that only had 100K+ earned through oDesk and awesome reviews and references. I certainly had my pain points with my devs (you seem to any time you have a contractor) but at the end of the day, they write really good code and the end product is pretty awesome.

There's more steps that I've gone through but I think Walker has laid out those other steps for the most part.

If anyone is interested in more details on anything, I'm happy to help.

 

[Walker411]

thanks for the long & detailed post. Few questions:
1. How many apps do you actually have in the app store?
2. What are the actual earnings? How long do you think it will take for you to be able to live on app revenue and quit your day job? Or have you done so already?
3. Could you elaborate on the outsourcing costs for an average app (like yours)? I have read many blog posts on that but they saying it will cost $500-50000 isn't that much of an information

1. This is currently my only app in the store, although I have plans for more. I may look into buying apps that are already in the store too.
2. For the first couple of weeks, I would get anywhere from 5-8 downloads a day. Apple takes a 30% percent cut of my 99 cent selling price, so I had the potential to make close to $100 a month. Unfortunately, my lack of keywords dwindled my download rate. Hopefully with a fresh update and keywords, I will see my downloads increase.
3. My app was fairly simple, and the developer bids were in the range of $700-$3000. The developer I used had great reviews and I told him I had a budget of $1500, so we made it work at that price.

-Tim

 

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[healthstatus]

3. Could you elaborate on the outsourcing costs for an average app (like yours)? I have read many blog posts on that but they saying it will cost $500-50000 isn't that much of an information

Keep in mind what you want it to do accounts for the huge difference, a few page static app that doesn't need to access the Internet or GPS is much cheaper than those that do. Creating a game with 3d graphics and multiplayer support will need more than $50k. You can also go through the specifications process that @Walker411 outlines and put it up on Elance and get bids. Then you know what it costs.

I will also add that if you become an INSIDERS on the site, I have a thread on picking the right outsource guy on elance.

 

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[100k]

Thanks for sharing. I am going to develop a useful app that solves a problem this year.

So, this was def. very intr. to me.

Elance is good coz 1) you can pay per project (like you said). 2) You can pre-screen the people before you even post the job.... just login and go through the freelancers - use filters (location, ratings, skills) then check out their portfolio and their reviews, then when you post your job - just invite the 2-10 people you found to be the perfect match for your needs. and 3) Payment is kept in escrow until the job is done! So if they don't deliver on what was promised you are protected.

Good luck with your future app plans.

BTW, check out this video I came across a few weeks ago on how to find needs/keywords with low competition:

 

[MattCour]

As Oddball knows, I highly recommend Sensor Tower for keyword spying and research. Also agree with 100K about Elance, there's some really great talent there!!

 

[healthstatus]

I'm thinking of using Elance to build a website. Where is your developer from?

This is the last thing you want to look at. Look at their ratings, previous number of jobs, total billed on elance. Join the INSIDERS part of the forum to get my full criteria of what to look for. I have over 96 jobs that I have run through Elance.

 

[healthstatus]

Shouldn't we be afraid of hiring developers from elance?

This is covered in sooooo many threads. NO, established developers are doing what they want to do for a living. They don't want to mess up their online reputation, and they don't do marketing well, which is why they are willing to pay Elance to get a chance to work for you.

 

[-L-]

Very interesting read. Quite surprised by the price you paid. 1500$ is not that expensive.

How long did I take from posting the job on eLance to the app being live on iTunes?

 

[Walker411]

Hey Tim,

I'm thinking of using Elance to build a website. Where is your developer from?

I'm getting great prices from India and Bangladesh. Some of high design ability. However, a lot of posts discouraging people from hiring freelancers from these countries. Any input?

My developer is located in Bosnia. It's nice because he can work while I sleep and then I can test the app throughout the day. I too have read discouraging posts about developers from India but on the other hand I've heard great reviews. It could be hit or miss. I definitely recommend looking at their reviews on Elance and make a decision based on how well they respond to your job posting. Good luck!

 

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[oddball]

3 weeks for review? Damn. I've never had one that long. Usually takes mine like a week to 10 days before they go under review and then under a day for a pass/fail.

 

[Walker411]

Ah true, I didn't have any apps released during that period. All mine were before or after that.
Christmas is another time that takes a while. Around 2 or so weeks.

I decided to go back and check what the exact dates were. Looks like it took 17 days total so I guess it was a bit closer to 2.5 weeks. I do recall getting a lot of emails from iTunes Connect about slower review times during the iOS7 debut. Glad to know it will be faster next time.

Can you PM me the name of your app? I'm genuinely interested in using it as I've been looking for something like this for a while.

PM'd

 

[G_Alexander]

$$ for you Walker.

Thanks for the detailed writeup, and way to take action. Keep it up.

 

[mememan]

Really good information on this thread. I've been burned by coders before (I know I'm at fault since I'm in charge, but these were $40/$50 an hour guys in some cases - price means nothing).

Do you all make your job posts really quick are sparse? I've tried that (with bulleted lists) as well as providing more detail and I never get who I want bidding on my jobs.

 

[healthstatus]

Do you all make your job posts really quick are sparse? I've tried that (with bulleted lists) as well as providing more detail and I never get who I want bidding on my jobs.

NO!!! You are writing a sales letter to convince the best programmers to quote on your job. If your details are sparse and sketchy and hard to understand, they will assume your specifications are the same. The same way you look at their responses regarding communication abilities they are looking at your job post.

 

[openminded790]

Nice man!

I was big into app outsourcing a while ago, now I just do affiliate marketing full-time because it's picked up quite a bit. I actually got my app made for $200! I bargained a lot and picked up some good developers who didn't have that many jobs yet.

The quality of it was not that great though. Since they were new developers, they didn't know how to treat their customers/clients and kept pulling dodgies here and there lol.

I still bragain a lot though. You'd be surprised how low they're willing to go!

~ Mateen

 

[mememan]

I do agree that most iPhone games are too demanding. If I have to commit more than 5 minutes to the game I would much rather just sit down and play xbox. However, I do think that iPhone games have a lot of potential if done correctly. In my opinion, the best games are those you can play for very short periods of time without having to commit to the game. Like Flappy Bird was great because if you had even just a minute or two of down time you could play a round or two then immediately close the app no problem without having to worry about saving or losing progress. Simple but very effective.
Regardless, I would really just like to know the price range I would be looking at rather than the success of the game (I am confident I have that part under control-if not, I'm young and I'll learn from the experience and mistakes).

Take a look at this:

http://www.lolerapps.com/baby-maker-costs-and-earning-report-in-the-black

The summary is a retarded app cost Pat Flynn $5k to make.

Are you familiar with Humble Bundle? Triple AAA indie titles going for $0.01 for 5 of them at a time (or $0.99 if you want Steam keys). The market is beyond diluted.

Take a look at the value of game source codes and maybe work off of there. I would not build from scratch, and for the love of god, avoid this cutey lame design everything goes for. Oh, but then if you make a game slightly edgy or non-PC, Apple won't accept it into their network. Then you move to Android, where people are from the Windows computer market and know it isn't worth paying $100 for a Bejewled clone, and if the game is any good, they'll hack it

 

[frieden70]

Free with in-app purchases.

See Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, etc as examples.

What's the more profitable thing to do, price your app or make it free and add in app purchases for premium stuff? Say the app is a 2D non multiplayer game.

 

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[frieden70]

That's like asking what is the approximate cost of a car?

Too many factors...

Could be 1k-100k.

Create a wireframe of your app (I detail how in my first post in this thread) and start getting bids on your favorite outsourcing platform. Voila, approximate cost and it didn't cost you anything but your time to figure it out.


Good luck.

What's the approximate cost of outsourcing a 2D game app?

 

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[MattCour]

What's the more profitable thing to do, price your app or make it free and add in app purchases for premium stuff? Say the app is a 2D non multiplayer game.

Why not do both? That's what I did. It's very easy to make the exact same game but one has ads and is free. The other is paid with no ads. Both have IAPs. You can buy source code pretty easily and have a game created within a month or less for under $1500 in my experience. If you really haggle you could have a sweet game done for under $1k from an Elance programmer. Good luck!

 

[SGBoise]

Thanks for the info. I need to use your suggestions. Being a programmer, I prefer to do it myself but it limits my potential.

 

[smarty]

thanks for the long & detailed post. Few questions:
1. How many apps do you actually have in the app store?
2. What are the actual earnings? How long do you think it will take for you to be able to live on app revenue and quit your day job? Or have you done so already?
3. Could you elaborate on the outsourcing costs for an average app (like yours)? I have read many blog posts on that but they saying it will cost $500-50000 isn't that much of an information

 

[Walker411]

Thanks for the tool 100K! I'll do some research after classes and see if I can use it on a Mac. I also liked paying through escrow because I knew I was either going to get my product or my money back so it was essentially risk free. Have you used Niche Finder Mobile?

-Tim

 

[oddball]

I'm curious how that niche finder mobile is. I use something similar but it is keyword specific, so you have to manually check every keyword you want to check. I'd like something that gives variations like this software. I'm willing to try it unless people have specific bad reviews on it.

 

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[Warrior]

Thanks for the tool 100K! I'll do some research after classes and see if I can use it on a Mac. I also liked paying through escrow because I knew I was either going to get my product or my money back so it was essentially risk free. Have you used Niche Finder Mobile?

-Tim

Hey Tim,

I'm thinking of using Elance to build a website. Where is your developer from?

I'm getting great prices from India and Bangladesh. Some of high design ability. However, a lot of posts discouraging people from hiring freelancers from these countries. Any input?

 

[oddball]

As Oddball knows, I highly recommend Sensor Tower for keyword spying and research. Also agree with 100K about Elance, there's some really great talent there!!

Yes, I love sensor tower. Prices/packages are not optimal though. I've tried talking with the creator to change them. For people like me build large portfolios with lots of apps is frustrating. I may try out this Niche Finder though, 60 day money back guarantee is nice. I'd like to be able to search a keyword and get suggestions for other possibilities.

 

[Walker411]

Very interesting read. Quite surprised by the price you paid. 1500$ is not that expensive.

How long did I take from posting the job on eLance to the app being live on iTunes?

I hired my developer in May and it was submitted for review by August. I believe it could have been done quicker but I had a heavy load of summer classes that consumed most of my day. The review process took about 3 weeks and it was approved by Apple on September 7th. I'm sure price range varies per project but I was very pleased with the price!

 

[healthstatus]

3 weeks for review?

That would have been around IOS 7 release time, lots of apps got backed up in line to support it at that point

 

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[oddball]

That would have been around IOS 7 release time, lots of apps got backed up in line to support it at that point

Ah true, I didn't have any apps released during that period. All mine were before or after that.
Christmas is another time that takes a while. Around 2 or so weeks.