How I went from financial App failure to finding success on the App Store

[coder_for_life22]

Yes. And yes, before I made the app, I posted on Reddit to see if anyone thought the idea was good.

Hey, where did you post on reddit?

I found this thread gold. I have been coding for about 6 years and released about 10 games so far.

The first 4 or 5 games were mainly experiments and were done back in 2012-2014 right before I graduated highschool.

My 7th game actually did pretty well. Clearing about $500 per month but King.com flagged my game for copywrite infringement even though my game was not even a match three style game. I think this is the time when there were 1000's of clones being published and king.com went on a rampage.

Long story short, that app was removed. I eventually went on to build more little games here and there but nothing that I ever intended to do well with. I mainly did those out of my love for building games and also to become better at coding(I now study computer science).

I took a break from developing apps for a while and began to coach people through the process of building their own games and coding. I also coached them through publishing and the process of ASO, etc.

This made a nice amount of money but unfortunately I got side tracked and let the business die.

Now I am currently working on a new mobile game and have built up an audience on Instagram of 30k people all directly in the niche of my game. I will be posting another thread about my progress with this and also to get advice in terms of marketing etc.

I found this thread to be gold and i'm wondering from the current position I am in with this game, with having the audience built up already, what would you do to capitalize on this opportunity?

I am currently doing a beta test right now. I posted on my IG looking for 20 beta testers and have 20 followers from my IG testing the game. So far the feedback has been great and inspired me to continue on with the project.

 

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[Bon Appetit]

Just a post to say thank you.

Very interesting threat, I am a total beginner in the app business, I would like to create an app but I don't have any knowledge about this field yet.

I have found a lot a valuable informations in this threat and I would like to thanks everyone for sharing their knowledge and experience, especially @Rcaraway1989 who started this discussion.

I will start my journey by reading the recommanded books: app empire and appreneur. I will check out the bluecloudsolution website and check out the Okome's Daily Spark Podcasts.

if you have any others recommandations for newbies, do not hesitate

Wish everyone all the best.

 

[parkerscott]

The app did 8,000 downloads in its first month.

I would not say App Store success is hit or miss as I described in my post. There's a lot of factors at play, depending on how ambitious your app idea is. Is it a big idea or small? Lots of competition or niche market?

Wow 8k downloads. Very impressive.

As for my plan its a big idea with absolutely zero competition. Just a couple downloads wouldnt cut it for me.

 

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[parkerscott]

I agree wasting time on a big idea sucks. My suggestion is to think about the least amount of work you can put in to validating the idea. Are people solving this problem in a more primitive way already? If so, why not interview a few and gauge their responses to see if it feels like you're on to something big.

Then, even still, you can just throw up a landing page after you've identified a target customer and see if you can get lots of emails.

Building the actual app should happen waay down the line -- until you've validated everything else.

Ok thanks a ton. I will certainly try validating the idea before I think about launching.

 

[drilonnn]

Tapsmith LLC ? Is this your company ?

 

[Rcaraway1989]

Tapsmith LLC ? Is this your company ?

Yes

 

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[dantech]

Did you post on reddit also?? If so, that is how I found your app and was playing around with it!!

 

[PedroG]

Great post! So you mainly promoted it just by commenting on different sites?

 

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[Yury]

I see an educated guess that brought success.

Exactly! That's the point. An educated guess, based on some evidence (homework done) - and then the necessary gamble when it was inevitable.

did Columbus validate his project

I figure his first attempt was the validation itself. Thinking about it now, Columbus did not assemble and sail a big fleet (whether that was possible or not is another question), you can say that he sailed the Minimal Viable Expedition (MVE) which itself was the only possible validation of his ideas.

@Rcaraway1989 in his example at first sent a big fleet in a wrong direction, and so he learned from that and the next time he decided to send a MVE first to check if there's some land at all. And only after validating the route (and doing some more homework) he decided to send the full fleet.

If I am a great web designer, do I need to validate

It depends on whether this designer thinks that he/she is great (a good road to a depressing failure for many under-recognized geniuses out there)... or did the clients actually recognized and appreciated his/her greatness?

And even if you're a great designer, you're at risk when not validating&testing your portfolio approach.

Straight away I can think of a couple of great designers whose portfolio sites reflected their brilliance but many prospective clients (myself included) could not connect their brilliance with the client's needs, as the portfolio is fancy and stuff and the talent is clear but while aesthetically I enjoy looking at the portfolio, as a client I'm not convinced that they will be able to solve my problems.

So it was like a huge fleet with orchestras and balloons sailing in a wrong direction.
Did these great designers need to validate and test?.. It's up to them.

Im a big believer in educated guesses and pivoting

Me too - when you have enough resources to pivot and your guesses are really educated. So when one is not lazy and does the homework to make the educated guesses, this person will determine if it's possible to run some validation process & tests, or it's completely impossible in this particular case (due to its nature and not to the laziness).

So in this latter case, a necessary gamble is inevitable. And if you can afford it and the worst case scenario won't sink your ship (or you don't mind it), why not to go for it.

how about 100s of other businesses like cafes, restaurants, pubs, clubs etc

You mean these that open and fail by truckloads a day? The ones like that hip hop shop in MJ's book?


Ok we could go on and on about that but I think there's no need in it really.

I guess we just use different words for the same thing. You call it educated guesses. I call it validating&testing as much as possible when applicable, and carefully assessing and accepting possible downsides of your actions in other cases.

It's about being responsible and not doing reckless choices when there's absolutely no need in it and no reasons for skipping the validation&testing process apart from one's laziness.

 

[teabag]

QuickMVP was... well, quick to set up.

First time using google ad words so I put $50 as my budget. Pretty excited to see what happens (or doesn't).

It recommended I drop $380 on google adwords to get a 250 click rate. Not sure if that's how much I should be spending right away, but looking forward to whatever happens.

 

[Guest24480]

I'm guessing you developed the app yourself? How long did it take to make the prototype version where you tested the market and got paying customers and at what point did you begin to think about upgrading it?

 

[parkerscott]

It's so refreshing to actually see people just going and trying things out straight away!
Internet (and life in general) is full of wanna-bes who claim that they wanna change their lives but won't actually try something new at all.
So I bet you'll get some useful experience @teabag and it will pay you back much more in the future.


It depends on the industry of course as in some cases you won't get clicked once for $15 lol.
But if that's not the case I'll second @Rcaraway1989 as usually you don't need to spend too much to see how the first visitors behave, adjust your funnel and then add some more fuel.

Also please make sure you don't fall into this trap, or a similar one:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/how-i-lost-550-to-google.53043/

Im well aware of that thread I think i got the charges disputed though. Still be carefull because they will automatically start a campaign and keep billing you.

 

[Yury]

Still be carefull because they will automatically start a campaign and keep billing you

Yep your experience described in that topic hopefully will help others who will follow your way...
And also @3things 's input in that topic, wow what a good lesson to be learned -
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/how-i-lost-550-to-google.53043/page-2#post-375343
So thank you guys for not hiding the problems so other will hopefully be careful with this stuff.

 

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[Yury]

I guess I should make a progress thread

Sounds great as your Appreneurial experience combined with your thorough approach described in this topic is surely something that can help both these who's interested in Appreneurship and to these who are yet to grasp the power of your approach.

So I figure it's going to be a very useful topic (I already kinda felt sorry for somewhat littering this topic with unrelated stuff).

BTW talking about AppStore, it might sound silly but I've always shunned it because of my strong distaste towards Objective-C. And now with (much yummier imho) Swift coming and me having my main vehicle running solidly I'm excited to be able to taste the Appreneurial stuff myself - it's somewhat far from my business route at the moment but I'd love to get a better idea of how things are done there and how to connect it with my vehicle. That's why I'll be the solid follower of your topic.

Just one thing - do you plan to have this topic in public or in the INSIDERS section? There were some cases of copycats even Inside, so if you'll put your topic in the public part of the forum probably you'd better be double-careful with some details because while many people here have their own ideas to pursue, perverted strangers might try to completely copy everything you describe including your niche etc. So watch out.

But I really hope to read more about your progress and to learn from it.

 

[Rcaraway1989]

Sounds great as your Appreneurial experience combined with your thorough approach described in this topic is surely something that can help both these who's interested in Appreneurship and to these who are yet to grasp the power of your approach.

So I figure it's going to be a very useful topic (I already kinda felt sorry for somewhat littering this topic with unrelated stuff).

BTW talking about AppStore, it might sound silly but I've always shunned it because of my strong distaste towards Objective-C. And now with (much yummier imho) Swift coming and me having my main vehicle running solidly I'm excited to be able to taste the Appreneurial stuff myself - it's somewhat far from my business route at the moment but I'd love to get a better idea of how things are done there and how to connect it with my vehicle. That's why I'll be the solid follower of your topic.

Just one thing - do you plan to have this topic in public or in the INSIDERS section? There were some cases of copycats even Inside, so if you'll put your topic in the public part of the forum probably you'd better be double-careful with some details because while many people here have their own ideas to pursue, perverted strangers might try to completely copy everything you describe including your niche etc. So watch out.

But I really hope to read more about your progress and to learn from it.

Good idea about INSIDERS's. I just joined -- I'll keep future posts there.

Ya most dev's hate Objective C -- I was too much of a newbie programmer when I started to mind.

 

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[Yury]

Phone Gap

Yeah just please be sure to properly analyze the downsides of Phone Gap first as Phone Gap/Xamarin/Appcelerator/Kony/you name, each have their very specific downsides. So while they might work just fine for some purposes, for other ones you'd better use native approaches for each platform.

 

[Weavie]

Yeah I am aware of plenty of downsides to Phone Gap. If an idea proved itself I would most likely rewrite it native.

 

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[NicoleMarie]

This website looks great; one of those great things out there that I wish I knew about sooner. What happens to the people that sign up/pay? What if you ditch the idea?

 

[teabag]

So MVP sounded great and all. I set it up with no problems and increased my google adwords to $150.

Over 7 days I received 13 unique views and 0 clicks (meaning 0 people submitted their email).

My landing page and website look great visually and the offer is better than my competitors. Any analysis on this?

Also, it took 4 days for google adwords to be approved... when the landing page lasted 7 days...

 

[NicoleMarie]

The site pretty much says "Hey the product isn't ready yet so give us your email and we'll let you know when it is". When GifShare hit the App Store, i created a MailCheat(Chimp) campaign (You can download the emails and upload them to MailCheat(Chimp)) and let everyone know it was ready.

Edit: the cool thing about this is that I still have those emails. I can send out emails to the list when I release big updates or new apps.

Oh ok. I actually found out that people aren't making people pay lol, although I guess it could also be used for "presales." The email collecting DEFINITELY sounds great, since you already know everyone wants what you have. Best of all, they came to you!

It looks like the adwords part of it is simplified, like no negative keywords and stuff like that. Did you find it sufficient still? Sorry if I'm missing something there ha.

 

[samuraijack]

Great post!

For someone who wants to get into the app scene, that has only began to learn to program for a couple months, should I just focus on marketing and just outsource?

 

[Michal II]

Very interesting Post. I'm iOS Developer and about year ago I quit my job with idea of making millions with my App and just got into financial troubles, I didn't yet finished it and had to start working for other people to be able to paid my bills.

To be honest I didn't spend any time to promote my app which is stupid and really forgot about it and work as freelancer now.
Can you give me your opinion based on video on my Landing Page http://www.facestatsapp.com - I found that after installation it takes a long time to update data from Facebook Server so it's something that I would have to work on. But is it worth my work?

Basic idea is that app show you who gives you most likes, most comments on Facebook or you can see how many likes and comments you got from specific friend

 

[Rcaraway1989]

Very interesting Post. I'm iOS Developer and about year ago I quit my job with idea of making millions with my App and just got into financial troubles, I didn't yet finished it and had to start working for other people to be able to paid my bills.

To be honest I didn't spend any time to promote my app which is stupid and really forgot about it and work as freelancer now.
Can you give me your opinion based on video on my Landing Page http://www.facestatsapp.com - I found that after installation it takes a long time to update data from Facebook Server so it's something that I would have to work on. But is it worth my work?

Basic idea is that app show you who gives you most likes, most comments on Facebook or you can see how many likes and comments you got from specific friend

Looking at your landing page leads me to believe you spent way too much time building a landing page. Have you verified there's a market for this? If so have you spoken to any customers?

 

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[samuraijack]

Great book and the creator is a forum member @regoapps

He has tons of posts on reddit in an AMA about his apps if you want to read, some value in there as well. He also has a youtube channel with some lectures he gave, also some valuable app tips as well.

 

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[user1995]

Thanks for the excellent thread!

Would you say that reskinning apps, submitting them a couple of times and failing fast is a good way to get your feet wet?

 

[Rcaraway1989]

Thanks for the excellent thread!

Would you say that reskinning apps, submitting them a couple of times and failing fast is a good way to get your feet wet?

Yes.

 

[user1995]

Yes.

Thank you, I shall do so.

 

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[luniac]

No there isn't. Literally choose your font, picture and type.

Oh and your credit card details

well ill give it a shot
i hope its not prohibitively expensive, i got some money to burn cause i live like a fat priest(im not fat), but i got limits lol

thanks

 

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[Kevin Peter]

Am on a similar lane. Building an app that solicits your bank account transactional SMS information and gives you an notification on the cash flow and the savings detail on the end of the month. Looking forward to monetize it after 3 years, until then it is free for every possible user across the world.

 

[DaRK9]

Am on a similar lane. Building an app that solicits your bank account transactional SMS information and gives you an notification on the cash flow and the savings detail on the end of the month. Looking forward to monetize it after 3 years, until then it is free for every possible user across the world.

Or you could find investors, use the money to get a much larger user base faster via marketing, and charge in 6/mo-one/yr.

 

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