MBA931 Creating & Selling a Mobile App P1

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Today's episode is part one of our two part lesson on creating and selling a mobile app. If you have a great idea for an app, if you've been wanting to create an app for some time and sell it, this two part lesson is going to be great for you because I'm going to break down exactly what you need to do, what you need to plan, how you're supposed to execute it. In part one, today's lesson we're going to focus on the creating part, how to get this thing created. And then in part two in tomorrow's lesson we're going to focus on how to sell your mobile app. It's not enough for you just to create it, you got to market and sell this thing so it's a business. So today we're going to be focusing on the idea of the app, the problem it solves, how to plan out this app, how you're going to actually create this app, whether you're going to create it yourself or hire somebody else to do it. Talk about costs, we're going to talk about server needs, we're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff. So today we're going to focus on making sure this thing exists in the world. Then, of course, tomorrow we're going to talk about how to make sure we make this a business and sell it. We got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. All right, creating a mobile app. It all starts with an idea. What are you going to be creating? And you really should be starting with, what problem are you solving? What value are you adding? What. Whether this app is a game, whether it's a productivity tool, whether it's a communication tool, the first thing you need to define is the purpose. What problem does this solve? Once you've nailed that, you need to make sure that you understand the market. So you're going to search all the different apps that have to do with this idea. Go to the app store on your iPhone, or go to the Google Play Store on Android and take a look at what's out there, what's ranked the highest. Read the reviews and read the three star reviews. Find out what's missing in some of these apps. What are people hungry for? What are they looking for? What problem are these apps not solving? Take note on all of this, because this is going to really help you build an effective app that people want. Now, once you've nailed that and you know exactly what this app does, what problem it solves, what's the purpose? You really need to narrow in on this. You got to keep it minimal, viable, especially with a mobile app. You could do a billion different things with a mobile app, but you got to keep it simple, especially for your first version. It doesn't have to do everything. As soon as you launch, you have to remember you want to keep your costs down as much as possible when it comes to creation. Because when you sell your mobile app, whether you are going to be doing a free version and then you have in app purchases, or you're going to have a light version and then a paid version, and people are going to pay to download the app. You have to remember that people are not accustomed to paying a lot of money for apps. Somewhere between $1 and $5 is really the average. Last time I paid more than $5 for an app, probably a year ago or something. But, you know, most of the time the apps that I have are either free or they are around that range, a dollar to five dollars. So you got to think that your margins are going to be pretty low. So you got to keep your costs low as possible. And the best way to keep your costs low is to stay specific, is to stay really, really targeted in and minimal viable. Now, I mentioned about the different pricing. You can either do a free app and have in app purchases or sell the app itself. Or we'll talk about that in tomorrow's lesson. Selling your app today. Let's just focus on getting this created. So now we know we have to narrow in on a very specific purpose. So I'm going to use an app that is very specific that I use a lot, and it's called tripcase. Tripcase is an app that you can download for free, and it makes it easy to bring in all your different itineraries and tickets when you travel. So, for example, if you're traveling to Thailand, you have a airline ticket, you have a hotel reservation, you might have a car reservation. Instead of having these things all over the place, you might have bought them in different, you know, sites or different companies. Tripcase brings them all together, and you have the whole itinerary and all the information you need for those flights and reservations in one app. And all you have to do is just email tripcase special email. That's a link to your account, your itinerary from all those different companies, and it brings it all together in one app. It's pretty cool. That's all it really does. And I really like it because it's a single use app. I use it when I travel, and it has everything I need right there. As soon as I book my flight, I just forward that itinerary to tripcase. I do the same thing with any other reservation, hotel, Airbnb, anything else. Now, the way tripcase makes its money is they also have some ads in there to maybe upsell you some adventures that happen at your locations. So they're either making some revenue through some affiliate marketing or through ads. The point I'm pointing this out is that they could do a whole bunch of things as a travel app, but they just focus on into one area in one app. Now, there's a little secret about creating an app that a lot of people don't talk about. Ease of use and user experience really is so important with apps. It's actually sometimes more important than the actual use of the app. This means that the experience that somebody has on the app, the ui, the user interface of that app is really important. So Design is really important to make sure it's easy to navigate and go around and do the things you need to do with your app. If people like to use your app, they're going to use it. So user experience is so important. When you're on a desktop app or desktop software, it could be a little clunky, it could be a little bit windows 95 and people will still buy it because it has all this functionality. Because it's a bigger screen, there's a whole bunch more you could do with a desktop software because you have a mouse and you have a keyboard that's very easy to use. You can right click all bunch of stuff, you can drag, drop stuff like that. Can't do that with a mobile device. So. So you gotta make sure your UI is on point. So just keep that in mind if your interface is great and you could do that with a very specific purposed app. Now you get your idea. Now you know that it's got a specific purpose, a specific problem it's solving. You gotta ask yourself, am I gonna be creating an iOS app or an Android app? I highly recommend you choose one when you create your app for the first time. So if you start with iOS, you could later on make an Android app. Once You've launched your iOS app and you had some success. So choose whether you want to create an iOS app first or an Android app first. A lot of people are not really sure which one they should start with. Many people lean towards an iOS app because they feel like iOS customers are usually used to paying for things. You know, it's expensive to have an iPhone or an iPad versus an Android device. Could be as cheap as $100, sometimes even less. So they feel like those who are on Android marketplaces are not really big spenders, but this is just, you know, one opinion that you could read on a lot of different, you know, app building blogs. This is something that I have extracted when I was doing the research for this episode. But you do what you feel is comfortable. This leads me to the next part. Let's say, for example, we're going to create an iOS app. How are we going to create this? Who's going to create it? Will you create it yourself? What about design? And if you're going to hire somebody, where do you hire them and how much is this going to cost? So number one, you have to understand that there are two parts to, to creating an app or any software for that matter. Number one, there is the actual design of the app, the actual interface, the screens that they see design is different from actual coding. Those who develop usually don't do both. There are people that are called full Stack, they can design and develop, but I find that people that are dedicated to design or user experiences, they're really good at that, and they focus on that. That's their specialty. And then they take those designs and they hand them over to a developer, and the developer just focuses on creating clean code and creating a great app. I personally agree with this, with my experience in creating software over the years, that a dedicated UI UX designer is really going to do a much better job than somebody who's got their feet in design and development. So you have the design portion of it, and then two, you have the development portion of it, taking those designs and actually coding them. So. So they actually work and they function the way they should. There are other aspects, like making sure you list your app in the iOS store, hosting your app, you know, you have to make sure that this app is actually available on a server somewhere so people can download it. And usually somebody who's a developer, a mobile developer, can help you with that. That's quite simple stuff for a developer, but if we back up a little bit, there is the option of you actually building your own app. It's not rocket science. You can learn it just like you've learned something else in the past. It may take some time, a few months, for you to get your head around it. And if your app is very specific and very simple and you really brought it down to a minimal viable product, you can do this yourself. Now, this is development, it's not design. You may need to pick up a few design courses if you want to design it yourself as well. But getting somebody to design your app may not cost that much. You could probably have somebody on Upwork. Go to Upwork.com and as a project, design all the screens for your simple app. And, and this could be as simple as, like 10 screens. And that would include login and logout and their dashboard and their message center or whatever you have in the app. And they could do that for under $1,000. A really good designer, you could probably get somebody to do it between $5 and $600 too, but they may not be as senior. Now, if you want to develop your app yourself, there's a great course I recommend, and you can find it on Udemy. This course has over 10,000 students and it's got five stars and it's highly recommended. I actually learned this from Derek Sivers. Derek Sivers is building an app and he recommended this course. It's called the Complete iOS App Development Bootcamp. We're going to put a link in today's show notes. You can find that@100mba.net mba931 I mean, this course is so in depth and it's supposed to take you from complete beginner to completed app. And it's only $15. I think it's well worth it. I would even take this course if you were going to get a developer to work on this so you understand the ins and outs of what's going on so you can take the course and build it may take some time, but I really think it'd be a fun adventure, a great learning experience and you could take those designs that you have and build your app. Now if you don't want to do it yourself, you can definitely hire somebody. Upwork is a good place to check out some experienced developers. There are other places to find people if you're looking for somebody who can do a project or you have a certain budget. There's definitely other places. But I definitely would set a project budget and do a project rather on an hourly basis to say, hey, the project is xyz. I need all this stuff. I need the app to be live. I need to make sure you take me to, you know, all the way to launch and this is how much I want to spend. And you can go through interviews and Skype, call these people and go through the whole process and make sure you have somebody that's great for you. My number one recommendation is get somebody who's a great communicator. You don't want somebody who can't communicate and you lose a lot of time and money on just miscommunication. Experience is important, but I believe communication is just as important.

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To wrap up today's lesson, make sure you nail your idea first. Make sure you know what problem you're solving. If you need help with that, we have a free idea validation course that is a seven part video course, seven videos workbook. It's going to help you nail that idea. What problem does your app actually solve? You can check it out@100mba.net. You're also going to decide, hey, is this going to be an Android app or an iOS app? Then you're going to decide who's going to do the designs. Am I going to hire for that? Am I going to learn how to do that myself? And then development, will I get a developer myself? Will I budget for that, or will I learn how to do it myself? Now, if you're going to hire somebody and your app is pretty simple, you should budget around 3 to $5,000 for development. Development can be costly, and it's better for you to pay somebody who's worth it, $5,000, who knows their stuff to get it done right the first time, than pay it again and again, because the person who first touched it was not really experienced or knew what they were doing. If you're on upwork, check out the reviews, check out their testimonials, check out the work they've done in the past. Interview them very well, get on camera face to face, make sure they're a good communicator. Once your app is created, it's up on the App Store, you're ready to sell it. That's when the fun begins. That's when you have a business on your hands. And we get into that in tomorrow's episode. And make sure you hit subscribe. You get that automatically. All right, thank you so much. You guys are listening to today's show. That's it for me today. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Creating software is a lot of fun. It's exciting seeing it come to life, but it takes a lot longer than you expect. I can tell you that from experience. Our webinar software, Webinar Ninjas on version 5 right now, and every version has so many updates within there. And it just takes time. It takes time to do something right. It takes testing. It takes, you know, experimentation. So make sure you're patient. But when you're first developing your product, your first app, and you're pushing it out in the world, get it as simple as possible. So it takes minimal time to get it out into the market and get feedback from your customers. All right, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Take.

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