This book will covers everything you want to know about how you can start an app business with no money. It covers topics such as how to get started, the tools needed and other related topics. With this book you will be able to do exactly what many other successful startups have done before, and that’s creating a big app business with no money!
Starting an app business with no money is possible for those willing to put in some time and effort. This book will help you understand the process of making your first $100 on the app store by teaching you how to create an app, submit it and market it.
Outline Your Idea
The first step towards creating your mobile application is to dissect what exactly you want it to do. Start outlining the idea for your app and gradually dive into greater detail. Make sure to note the mission of the app, the features that you wish to include, and any other information, from design choices to specific original bits of functionality, that will distinguish your app among numerous similar ones in the app store.
Reduce Feature Set
Depending on how much you have in your budget, the first option you should look at is reducing the feature set. Talk to a developer about which of your features are contributing most to the cost and see if you can do away with any of them in the first release. Often you’ll find that peripheral features can be stripped out with little consequence to your users’ experience. Stripping it back to just the basics will also help keep it simple and enable you to focus on your core features.
Build your app cheaply offshore
This is the most common fallback for strapped-for-cash founders. I personally wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a sound technical understanding of app development and server administration, have a lot of time on your hands for project management and quality control and know what to look for in a development team.
If you don’t have those three prerequisites, getting your app built cheaply offshore is not a good idea. Like many others to try this option before you, you will most likely lose what little capital you do have. The likelihood of project failure increases dramatically when you send your project overseas and in many cases you have little recourse when it comes to getting a refund.
The same applies to local app development companies who get their development done offshore. Same risks, same prerequisites.
Determine Your Target Audience
Once you know exactly what you have to offer, research your target audience. Consider such factors as age, interests, location, and other aspects relevant to the features of your app. Once your buyer personas start forming, you may need to adjust your outline. For instance, although some feature can appear unique and fantastic to you, there is a chance your target audience won’t find it captivating, and it’s important to rely on such empirical data rather than implement the idea in its original state anyway.
Choose a Platform
Developing both for Android and iOS will be significantly more expensive than starting with a single platform first. Analyze your target audience carefully and determine whether one of the platforms hosts more potential clients. You can also settle on cross-platform development and effectively eliminate the necessity to have several different versions of the app.
Choose the Development Route
Build the App Yourself
Creating your own app is currently the most accessible option when you have an extremely low budget. There are numerous platforms that offer extensive toolkits, allowing you to design and program a mobile app from scratch, with little or no knowledge of how to code. These services offer limited design choices and functionality, but they can be incredibly efficient for building a prototype of your app and testing it before deciding on professional development. Also, depending on the complexity of your application, you may stick with this option indefinitely.
Some of the most popular platforms to build your own mobile app include:https://652155033b22bbb39e75a88d5f606370.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
- Good Barber
- io
- Game Salad
- Appy Pie
- AppMachine
- Mobile Roadie
- Shoutem
Deeply research your market
The first step to inform everything you do moving forward is a thorough market research. You need to know the current offering on the market and use this knowledge to find a gap your app will fill and serve a fresh, complete solution to the problem you’re solving.
Extensive market research should help you discover:
- Who are your competitors?
- What is their strategy?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of other app developers in this market?
- What are their customers saying in the reviews and on social media?
- What is their unique selling point?
When you have the answers to these questions, you will be able to avoid your competitors’ mistakes, double up on the strategies that work, and clearly define your unique take on the problem and the path to solving it. There are millions of available mobile apps, and this is your opportunity to ensure yours stands out.
Browse through the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store to see what else is out there. If few apps fit the description, it’s either good news or bad news. On the one hand, there might not be a market at all for the app. On the other hand, there could be a void in the market, opening the door for new app businesses to take advantage.
Define your elevator pitch and target audience
Can you articulate your app’s specific purpose? Can you name its difference from your website and its specific use cases? This is probably the trickiest step for business owners and marketers. Boiling all your ideas down to one or two sentences of clear purpose is hard, but it’s also one of the core steps to ensuring the success of your app.
This is the time to define:
- What will be the app’s key functionality?
- Can you define what problems your app solves?
- Who are the potential app users?
- Why would people want to use it?
- What is the added value compared to a mobile website?
- Which business goals will it help you achieve?
- What audience will benefit from it?
- What does that audience need and crave?
Being honest when answering these questions will ensure you don’t waste resources on redundant app features or targeting the wrong groups of people.
If you can’t clearly articulate the situation where your app solves a problem, there might not be an app business to pursue here. App ideas are useless if they don’t solve problems for real app users.
By now, you should also be confident about your elevator pitch. If you accidentally found yourself in front of a potential investor and they asked you about your project, how would you convey your mission in only a couple of sentences in less than a minute? Again, strong focus and clarity this early in the process can amplify your success in so many ways, so don’t miss your opportunity to be precise and clear with your app’s purpose early on.
Conclusion
The amount of money you can make developing apps is increasing daily. Start an app business with no money and invest only your time and creativity to build a sustainable income stream.