Making money writing apps online may confuse non-developers. But a programmer can create an app for you. Indie Hackers has many app developers who are willing to collaborate with entrepreneurs to realize their ideas.
You just need a distinctive app idea, an audience, and a brand image. Your programmer handles development.
Add your app to Google Play and the Apple App Store to make money. Contrary to popular belief, a free app can help you make more money. Free apps can make money by adding advertisements or premium features. The free software will draw more consumers, making it easier to upsell.
Get an App Plan
App creation requires planning. The rest of mobile app development will be easy if you’re thorough here.
If you’re reading this, you probably know what kind of mobile app you want to make. This is wonderful since you can start thinking about the app more.
No App Idea?
If you don’t have an app idea, consider how a mobile app could solve difficulties you or others have.
List issues and remedies. Choose the greatest ideas for research after making a list.
Google Trends provides ideas. Search for hot topics in different categories. One may have a good idea for an application.
Trending Subreddits can also inspire. It posts daily app conversations.
After brainstorming, pick the best. Answer the following questions to choose an app development idea.
Your app solves what?
The best apps tackle a consumer problem. To succeed, your app must do the same.
Consider your mobile app’s appeal. If you can think of a good answer to this question, you may be onto something and be on the right path to making money writing apps online.
Examples:
- Uber Eats App: Allows smartphone take away ordering.
- TikTok: Shares images with friends.
- Apple Podcasts: Organizes and plays podcasts.
Remember that the issue an app solves may be old ones, don’t always look for the latest problems.
Your app could reinvent a solution. Teams did not pioneer video calls, but it made them easier for a specific demographic. It could also address an audience’s issue.
A Podcaster wants to establish a mobile app so listeners can easily access its stream.
The podcaster does not need to reinvent the wheel. This app’s best version will resemble all podcasting apps. Content and audience are more important than the app idea.
Your app’s features?
Next, determine your app’s features. Remember that app development becomes more complex as you add functionality. The cost to build your app may also increase if you hire a development team to make it.
An MVP is a good idea (Minimal Viable Product). This is a stripped-down mobile app.
If needed, updates can add functionality. Using TikTok as an example: It lets you share photos/videos, follow friends, add stories, instant message other app users, comment, and search a detailed discovery feed.
Initially, the app was simpler. App users could only share photos with friends.
Another example might be a radio station app: the most basic radio station mobile app will have a feed and schedule.
After creating a great app, the station can add commenting and downloadable content.
Your App Users?
Your app should have a particular target audience in mind. Consider the people who struggle with the problem you want to solve, as this is most likely to be your target audience.
Before developing a mobile app, identify your audience. Your audience will affect most of the decisions you make, from your app’s core features to how it looks to how you market it.
Research Your Competitors and Audience before starting with Making Money Writing Apps Online
Next, you should perform market research. This will help your app development process in several ways.
You will:
• Gain a better understanding of the app store market.
• Discover the types of mobile apps that are successful.
• Find apps that solve your problems.
• Discover inspiration for app design and features.
You can perform market research manually by looking at the most downloaded apps in the main marketplaces such as the iOS and Android app stores.
Narrow the search down by category to see what others are doing in your area of interest. Download some of the best ones to try them out.
If you have the budget available, you could use analytics software like App Annie to get more information about competitors.
A Note on Competition
When making money writing apps online, it’s tempting to become discouraged if you find an existing app that does what you want it to do.
But you shouldn’t be. The presence of competition in your niche is a proof point that the niche has value.
Finding an app idea like yours during market research isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it shows there is a demand for your product.
You should be more worried if there is nothing out there at all, as this might suggest that people don’t want what you offer. Similar apps mean your idea has an existing user base.
There are several reasons why existing competition a bad thing isn’t necessarily when it comes to the app development process:
People may be interested in trying alternatives. Think of shopping apps; each fulfils the same fundamental role whilst taking subtly different angles that give people the option to diversify their choice. Also, people don’t necessarily settle on one mobile app; they enjoy switching between multiple similar apps, either routinely or at random.
Existing apps don’t necessarily capture the entire potential market. Just because an app already exists in your niche doesn’t mean it’s captured or claimed its entire potential user base. Think about all the different food delivery apps that are available.
You can research existing competitors and apps. Existing apps in your area give you a point of reference and research. You can look up vital statistics about their performance and see the best features.
The customers for your niche are already out there. Convincing people to use a better version of something that already exists is easier than convincing them to use something they’ve never used or thought of before.
List What Makes Your Competitors Good
While you are researching other mobile apps, make notes of what you like and dislike about each one.
Make sure to consider:
• The features that are available.
• The app design elements.
• How you move from one screen to another.
• Whether you must log in or create an account.
Once you’ve done this, it’s time to move onto the next step of the mobile app development process.
Define Your Competitive Market Edge
Your mobile app can’t simply be a copy of something that exists already. Each app—just like other commercial products—needs a USP. The USP will likely be the key to making money writing apps online.
Your USP will not only become your headline feature, but it’ll also become a major component of your sales and marketing strategy. It needs to be catchy, memorable, and useful.
Whether you’ve discovered similar mobile apps in your niche or not, you’ll need to draught the angles you’ll use to compete with others and convince people to use your app over theirs. These angles will be advantageous when you come to release and market your product on the app stores.
Your edge is also about your competitor’s weakness. Read your competitors’ reviews and identify common themes, and look them up on forums like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, etc.
Here are some examples of the competitive edge of popular mobile apps. Note that many of the mobile apps aren’t drastically different from the ones that came before.
• Teams to Skype: Ability for anyone to join a call whether they have an account.
• Signal to WhatsApp: Open the same account on multiple devices. Plus, potentially better privacy.
• Paramount Plus to Amazon Video: Access to Paramount content.
• Canva to Gimp: Easier for beginners to create professional designs.
It’s important to note that the USPs don’t necessarily make the former apps better than the latter ones. For example, many people would rather buy Netflix than Paramount Plus. And most professionals still use Photoshop or Gimp.
The point is that the competitive edge makes the apps stand out and appeals greatly to the target audience.
Talk to Your Audience if you want to start Making Money Writing Apps Online
Once you’ve looked at what your competitors are offering, you should speak to your potential app users. Doing so early in the app development process ensures you build an app that contains the features that they want.
Imagine you want to build an app for a hair salon. Once you’ve analyzed your competitors, you should have a good idea of the types of features users enjoy. But it’s only by talking to people that you will find out if this is the case.
You could create a survey asking about various features you are thinking about including. Once you’ve generated some responses, you should have a better idea about what app users want.
Decide How You Will Monetize Your Mobile App
If you want to make money from your app, you must consider how you will do so. Apps have a high development cost, and effective monetization will help you get this investment back.
You have several options for monetization. The right one will depend on the type of mobile app you plan to release.
It’s important to think about monetization before you start designing your app so that your chosen method is fully integrated into your product. There are a few different methods of App Monetization:
Advertising
This is probably the most common form of app monetization. You’ll likely see it in many of the apps you use. This is because it is a fundamental requirement for making money writing apps online.
One of the reasons ads are so popular is because it’s easy to add them to a mobile app. You don’t have to think about building complex paid features into your app development process.
Ads also make it possible for you to make money despite your app being free. This means more people are likely to download it from app stores. Ads come in many forms. Some are disruptive to the user experience, while others are more subtle.
If you want to use ads to monetize your app, you have plenty of options. Consider platforms like:
• AdColony
These are great for beginners as you just must add the code to your app. The platforms will deal with connecting you to ad buyers.
Generate Business
Many people make an app to increase the revenue potential of their business. The app doesn’t generate money. It just gives people another way to buy your product.
Think about ecommerce stores that build an app version of their online landing page or hair salons that use an app to process bookings. The mobile app contributes to the business’s bottom line, but it isn’t the product.
Paid Apps
Asking people to pay for your app is an easy way to monetize it. But it can be a challenge to convince people to do so.
To get around this, many apps offer users something for free. This could be a free trial or additional features that people pay to access. It then encourages users to sign up for the paid version.
Both Google and the Apple App Store make it easy for the development team to charge for the app. But they also take a significant cut of your income.
Subscription
Like the above, you could offer a free trial period that automatically changes into a paid subscription after a set period. Or you could offer a subscription version of the free app that enables access to a whole host of “pro” features.
Think of video editing software that lets you use the app for free, but makes you buy a subscription to export your clips. Subscriptions can be very profitable because they bring in money over and over again instead of just once. It can be hard to get users to subscribe, but this is a great source of recurring revenue when making money writing apps online.
In-app Purchases
This is a form of monetization that is especially common in gaming. You monetize via in-app purchases that unlock extra features, in-game currency, or other content.
The idea is that while many customers use the game for free, those who pay for it more than make up for the lack of earnings from free users. If people like your game and play it consistently over time, your earning opportunities are almost limitless.
Flappy Bird is an excellent example of this. Estimates suggest it has made over $1 million, despite it being completely free to use.
Build an App Wireframe when starting making money writing apps online
At this point in your mobile app development, you should be building a picture of what your app will look like.
You’ll know:
• The features you want to include.
• What competing mobile apps offer.
• How you intend to monetize your app.
The next stage is to plan how this will all fit together in your mobile app. You do this by creating a wireframe.
Wireframes are digital sketches of apps or websites/pages. Wireframes provide a series of outlines of buttons, pages, functions and other design elements that can help you get a sense of how elements of your app will fit together and affect user experience. They can be exported into other design tools to help designers create UIs and skins.
Remember that the more features you plan to offer, the more difficult this stage of mobile app development will be.
There is a debate about whether you should design your app’s skins, logos, and branding before or after wireframing. After all, how can you create a sketch of your app without knowing what images will fill in the gaps?
We’ve included app design in the next section, but you can do it before or during the wireframing process if you prefer.
Wireframes have a practical purpose; they allow you to get a sense of how users will navigate your app and how it will function from a mechanical point of view.
They outline exactly what will happen when users press a button in your app.
It’s essential that you organize this before you start developing your app. It’s much cheaper to fix an issue at this stage than it is once you’ve started the mobile app development process. This can have a big impact on the development cost of your app.
A wireframe doesn’t have to look exactly like your finished app will look, at least in the early stages. Start by building a basic sketch that shows the key elements and how the navigation will work.
If you pack your wireframe with graphics and logos, you’ll get bogged down in tweaking visuals when you should be focusing on user journey and flow. You can add more detail when you are confident about the basic flow.
It’s good practise to make it as easy as possible for people to use the main features of your app, so this should be the focus. Check out the example home screens in the image below. Each one makes it super easy for the user to access the main feature.
You can hide secondary features or pages within drop-down menus. These are not the most important features to prioritize when making money writing apps online.
There are tonnes of wireframing applications online, such as those from Balsamic, and Adobe. They are all great for app development, although they can also be used to wireframe other types of programmes.
Many of them are designed for users with no experience, with templates and drag-and-drop services to simplify the process. Or you can even use pen and paper to create your wireframe. Just go with whatever’s easiest for you.
Testing your Wireframes
Once you’ve tinkered with your wireframes, it’s best to test them extensively.
Don’t just do this yourself; recruit family, friends, and co-workers to go through your wireframes on different devices. The more people who test your wireframe, the more likely it is that you’ll discover flaws.
The aim at this stage of the app development process is to make sure the app’s user experience is as simple as possible. Provide people with different tasks to do on your app and see if they can complete them.
Look for places where the navigation is more complicated than it should be or where instructions aren’t clear. Balsamic has a good guide to wireframe testing that you can check out here.
Build Your Design Elements
During wireframing, you should start planning the visual elements of your app.
This includes things like:
- Images and media.
- Your logo.
- The design of buttons and screens.
- Font.
- Color scheme.
- Animations.
- Menus.
Assuming you’ve done a thorough job of wireframing, you should have a good idea about exactly what you need to build your app to maximize the user experience. A good user experience is very important when making money writing apps online.
If you are building an app for an existing business, this section will be easy. You can use your existing material and make it suitable for your app.
This will ensure consistent branding across all your promotional materials. If you don’t have existing material, you’ll have more work to do.
Consider hiring a designer to create some of these elements if you aren’t comfortable doing so yourself. There are plenty of useful tools available to help with app design.
Logo generators from Fiverr and Canva. Both these services provide high-quality templated logo designs.
Color palette generators from Canva. These provide you with colour palettes that make sure your app’s branding is consistent.
Now you’re starting to get a good idea of what your app will look like, it’s time to move on to the next stage of app development.
Choose Your App Development Strategy when starting making money writing apps online
When it comes to building a mobile app, you can take one of two approaches: developing it from scratch or using an app maker. Here is a look at each of these processes in more detail.
Mobile App Development from Scratch
When making money writing apps online, if you choose to build your app from scratch, you will have to create the entire product yourself. You’ll either need to learn a programming language, develop your coding skills, or hire an app maker to help you with building the app.
A development team will work with you to:
• Create various wireframe prototypes.
• Draft your back end.
• Create user/graphical interfaces.
• Finalize your front- and back-end.
This is ideal for those who want to work with developers and designers on longer-term projects.
It’s also often essential if you want to create a commercial app with completely new features.
Finding freelance developers
Post an ad on a freelance marketplace like eLance or Upwork to have professionals contact you with proposals detailing how much it will cost to build the app and how long it will take.
Check out reviews and past products to make sure you get a qualified candidate. Ideally, you’ll find someone who has experience building apps like the one you want to create.
How Much Does It Cost?
Paying someone to create an app is expensive. I’ve seen quotes in the high $10-100K range for professional app development. I can recommend Green Custard for professional mobile app development. They would be a great consultancy to work with when aiming to make money writing apps online, as they have done it many times for their clients.
And the development cost doesn’t necessarily end once the app is built.
After you release it to the App Store and Google Play you may discover bugs or want to add updates. If this is the case, you’ll have to pay for the app developer to implement these changes.
Learning to Make an App
Learning mobile app development is time-consuming. But there are plenty of courses and platforms out there that make it possible to do so if you are committed.
Look on platforms like Coursera, Kajabi and Udemy for courses on app development.
The great thing about learning how to create an app yourself is that the development cost can be nothing more than the price of the courses you take to learn how to do so.
You can start building basic apps in just a few weeks. Getting to the standard required to build complex apps will take much longer.
Front-end and Back-end Development
Once you’ve prototyped your idea with wireframe mock-ups, it’s time to think about building your app for real.
This is where most DIY app builders get bogged down in details and jargon that they don’t understand.
Firstly, let’s just summarise the difference between the front-end and back-end:
- Front-end: The front-end is what you see as a user or customer. It comprises the interface and components which you can interact with.
- Back-end: The back end is the core/brains behind the front-end and deals with app functionality, requests from the front-end and data.
If you build your back end first, which is generally the more time-consuming of the two, then you may find that your UI is limited to what you’ve built into your back end.
However, if you design your front-end first, you might be penalised when adding extra functionality in the back end.
Overall, it is generally considered most logical to build your back end first. The back end drives the front-end and without its core fundamental elements, it’s difficult to envisage how your UI will come together. Also, if you’ve wireframed then you’ll have an idea of UX and flow already, better enabling you to design your core back-end and choose what services you need to get your app running.
Starting with your best wireframes, work out and jot down what APIs you’ll need and whether you’ll need custom APIs and data diagrams, and then delineate your servers. This will greatly streamline the process of making money writing apps online.
There are several back-end solutions that allow for the creation of back-end services without the need to code. These include Xano and AWS Lamda.
Front-end: UI
The user interface (UI) design is often considered the ‘fun bit.’ You’ve slogged at your app databases, servers, and APIs but now it’s time to get creative once more.
App UI design now revolves around what are called WYSIWYG editors. This simply stands for What You See Is What You Get.
They allow for the design of user interfaces that look identical on your screen to how they’d look in real life. You can easily insert visual elements, create icons, menus, and screens and generally design the look of your app with pre-made visual elements.
Often, you can import your wireframe into a WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly drop visual elements into your wireframes. This enables you to easily test the app for user experience and compare your prototypes.
Visually designing your mobile application is pivotal to everything from marketing to sales. It concerns how your app will be visually advertised and the aesthetic appeal it will have for your users. Everywhere your app goes, its visual design will follow in the form of screenshots and logos.
Once again, not knowing how to code is not an impediment to producing the front end for an app, no-code app designers like Bravo are great for this when aiming to make money writing apps online.
Mobile App Development with an App Builder makes Making Money Writing Apps Online easier
App builders are the app version of web builders like Wix or Apache Cordova. They make it easy for companies to create apps without writing a single line of code. You just choose a template and then add the features your app needs.
You can customise the design of your app with text, images, colour schemes, and logos. In the end, you get a fully personalised app for your brand or business.
There are several big benefits to using an app builder. These include:
• They’re fast: You start with a premade template and then add additional features from a library. If you already have app content, like text and images, available, you can have your app ready in just days or even hours.
• They’re proven to work: The apps and features provided by app builders are proven to work. You can create an app without coding or knowledge about beta testing because this has already been sorted. If any issues do occur, the team behind the app builder will fix them.
• The app design is optimised for different uses: App building platforms know what different types of users need from an app. By providing you with templates, you don’t have to spend as much time planning or researching.
• You can use the app on both iOS and Android: The app maker will create both iOS and Android versions of your product for the respective app stores. This is essential to ensure the widest possible reach.
• They help with the extras: App building platforms will typically help with all the extras that come with building an app. For example, publishing the app to the App Store and marketing your mobile app.
The downside to using one of these tools is that you are restricted to the features already available. A practical example I ran into was when I was designing an app that used a map and pins on a map. The built-in Apache Cordova tools would not allow fine grain control over the map in order to customize the pins to show specific types of locations; a more low-level tool was required to achieve this.
They’re great if you want to build an app for your business using a proven feature set. For example, building a coffee shop or a restaurant app.
But if you have your eyes on creating a brand-new idea, like the next Twitter or Just Eat, you’ll have to develop your app from scratch.
How Much Does It Cost to Build an App like This?
Making money writing apps online doesn’t have to be expensive. Using a builder for app development is cost-effective, as the cost is lower than building an app from scratch. The app templates you use to create an app have already been developed, and you essentially just pay a fee to use them.
Test the App
During app development, you (or your developer) should be routinely testing your app.
The purpose of testing is to identify major issues, crashes, dead ends, dead links and error messages to make sure that your app works well.
At this stage, you can test your app virtually using smartphone simulators. You can test individual features as you build them out.
Once you are reaching the end of the app development process, it’s important to test the software on your phone. This will show you whether everything works together smoothly and where you can improve your app.
Start by testing out the app yourself. Run through the main ways you envisage people using your app to check the process is smooth.
Then you can ask a small number of people you know to test your app. The goal at this stage is to ensure that your app works on a wide range of devices. If any bugs or issues occur, fix them before releasing your app to the public.
If you want to do further testing, you can hire the services of a company like Tricentis, Testlio or Global App Testing.
Testing on Android
The easiest way to test on Android is to publish your app on the Google Play Store but only make it available to certain users. This is an important step before making money writing apps online. You can then send a link to users, who will be able to download your app and try it out.
If you want to do this, you’ll first need to create a developer’s account.
There are three types of tests you can run:
- An internal test makes your app available for a limited number of users.
- A closed test that lets you share the app with a wider set of targeted testers.
- Open testing that lets anyone download your app and submit private feedback.
You typically want to go through each of these testing methods in order, gradually increasing your audience size.
Google has an excellent guide you can use to help you during the testing process. Check it out here.
Testing on iOS
TestFlight makes it easy for iPhone app developers to set up tests of their products.
Just create an Apple app developer account and then upload the version of the app you want to test to App Store Connect.
You can then share a link to the iOS app asking people to download TestFlight and then try out your app.
Like on the Google Play Store, you can test internally with up to 100 app users or externally with up to 10,000 users.
Apple recommends making the type of feedback you want clear to users when sending out invites. TestFlight software makes it super easy for people to provide feedback directly by taking a screenshot while using the app.
You can then view this feedback within App Store Connect.
Release Your App
“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.“
Reid Hoffman – Founder of LinkedIn
Now that you’ve built and tested your app, it should be ready to go. It’s time to release your app on the Apple App Store and Google Play! You can’t start making money writing apps online if you never release your app.
Here are the most important stages of your app launch:
Create Your App Store Listing Pages
The first step is to create listing pages on both Google Play and the Apple App Store. This will make it easy for both Android and iOS app users to download your app.
Assuming you tested your app on both these platforms, you already have your app developer accounts set up. It’s then just a case of optimising your pages.
Your listing page consists of several main elements:
- App Name: This is the title of your app. But you can optimise your title by adding descriptive keywords to help you stand out when people search for your app.
- Icon: Your app icon is important as it’s what stands out when people search on the App Store. Try to make one that is instantly recognisable to your users by using the same colour palette and design features as your app and other branding elements.
- Screenshots/Images: The screenshots and images section is the first thing potential users see on your listing. Use this section to highlight some of your app’s most important features and benefits.
- You can also add a video to this section that shows your product in action.
- App Description: In this section, you need to write more about the features of your mobile app and why people should use it. Start off with the most important point, as this is what users will see when they visit your page. You can then go into further detail in the “read more” section. In the “read more” section, the company then provides more detail about the product. This includes information about its specific features.
- Include user feedback: It’s also a good idea to include any user feedback you get on the app stores. This is as simple as adding user reviews to your app’s listing. Users trust reviews because it gives them an idea of what to expect from your app and how other users have experienced it. Apps with great reviews also tend to get more downloads because people want to download a product that they know will work well.
Promote the App
Now onto the final stage of app development: getting people to use it. If no one uses it, you’ll have no luck making money writing apps online!
The great thing about publishing your app on the app store or Google Play is that these platforms will promote your app for you. When users search for terms related to your app, yours will show up.
The problem is that these listings are competitive. This means it can be difficult to show up. You’ll need to use other app promotion strategies to be seen.
Luckily, there are plenty of options available. Here are some of them:
Promote to Your Existing Audience
For many app developers, promoting the mobile app to your existing customers will be enough to generate downloads. There are many ways you can do this.
- Social Media: Promoting your app on social media sites like Instagram or Facebook is one. Just create posts telling your followers about your app and include a link to your download page. McDonalds regularly promotes its app on its twitter profile.
- Physical Advertising: If your app is for a physical business like a restaurant or a shop, promote the mobile app in your premises.
- Radio Advertising: Or if it’s for a media channel like a radio station or a blog, advertise your app on these channels.
- Email list Promotion: Your email list is another good option. When promoting your mobile app, clearly show users what the benefit of downloading it is.
For example:
Mobile phone stores could highlight promotions and coupons that people can only access from within the app.
Hairdressers, or salons might focus on stamp-based loyalty programmes that clients need to download the app to use.
You can even add a specific benefit for users who download the app and use it for the first time.
Paid Ads
Paid ads are the easiest way to get your app to show up when users need it, which is important when making money writing apps online. Use Google Ads or Apple Search Ads to get your mobile app to show up in the marketplace when people search for relevant terms.
These ads are super effective because at first glance they appear to be regular results. They also display above all other listings.
To create an effective campaign, you need to build an attractive ad and choose the most relevant keywords.
You should also spend some time optimising your app listing for conversion. If you don’t, users will be less likely to download your mobile app.
The difficulty with search advertisements is that they cost money to operate. If you have a good method of monetization you’ll be able to generate a profit. If not, you may lose money.
Other Promotion Options
We’ve focused on the above two options as they provide the biggest bang for your buck without needing too much investment in time or money. But there are plenty of other ways you can promote your product without needing the app stores.
These are good options if you have the time to invest in them or existing experience in these areas.
A good PR strategy will get you app coverage in the press. This will get the word out to a large audience, which can result in more downloads.
Creating a website and implementing a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy will bring people to your site when they search for relevant terms on Google. SEO can take a while to pay off, but when it does, you’ll get a steady stream of relevant traffic.
Ads in traditional media formats such as TV, radio, and billboards can be expensive, but if you have the budget, you can get your app in front of huge audiences.
If you want to learn more about any of these strategies, we have an in-depth guide to mobile app marketing that you can check out here.
In Conclusion
We’ve covered everything you need to create an app, from thinking of an app idea to launching it.
The planning, brainstorming, ideation, and drafting stage of making an app is always the same. Take time to plan your approach throughout the entire process: it’ll save you time, money, and effort.
Following that, you must either build your mobile app from scratch by working through its various elements or use an app creator. The main differences between these options are the development cost, the time it takes to get set up, and the features you’ll have available.
App development does take a lot of investment to understand how to do it and a lot of specific technology, if you invest the time to learn this, you will be able to produce the next app much more quickly. Remember if the first app is not a success, try again with a different niche or promotion strategy.
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