In this article we look at app development as a method of generating passive income. App development is often touted as one of the big ways of making money and of course some people do get lucky and strike gold but thats not the norm I’m afraid, also sometimes the costs are hidden away as it can cost more than you think. There is also a barrier to people who want to create an app who believe that they need to be a genius programmer with a university degree. This is not true either. I created apps so it can’t be.
When I say apps I also mean games for mobile devices as well – its the same idea, mainly
App development options
You can learn how to use the development environment for developing and Android or iOS app and all of the programming knowledge that you would need to create an app from scratch. There are several programming languages available, you can even create an application use web based technologies and package it as an Android App
You can use an online app builder where they generally have a selection of templates or screens that you can piece together to create your own app. This is a far quicker way of creating an app but there are extra costs. Some companies charge per app, a monthly or annual fee or a fee based on how many users.
Another option is you can go to a site like codecanyon and pay for a template and customize it either yourself or by hiring someone to do this. A lot of these templates are easy to modify – for example a common idea is to put your content on a wordpress blog and the app simply displays the pages.
Monetization
There are a few ways to monetize an app
Paid – If your app or game is very good then users may pay a fee like any software prior to downloading. I would be careful as Android and iOS users are used to free apps and you would have to offer something that is not available in an existing free app
Freemium – These are the apps that are free to install but have lots of in-app purchases which range from removing ads, unlocking features or in game tokens. If you have a game then these can be a money spinner, if you have a popular app with ads then an in-app purchase to remove the ads maybe a money spinner as a lot of users will pay a small fee rather than look at these ads.
Free (ads) – Free app, the most popular type for users but there are ads which can range from Admob banner ads to video ads to interstitial ads for other games which the user must wait a period of time before closing. These ads are popular but damn annoying for the user. There are many ad networks and options.
Promotion
There are many ways you can promote an app, here are some examples.
A basic website detailing your app, a youtube video showing the app usage, tweets via twitter, instagram posts of you using the app, pinterest pins of the app screens,a facebook page.
If you wanted to could also create an ad campaign on one of those sites
In short there are many ways of promoting your app – just remember and point to the app page from your web site or social media content
Tips
Research the popular apps on the app store – what is popular. If there are no apps out there or they don’t get many downloads then maybe its not a popular topic.
Do not overload your app with ads – nothing makes a user deinstall and add a negative review than a 15 second in-app interstitial ad that appears every few screens or minutes.
Try and come up with an idea that can have spin offs – a quiz app formula that can have sub-niches, a wordpress app that you could use for multiple niche blogs, a game that can have a sequel if successful – you get the idea.
Always test your app if you develop it yourself – nothing is more off putting than an app that crashes on a phone or tablet or a feature that doesn’t work
Support Android and iOS – If you can, both have different development requirements (there are exceptions to this using certain build environments) and also costs. I would focus on Android as its cheaper and get money coming in.
Amazon app store – Don’t forget that the Kindle tablets do not use Google Play but rather the Amazon app store – this is free to join. Not as many users but you can get your app out there and making money. They also support web apps which are easier to create.
Research native app development – if you can master this then you can create an app which would work on multiple devices. Game development engines seem t have cracked this as many have options to export to Android, iOS, Windows universal app, HTML5 and so on.
Using a CMS as a back-end is a good idea, you would publish content on WordPress or perhaps even a static html based site and the apps only function is either to show the static site in a web browser or pull the WordPress posts into the app. This way you can easily add content, fix typos without the release of a new version of the app. you are modifying the content only.
Myths
Not every app makes a massive amount of money, it depends on user numbers.
You still have to look at customer feedback and work on releasing bug fixes and new features to keep your app competitive.
Apps are not free and never will be – there is a cost to registering an account on the 2 main app stores. You need to pay these before you even publish an app.
An app needs a team of developers – not true, where the bigger games have teams of people developing them the more basic games and apps are still developed by single people or at most a small team.
You need to be a developer – no you could use an online app builder or hire a freelancer
An app does not need marketing – now once listed on the store a few people will find the app but remember the App store tends to list things by amount of installs or a certain number of ratings which are usually ranked by the highest. So you will need a user base who install and then rate the app, this then has a knock on effect of more downloads. You need to push the app listing on as many sources as possible.
PASSIVE INCOME APP DEVELOPMENT