As there are thousands of apps on the market, there's even more being built and uploaded to app stores on a daily basis. Millions of people use apps everyday to handle simple and complex tasks in their lives, play games and just about every possible activity you can do with a mobile phone, tablet and a computer. What many people don't realize is that you can have your own app designed and built for little money.
Now while it does take a lot more money to build a more detailed app, a simple game app like puzzle and word games or even wallpaper apps can be built for way less than you may think.
Learning The App Market
Before jumping into the mobile app world, you may want start learning about the different tools and services that you will need in order to get the app working. You will also need to learn about the different monetization methods, some of the different words and their meanings in the developer world, and other services and tools you would need to accomplish getting your app up and running in the app store. During my trial and error stages, I came a cross a book, "Mobile Apps Made Simple: The Ultimate Guide to Quickly Creating, Designing and Utilizing Mobile Apps for Your Business" by Jonathan McCallister.
This is a great book and has been very helpful for me when I first started looking into having some mobile apps built for me since I knew nothing about coding and mobile app development. It is simply about setting up a plan and how to go about designing a mobile app on your own. It gives you a guide on how to start out planning for your app, software to program the apps, some of the programming languages that can be used, and other steps necessary in making your own app. It is really helpful for those with no technical skills who wishes to get a jump start with their app development.
The idea behind my first mobile app came from watching some of the videos on YouTube created by an online entrepreneur name Trissha Taylor. She gives some great advice and tips in her videos about making money online to, building your first app and getting it on the market. She also points out some of the problems you may encounter and how to go about solving them.
To start, you may want to get a little familiar with the online outsourcing marketplace Fiverr (Click The Link and Receive a Free Gig worth $5) which is one of the top sites to get small tasks or jobs outsourced. You can get someone to write code, design graphics, build apps, websites and so much more and the best part about it is that all the services have a base price of $5. You can also get additional work and customization done by paying a little extra for their premium services. You can also talk with different developers and see which one offers you the best deal and offers the best quality work.
Within this case study, we are going to summarize the process that I used to outsource the creation of my first few mobile apps to releasing them in Google Play App Store.
See Also: Outsourcing Work Using Fiverr & Upwork
Listed below are some of my first apps that were published in the Google Play Store:
These two mobile puzzle apps are my first apps that was built for the android market and was used as a test to see exactly how the whole process works using Fiverr and Google Play Store. I gained a lot of knowledge during the whole process as both apps were designed by 2 separate developers. One of the developers went a great deal in helping me get the app built, to uploading it to the app store and because he was so helpful and did not charge me for the extra work he did (which he had every right to), I now give him most of the jobs I need done for my mobile app portfolio.
Deciding on the type of App
As said above, some of the easiest and low cost apps to build are usually puzzles, word games and wallpaper apps. Normally, you might have to get the code, sounds and images separately especially if you are not designing the app 100% on your own, but many developers provide everything you may need except for images and sounds. Occasionally, the sounds may be included but for the most part, you will have to provide your own images. Getting your images is critical because you want to stand out from the hundreds of apps on the market and not have the same images as other related apps.
For some of my first few apps, I purchased images from the online microstock platform, Fotolia and used some free pics from Pixabay, a website for sharing royalty free and public domain images and film. You can find any type of images, vectors, icons from cartoons, vintage, nature, animals, etc for free or for a low cost. The only problem with free images is that many people have already used them in their projects so the best option is using a service that gives you single or bulk images for a low set price.
I would also like to add that the mentioned above apps are not the only app you can have built for little money. After building relationships with some of the other developers on Fiverr, I came to realize that many of the developers may already have a generic game that can be customized with different graphics, sounds, and features so it can be sold to multiple people without anyone having the same looking game. I find these apps to be great for beginners due to the fact that your only responsibility is obtaining the small things like mentioned above (graphics, sounds etc.)
Once my publishing account was set up, I went back to Fiverr to find a developer that can develop the type of app I wanted. I already knew what type of app I wanted to have built, so now I just needed someone to build it for me or purchase the generic coding to have it customized. With the first two apps, Chicken Hero & Friends and Animal Friends, the generic puzzle code was already in place and all I needed to provide the developers with was graphics. Once that was provided and the work was completed which only took a few days, they provided me with the .APK file, which stands for Android Application Package. The Android application package file (APK) is the file format used to distribute and install application software and middleware onto Google's Android operating system. It is the format used for Android mobile apps.
Monetizing the App
As I mentioned earlier, I am able to publish as many apps in the app store since I have paid the $25 registration fee, but the catch is that the apps has to be free to download. I can easily upgrade my account to do in app purchases and paid apps but there are many reasons why it will be better off free. The first two apps are very basic apps and was created to test out the entire system so I would know what I am doing for my future apps I am planning on having outsourced.
Although I will use them to test a few new features before applying them to other apps, it will be better to keep it free which also allows for more downloads.Also, due to the quality of those apps, it's not something I would be comfortable releasing at a cost.
Some of my other apps are a lot more detailed with original content and are on the market as free apps also but for the most part, unless it is a highly expensive app I outsourcing, all of my apps will be free to download. Currently, the only form of monetization I use are "in-app" ads. There are a few mobile advertising programs you can sign up with, like adMob, which allows you to generate a code, place the code in the app file, and make money once someone clicks on the ads that are shown while playing your mobile games or using the app. This part of the process was handled by the developers which consisted on me simply generating a code from the advertising program administrators section and emailing it to the developer. When he was finished, it was time to upload to the Google Play Store.
Uploading To The App Store
Upon receiving the .apk file, I saved it to my computer then headed over to the Google play store developer console, which, once your account is setup, you can access this in order to manage your apps. I did get a little help uploading the files of the first app to Google play store from the original developer because it was giving me a hard time due to the time zone differences. We used a software called Team Viewer which allows someone to remotely control your computer. It is used by a lot of companies for online meetings and to allow their tech teams to fix issues in the system remotely and can also be used free for non commercial projects. Using this was not necessary but being that it was my first time uploading content to the app store, he went out of his way to assist me.
Once the issue was fixed with the app, it uploaded perfectly. I then was able to upload the second .APK file that I received from the other developer by myself which I found to be very easy.
I would recommend trying it out for yourself but if you are having problems, you can always ask the developer for help as they are more than likely to have a few apps in the app stores as well and can offer you help. Some developers may charge you for this but if the problem lies within the app, then they are likely to do it for free.
Getting mobile apps developed and published into the app store is not as hard as many people think but there is a simple learning curve to it and as long as you can get past it, you will be fine. Don't forget to check out the book listed above which can give you great guidance to building your app.
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