I spent 4 months developing my last app to perfection, building a fancy website, setting up support, only to have it completely flop. So painful, and it wasn't the first time I've done it.
I knew I needed better process, so I've since been seeking a more "lean" approach to the infamous anti-lean App Store.
In contrast, the initial release of my next app GifShare took 6 days to build, had no fancy features, minimal design, and was pretty buggy. Yet it was doing $800/month (now up to $1,200/month a month later).
So what did I change? How did I learn to ship faster more profitably?
1. Validate - I setup a landing page using the service QuickMVP which took maybe 10 minutes. I setup an ugly v1 of the App icon on it which took an hour. The point of the page was to convey what the purpose of the app did, and to see if people would click through to get the app.
2. Test - I wanted to see if I could drive traffic to the landing page with minimal effort. GifShare's proposed purpose was to allow posting GIFs to Instagram, so I search google for things like "post gifs to instagram".
I found things like blog posts, youtube videos, and Yahoo! answers where I left a comment saying "This app is built specifically for this - [app link]"
The way QuickMVP helps you test is, if enough people click through and give you your email in a certain time period, then your idea is "validated". For me to find this idea worth building, I wanted to see if I could get 50 emails in 3 days.
I got double that (101 emails). With less than 3 hours of total work.
3. Build - The important part about building is that you build NO MORE than a minimally working version. I marketed "Post GIFs to Instagram" so I built just that in its simplest form.
I did it this way because it would take me less time -- and if I solved the problem in its basic form in a way that would generate revenue for me. If the business model wasn't panning out, I at least didn't waste time or energy to figure it out.
I've since added extra features and tweaked the app a bit to do $400/month than it originally was doing.
There's a lot more complexities to the process, so feel free to ask questions. I'd love to discuss.
I knew I needed better process, so I've since been seeking a more "lean" approach to the infamous anti-lean App Store.
In contrast, the initial release of my next app GifShare took 6 days to build, had no fancy features, minimal design, and was pretty buggy. Yet it was doing $800/month (now up to $1,200/month a month later).
So what did I change? How did I learn to ship faster more profitably?
1. Validate - I setup a landing page using the service QuickMVP which took maybe 10 minutes. I setup an ugly v1 of the App icon on it which took an hour. The point of the page was to convey what the purpose of the app did, and to see if people would click through to get the app.
2. Test - I wanted to see if I could drive traffic to the landing page with minimal effort. GifShare's proposed purpose was to allow posting GIFs to Instagram, so I search google for things like "post gifs to instagram".
I found things like blog posts, youtube videos, and Yahoo! answers where I left a comment saying "This app is built specifically for this - [app link]"
The way QuickMVP helps you test is, if enough people click through and give you your email in a certain time period, then your idea is "validated". For me to find this idea worth building, I wanted to see if I could get 50 emails in 3 days.
I got double that (101 emails). With less than 3 hours of total work.
3. Build - The important part about building is that you build NO MORE than a minimally working version. I marketed "Post GIFs to Instagram" so I built just that in its simplest form.
I did it this way because it would take me less time -- and if I solved the problem in its basic form in a way that would generate revenue for me. If the business model wasn't panning out, I at least didn't waste time or energy to figure it out.
I've since added extra features and tweaked the app a bit to do $400/month than it originally was doing.
There's a lot more complexities to the process, so feel free to ask questions. I'd love to discuss.
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