This document discusses strategies for developing a successful Android app business. It begins by providing background on the author's experience developing his first successful Android app from 2010-2012. It then discusses mindsets for success and outlines seven steps to make more money, including hiring others to handle tasks like graphics, outsourcing work, and assessing competition. Key factors for getting an app discovered like rankings, ratings, and reviews are examined. Myths about comments and expectations are debunked. Overall, the document provides advice on launching and marketing an Android app to achieve commercial success.

1. Nathan Mellor
CritterMap Software LLC
Signup for links at http://eepurl.com/d9tZj

2. Agenda
 Motivations:
 About you
 About me
 Mindset for success
 Seven steps to make more money

3. “I heard about some high school kid that
wrote an app in a weekend and is now a
millionaire”

4. Is this you?
(licensed from Dilbert.com)

5. About me - 2009
 Worked for a major printer
manufacturer for 12 years
 Feb 2009: “routine”
meeting with boss
 Downsizing announced
 New house, new mortgage.
 March 27: Last day at work
 March 28th: Third child
born
 April 2009:
“Outplacement”
counseling

6. What should I do?
Get a new “real” job
Do contracting
Consulting
My true passion:
“Become a successful online
business owner”.

7. Nathan in 2010
 Reeducation through the Trade ACT
 Enrolled in University of San Francisco’s Internet
Marketing program
 Developing an app on a new operating system called
Android
 First launched to the market June 2010.
 Started at about 5 sales a day; I was aiming for ~56.
 Paid zero taxes AND got a refund.

8. Nathan in 2011
 Saw app rise to the top of the
“Travel and Local” category paid
apps in January.
 (Took a screenshot)
 App featured in Android Market in
July 2011
 In December, survived a
competitive threat from a publicly
traded company that wanted me
out of business
 Paid taxes

9. Nathan in 2012
 Still just one app – but it is a fulltime endeavor
 Making some revenue through in app purchases
 Still haven’t taken a “real” job.

10. No, it’s not just visualizing yourself surrounded by money.

11. Which person do you want to be?

12. What is he worried about?
•Ideas
•Research
•Development
•Quality
•Publishing
•Tech Support
•Marketing
•Improvements
•Content creation
•Business Deals

13. Your Biggest Obstacle to Success.
 True or False?
 Since your time is free, you can save a
lot of money/overhead by doing most
everything yourself.

14. Your Biggest Obstacle to Success.
 Myth: Since your time is free, you can save a
lot of money/overhead by doing most
everything yourself.
Fact: Your time is probably your
biggest
expense, therefore, anything you
*do not* do yourself will likely save
you money.

15. What is your time truly worth?
 What if you have a day job?
My house
 What if you don’t have any
income?
 In December 2010, I got a call
Easy commute
from several recruiters
 The job was not in San Francisco.
 The job was not in Portland Nice
Android
 It was three miles away. Job
 I wasn’t available. . .
Columbia River

16. So... do you need an office building
and some venture capital?

17. What if you’re just a guy in a
corner office with a view?

18. College
Is this spam? Educated, English
Speaking, Industrious
people are *anxious* to
work for you for $2.50
an hour.
Meh?

21. Hiring People
 For the small businessman, usually means outsourcing
 Is it easier to:
 Get a contract from a spec and get competitive bids? (ie
elance,Odesk,etc)
 Hire a part time freelancer? (ie Odesk,etc)
 OR
 Hire someone fulltime?
 What would you have them do?

22. What could you hire someone to
do?
 Eugie  Rogelone
 Tech support
 Graphics specialist
 Help Guides
 Icons
 Jaimie, Hashir
 Experienced Android
 Layouts
Developers  Video production
 Daniel  Zoraya
 Intern
 Content writer
 Tools and server programming
 Article Marketer
 Jennifer Joyce
 Beginning Android Developer  Armae
 TBH  Linkbuilder
 QA
 Enrico
 GIS Specialist

23. Let’s start with a graphics person
 You want to look for vector graphics
 Everyone in the Philippines takes Photoshop in
college; look for Illustrator, others
 Other skills: video production, 3D, css
 They can learn
 Android icon standards
 Patch 9 files
 Prototype layouts
 Have them send you an email report each day
 Pay them via Paypal mass pay

24. OnlineJobs.ph
About $325/month
Adobe
Illustrator
Video
Animations

25. Project Management: BaseCamp

27. Starts with an audience
Who are the potential customers?
What are they looking for?

28. What do they buy now?
Ex: Garmin’s outdoor/fitness division had sales of
$400 million last year

29. Marketing funnel for Android Apps
Android Activations 500,000 per day
AUDIENCE Potentially interested in outdoor (1%?) 5000
(target market) navigation on a phone
PROSPECT Know about your app (from ??? Market Listing
Market listing/website) ~600 website
LEAD Have tried your free app 800
CUSTOMER Have paid for something (paid 100
app, in app purchase)
EVANGELIST Will recommend your app, rate, 5
and share
LOYALIST Will buy more stuff from you 3
(other apps, in app purchase)

30. What about assessing
competition?
 Should you search the Android Market?
 Dangers lurk . . .

31. Crushing your dreams . . .
 What should Dilbert do?

32. My Perspective
 In November 2009, apps had 255 char descriptions and
search was very primitive.
 From my narrow perspective,
 Windows Mobile was on its way out; iPhone was
big, Android was a rising star
 iPhone had five or so apps that did what I wanted to do
 Android had zero (or so I thought)
 Static analysis is insufficient
 By the time of release, there were three, including one
publicly traded company (or so I thought)
 Now? Maybe 500. Some are free. Some are Open Source

33. What to do?
 Make up your mind that you *will* ship a product.
 Look for positive examples in your target market.

34. The Top Grossing Apps
 Look in the top 200
 Emulate success!
 See what is similar or
parallels

35. You will probably do this.
It is cost effective.

36. The Funnel in Action
Get Found in Get Found in a search
a list
Click
Install
through Buy!
App
to details

37. Lists
 Featured
 Top Paid
 Top Free
 Top Grossing
 Trending
 Categories
 Featured
 Top Paid
 Top Free
 Top Grossing
 Trending

38. Sources of Downloads- Sept-Oct
Downloads
5000
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0 Downloads

39. Do you want to be at the top?
Factors (search, list)
 Total number of downloads/sales
 Recent number of downloads/sales
 Active Install Percentage
 Number of ratings
 Average rating
 Number of comments
 Keywords in Title
 Keywords in description –front loaded.

40. Search Result
What will get them to click through?
•App Icon
•Star Rating
•Title (branded vs keyword)
•Company name
•On web:
•Two sentences of description
•Number of comments (1028)
•Category

41. Getting an install: what do they see
Web Market Phone Market
 Promotional Image  Screen Shots
 Screen shots  One paragraph of description
 Youtube Video (promotional)  What’s new
 One paragraph of description  Rating breakdown
 Rating breakdown  3 reviews
 3 reviews

42. Android Market Image (inside tips)
Aesthetic guidelines
 1024x500px
 No white backgrounds
 No basic advertisements
 No obvious screen shots of the
App in use
 Must be eye catching; vivid yet
understated
 Text Requirements:
Branding, App Name, Tagline
(optional) – if the promotion is
around a specific holiday or
event, that can be reflected in
the imagery as well

43. Comment myths and facts: true or
false?
 A free app will naturally get better ratings and
reviews, because user expectations are lower.
 A good app can reasonably avoid getting negative
comments.
 If you make fixes and improvements, users will come back
to update their rating.
 Users can easily see past three recent comments from
people who obviously have an attitude problem.
 Anyone who finds fault with your app must have unrealistic
expectations or a defective world view.
 You can get good comments by getting the “right” people to
comment.

44. Comment myths and facts: true or
false?
 A free app will naturally get better ratings and
reviews, because user expectations are lower. FALSE
 A good app can reasonably avoid getting negative
comments. FALSE
 If you make fixes and improvements, users will come back
to update their rating. FALSE
 Users can easily see past three recent comments from
people who obviously have an attitude problem. FALSE
 Anyone who finds fault with your app must have unrealistic
expectations or a defective world view. TRUE.
 You can get good comments by getting the “right” people to
comment. TRUE

45. How perspective changes:
remember the target market
 Maps slow, ugly, and out  Better than a $400 piece
of date of hardware!
 Other apps better and  Best maps for the
free outdoors
 Eats battery  Saved my friend’s life!

46. What about alternative App Stores
 I get an email every day about a new
one.
 Mostly a waste of time.
 Amazon gets about 2% of my sales on
Android Market.
 Most are much less than that.

48. How can you engage the right
people?
 Have a weekly
email newsletter.
 Subscribe users of
your app
 Can use
autoresponders
 MailChimp example

49. What can you cover in a weekly
newsletter?
 New features you just put out
 Response to comments in the Market
 News and topics of interest for your target customer
 Ask users to take action:
 Leave a comment in the Market
 Respond to an important survey
 See and comment on your YouTube Video
 Like your fan page on Facebook
 Etc.
 It also serves as a reminder to buy.

50. Mailchimp Newsletter Report

51. Other ways to interact
 Social Media
 Facebook
 Twitter
 In app messages
 AppsFire, others

53. How does a helpdesk make you
money?
Without With
 5000 support requests a year  5000 support requests a year.
 10 minutes average to handle  1 min to handle each one
each one.  Hire someone to handle at
 About 20 full time weeks. least half of them
 Once you have 2.5 apps, you  About 1 full time week
won’t be doing anything but
answering email

54. Zendesk

55. What can you do with a helpdesk?
 The most common question:
 “I got a new phone / rebuilt my old one. How do I get
my app back?”
 Can you:
 Have a page about a common task – with pictures
 Send the ten most common answers in the autoresponse
 Have macros that answer those common questions and
insert links to those pages.

56. Simplified

57. Web page marketing

58. Keyword Research
 A keyword is generally a multi word phrase
 You want keywords that:
 Are RELEVANT to your product
 Have lots of TRAFFIC
 Are ATTAINABLE.

59. Example: Traffic

60. Attainable: The Top Ten
 Do any spammers contact you and tell you they can get
you into the *second* page of Google?

61. An Optimized Page ..
 Mentions the phrase (ie Android Topo Maps)
 In the url
 In the <title> tag
 In the <meta Description> tag
 In an <h1> tag
 In the first sentence
 In the first sentence of the last paragraph
 2-3 times in between the first and last parag
 Has about 250-750 words (ave 500).
 That’s all!

62. Getting links
 The most creative part of  How can you get them?
internet marketing  Article Marketing
 The best links:  Social Media
 Have keywords in the  Guest blogging
link (anchor text)  Get app reviews
 Are from “important”  Press Release
websites  Directories
 Are from relevant
 Look for what links your
websites
competitor has
 Have traffic

63. Check Results (Google webmaster
tools)

64. Rinse and Repeat
 Establish a blog with wordpress
 Add a post every day
 Get some links
 At the end of a year, you will have 200+ keywords in
the first page of Google.

66. YouTube

67. How can you make videos?
 IPEVO 2
 Webcam on a stick
 Made for imaging
documents.

68. How else can you make videos?
 Screencastomatic
 Emulator Screencast
 Stock photos
 Slide shows.
 Parody of Hitler movie –
new subtitles
 3D After Effects rendering
 Cartoon from xtranormal

69. How to optimize them
URL

70. Get views and traffic
 YouTube is a social network.
 Get your newsletter subscribers to watch and
comment
 Find friends
 Find subscribers
 Consider tools like TubeToolbox.

71. Benefits include:
 Blended search
 Embedding in other websites.

72. Tube ToolBox
•Find similar videos
and interested users
by keyword
•Collect them into
lists
•Send them a video
you made
•Invite them to
comment or friend.

73. What and how often?
 Videos can:  How often?
 Be instructional for your  Once a week would not
product. be overkill.
 Discuss concepts related
to your product
 Be fun
 They should always:
 Target keywords

75. Action items for you . . .
 Hire someone.
 Figure out your marketing funnel
 Optimize for keyword search in Android Market
 Start an email newsletter
 Encourage the right people to comment and buy
 Start a HelpDesk
 Write and link up one web page a day
 Create and promote a video every week
 Use some helpful tools
 To get links, go to:
 http://eepurl.com/d9tZj