The presentation details how I make my living out of the apps I build for consumers, as an independent developer. The talk detailed how important is the media and taking care of the users as well as using analytics and telemetry to find issues with the app and fix them. ISCTE-IUL ACM #SmartTalk presentation

1. Indy 500: 4 years as
indie (app) developer
DIOGO CARDOSO
DIOGOCARDOSO89@GMAIL.COM
@DVD_PT

2. • Indie App developer (ImaginationOverflow)
• Freelancer
• Game Developer (wannabe)
• Teacher (wannabe) at ISEL
@dvd_pt
http://blog.imaginationoverflow.com

3. Agenda
• The process
• Technical aspect
• Marketing & Users
• Making Money
• The numbers
• Tips

4. The Process
1. Idea
2. Research
3. Naming and Branding
4. Development
5. Testing
6. Release
7. jmp 4.
Inception
Research
Initial Marketing and
Branding
App
Development
Beta
Testing
App
Launch
Maintenance
Feature
Enhancements
Beta
Testing
App
Update

5. The Process - Idea
• A necessity
• Something cool
• Technical challenging

6. The Process - Research
• Can it be done?
• Can it be built?
• Am I motivated?
• Are there enough users to justify building it?
• What is the competition?
• CAN IT MAKE MONEY?

7. The Process - Naming and Branding
• Social presence, twitter, facebook, domain, etc
• Name, should be something related to its purpose
• Should contain 1 search keyword
• Iconography
• Consistent in all mediums
• Visual appealing

8. The Process - Development
• Design centric
• UI first, code after
• User experience > (code quality + feature count)
• Code is not important
Taken from http://goo.gl/h3p3X

9. The Process - Testing
• Beta test program
• Offer your testers something
• Unit Tests
• Development Tests

10. The Process - Release
• Choose the release date carefully
• Let the press (Blogs, sites, forums) test your app first
• Make soft launches

11. Technical aspect
• Architecture
• Codebase
• Localisation

12. Technical aspect - Architecture

13. Technical aspect - Codebase
• Make your app a set of Micro services
• Storage
• Settings
• Navigation
• Error handling
• etc
• Reuse as much code as possible
• DRY (Don’t repeat yourself)

14. Technical aspect - Localisation
• Always support multiple languages
• No magic or explicit strings

15. Marketing and Users
• Know the media
• Users
• Analytics

16. Marketing and Users – the media
• Create a relationship with the media
• Know trend setters
• Press Kits
• Press releases

17. Marketing and Users – Users
• Feedback Channels
• Store Review replies
• Media Comments
• Treat them like princesses
• Act quickly

18. Marketing and Users – Analytics (1)
• Track and get familiar with:
• Retention
• Churn rate
• User Lifetime Value (LTV)
• Average Revenue per user (ARPU)
• Vanity (Motivation) metrics:
• Downloads
• Sessions
• Clicks
• Know the when, what and how.

19. Marketing and Users – Analytics (2)
Example:
How many users click on the Unlock Features and how many actually purchase something?
0.3%
Purchases By Events
0.0003%
Purchases on View
12%
Income
+/- 507€

20. Marketing and Users – Analytics (3)
Issue: Low click rate on the unlock features:
Possible Causes:
◦ User don’t know it exists
◦ User doesn’t need to acquire anything for it’s regular usage
Possible Solutions
• Create a better call to action.
• Use periodic popups
• Add more premium features
Admitting
1% clicks
Purchases on View
12%
Income
+/- 1576€

21. Making Money
• Premium
• Freemium
• Ad Supported
• Subscription

22. Making Money – The choice
• How many times will your users open the app everyday
• How long will the users stay on the app
• What kind of content are your giving your users
• What kind of feature set is your app going to have
• The platform that you are targeting.

23. Making Money – Our Choice
Premium + Freemium (Ads + In App Purchases)
Advantages
◦ Two apps on the market, double the visibility
◦ Three sources of income, Ads, IAPs, Direct Sales
Disadvantages
◦ Store ranks divided
◦ User confusion
◦ Harder to manager

24. The numbers
• Vanity
◦ Downloads
◦ Sessions
◦ Crashes
◦ Interactions
• Earnings
◦ Premium
◦ In App Purchases
◦ Ads

25. The numbers - Vanity
> 7M
Downloads
> 60M
Sessions
> 500k
Crashes
> 23k
Email Replies
> 12k
Facebook Messages
> 2k
Tweet Replies
> 7k
UserVoice Votes
3
Skype Calls
> 230k
Store Reviews
> 200
Reviews/Blog/Site Posts
7
App Awards
1.5
Persons
> 100k
Lines of code

26. Tips (1)
• Deploy Early, update often
• Aim low
• Shotgun effect
• Take it as a business
• Keep the Motivation
• Expect nothing
• Have fun
• Learn one thing every day
• Work smart

27. Tips (2)
• Users are people not € bills
• Let the users develop the app
• A submitted app is no longer yours
• Fix what’s wrong
• Brake what is right
• Make a work schedule

28. Questions