Greener grass beyond the App Store – Cash cows are grazing there
You thought making money off iPhone apps is a bygone era? Think again. While it is true that the iPhone App Store is nearly saturated, there are greener fields to look out for.
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WebOS and Symbian^3 apps
The Android market is nearing 100,000 apps. The Symbian^3 OS has zero third party apps. That’s right, zero. The Symbian^3 OS is the probably the best bet for you if you are looking to make some money from mobile apps. The Android market has a lot of room to grow as well. You can also choose to wait till HP releases some WebOS devices to develop apps for them! So even if you think the App Store is saturated, there are better OSes that need some apps.
Not enough success stories?
“Trism has made $250,000 for its developer, Steve Demeter, in just two months.” – Wired.com
The App Store has some amazing success stories, including that of Joel Comm who made more than $100,000 with a fart app. People rarely hear of similar success stories in the Android Market. This leads many to believe the App Store to be the be all and end all of mobile apps success stories. The truth is, App Store success stories are few and far between, and the money to be made in other markets is no lesser.
Symbian^3 is yet to come out and the WebOS doesn’t yet have any devices to boast of. Once they hit the mass market, the early birds are going to catch a lot of worms.
How do I come up with a groundbreaking app idea?
You don’t have to. You just need to look around in the App Store and the Android Market to find out which apps are selling well. That will give you an idea of what the users want. All you have to do it maybe put a little twist in an app if you want to and come up with a better interface for the app. It’s no secret that users love apps with intuitive and clean interfaces. That’s why the iPhone sells so well and Chrome is being used by everyone.
I don’t want to code!
Well, you don’t have to code. That’s the beauty of the open market. You can always hit up a site like getafreelancer.com and rent a coder to design an app for you. All you do is give him/her the idea for the app and a nominal amount of money. The coder will happily make the app and deliver it to you, source code and all. All you have to do then is market it!
Great! How much do I sell it for?
If you feel like it, nothing! Give it away for free. Android makes it ridiculously easy for you to add advertisements into its apps. We are sure Symbian^3 and WebOS will support some form of advertising. If you must sell it, though, make sure you price it low. The highest selling apps are in the range of $1 to $5 (subtract a cent if you are that fussy).
We recently did an article on how advertisers can benefit from Android’s new advertising features. Hit the link, you might be interested in using some of those ad formats in your own app.