Lessons

Lesson Info

App Case Studies That Work

I want to talk about examples these air all personal examples that I've had using all three of these methods and I don't talk about the pros and cons about it because I want by the end of this this module you're going to able to say all right here is the path that is really attractive to me and then I'm gonna take on my business I'm also they believer that you should learn from others experience one of the reasons I'm up here is because I want to share my experience with you guys and so the more I could talk about what's worked for me and what hasn't worked for me I think the better off everyone will be so here the three aps we're going to talk about you can see obviously these two are games on this is a news app which we've been american off a couple years first one is called grail so if you go in the ap story typing grail news you can download this app what this app is a it's an aggregator of the most shared news of the day now this is actually very big gap and we have a lot of algor...

ithms and back in technology and we spent a lot of money building this app because this is a very powerful app it's also it had never been built before this has been the process for a couple of years and you can see how the you know kind of works through the screen shots and if you download it you'll understand what's going on we did build this from scratch right we hired a full development team we hired a fullback and team we had project managers we had analytics teams we had data scientists we have everything we just needed a product that is going to summarise the share nude and it didn't exist nothing out there existed I couldn't go to a developer and say hey go take this and just copy it you know go go take this app that's already existing let's make this and let's improve it we had to start from scratch and iterated over and over and over that is not the most exciting marguerite on the beach process but it does help you build a very unique product which is great one thing that we didn't mention with building something from scratch is that we now own all that intellectual property which is something that you don't necessarily get when you use a template you can get the license on that software like you would if you got a website template but you don't you can't sell the actual goods and the time and the money and the energy that went into that code itself in the algorithms that you build share the news and rank them accordingly this was also venture back it's got a very very strong brand because it is unique you know if you wanna have you want to raise a couple of million dollars on an app? It's, hard to go and say, hey, well, we got this template off this website. And, you know, it costs us fifty five dollars, and we want six hundred thousand dollars. It just doesn't work, right, like, get real. So when you build from scratch, are also giving yourself an opportunity. Tohave something completely unique. A whole new business in itself, which could be really attractive if you're in that world of venture capital. Now the second one is was kingdom coins and this was an emulator this is actually one of the most I guess not profitable area I guess it was one of those profitable blue cloud you know millions of dollars on this game and you can see what it is right it's an arcade game where I'm sure we've all been to the carnival and you go and you put the quarter and I love this game when I was a kid it was you know you put the quarter in a little push here and you think you're going to get it and so you could see this to the screen shots I'm not the first one to do this right there was a couple laps in the store that had already done this and they were telling it I mean I was having meetings with people that were doing deals with these guys until I'm with numbers that were coming I was like how are they doing that why is there no one else doing this and so I was going through all the reviews and being like oh man I could make this way better uh so hell same functions and it was really easy to map out and to show my developers and say hey here's where we want to start and here's all the things here the bonus games I want to add and here's what here's what needs to happen and this wasn't a whole lot of competition. There weren't people that were coming up for these key words. So what I did was I started with original original app. We kind of created the core functionality, and then we improved it. Like I said, I added, new bonus is what I did is I made the first level. I gave away more free prizes and more free coins and you could ever imagine, and people started loving the app. They started reviewing it really highly because we put in really great functions for people to use like this. Every built it from scratch, but we had a blueprint way, knew what we wanted to build from from the ground up. We didn't have to brainstorm on it. It was just already built that was really powerful. And then finally this is tapped the shoot this is a template this is actually available on our website if you become a blue cloud select member which is our private community and it's a very simple code no we have one block post actually written by you who and it it walks you through how to do this I mean this is one of those things where it's a drag and drop builder and you could make it happen with this source go on the whole deal it's really really simple to make this happen you could probably this an afternoon especially if you have some design skills so it was an existing after already had it the source code was out there we've bought it and we started using it we just change the graphics right so originally it was very flat designed didn't look good at all we had our one of our designers update all this really cleaned up the screen shots we updated all the keywords we just we made it our own way made it unique in a lot of ways and we just added some minor improvements to it right like we added the social media sharing buttons that helped a lot we made the speed at which the circle spun like we saw a lot of youse coming back saying this is way too fast we just slow it down so we change that a little bit but this overall I think this took us two and a half weeks and it was the home run we had a great successful act is getting a couple hundred dollars a day and it was an easy great educating tool and now we can use this with a lot of our other students and say ok hey you want to get something that's really easy to go from zero up in the absence or we've got a great template and it's been really successful for us as well and other blue clouds like students which is awesome carter quick question how much time did you spend trying to decide which of these methods to go through because like when you explain it ok like this one makes sense for this but I think as people are getting going how much time should they spend trying to figure out which one of these is going to be best for their ass you should spend about two to three days coming up with a one sheet plan as if you were going to do all three of these so let's say you wanted to build a photography app make a one she plan and say I will if I was gonna build from scratch what will go into this write it down I was gonna emulate this what would I do well I do the research maybe do we'll do a little bit of research I'll show you how to do this and look at what that plan looks like and then three are their templates out there that I could use and when you go through this you also start to look at all right well one of the pieces involved especially after we go through the developer course and through that process you're going to have three sheets of paper you're going to say this is really complicated but the pros and the cons can outweigh the templates or maybe the emulating looks really good for what I want this to dio but overall I think if you spent two three days making those three sheets it's going to be very clear like hey I want to make money I'm not really interested in building something from scratch right now I want to I really want to learn the business as fast as I can something like that and have you ever kind of gone down the path with one type and then decided oh wait actually maybe I should be doing you no template for this instead of an emulator does that ever happen where you kind of jump around to the different types yeah that's actually how I got it how I got started with you know, relapse success I my first app I ever ever did so is october of two thousand eleven is when I launch this and I found one app that this guy had gotten hundreds of thousands of downloads and I previously was doing websites templates for lawyers I found this guy and I said I'm going to get your source code I'm gonna make it way better this is the greatest kind of a blend of the template emulator I thought this was gonna be the next angry birds launched it the thing totally bombed like I'm talking I maxed out my credit cards I put everything in like emotionally speak everything a toy bombed and then I had another app that I try to build on the same process and it didn't work either and then I tried building and half from scratch I tried coding I tried all of these different things and then just because of the timing of the market I found that if I had this one template which actually using those tiger and panda source codes because if I was like if I just build a lot of these matching to advertisers we'll see what happens and that that was a big win for me that's how I started a lot of that was the timing it's a little different now because there's a lot more aps there's a lot more technology available it's a lot more developers source codes things ways to do it but it was not all right I'm gonna do it it's the first time this is going to the right thing what I also didn't do which I would encourage everyone here to do is I didn't really know what I wanted I just knew I want to be in the app store I knew that there was this hot new business model and if I if I can get in the app store I'll figure it out in a smart guy I'm gonna work I'm going to get all my friends to download this and it's going great I didn't have a plan and that's what I'm encouraging all of you to do and that's why we're going to talk about having a plan about all this so that's what I would really say is more importantly than choosing abysmal like really crystallizing what your plan is what are your goals in the ad business so that's how it all started a great many questions from students here on any of these methods go ahead a little confused I've used aps you know life after the flashlight app it's a whole another world first the first thing you put on in your phone 00:10:13.3 --> 00:10:15. but you know there's those that are free they usually 00:10:16.07 --> 00:10:20. there's a lot more then I pay for one so on maybe 00:10:20.85 --> 00:10:23. this is going to be covered later in terms of those 00:10:23.9 --> 00:10:25. that download for free doesn't sound like there's 00:10:25.99 --> 00:10:28. a lot of a business model other than you're just offering 00:10:28.9 --> 00:10:32. something that's really cool totally were definitely 00:10:32.04 --> 00:10:35. cover that but to answer your question my first that 00:10:35.9 --> 00:10:38. first app I did I release it paid out because I said 00:10:38.69 --> 00:10:40. hey final make this paid I'm not gonna make any money 00:10:42.78 --> 00:10:45. for about two weeks I just kind of washed it dribble 00:10:45.09 --> 00:10:47. out and die getting ten dollars a day and I was like 00:10:47.86 --> 00:10:52. what am I doing and me too free and I went up to ten 00:10:52.29 --> 00:10:55. thousand dollars a day and I said okay something here 00:10:56.38 --> 00:10:58. and then I realized that these advertising networks 00:10:58.69 --> 00:11:01. had just come out and then I realized hey people want 00:11:01.91 --> 00:11:03. to keep playing this game and they're willing to buy 00:11:03.95 --> 00:11:07. mohr missiles for their you know planes that they're 00:11:07.17 --> 00:11:10. in there and I said wow there's a whole lot of new 00:11:10.51 --> 00:11:14. ways that I can monetize the zaps that I just didn't 00:11:14.41 --> 00:11:18. even think about and that was just kind of because 00:11:18.29 --> 00:11:20. no one's really talked about it those models just 00:11:20.14 --> 00:11:24. never been built before what's nice about the emulation 00:11:24.55 --> 00:11:26. and a template in even if you want to build it from 00:11:26.22 --> 00:11:31. scratch is that there are so many more options now 00:11:31.78 --> 00:11:34. right if you wanted to build a disaster relief app 00:11:34.35 --> 00:11:36. and you went out maybe it's not disaster relief but 00:11:36.52 --> 00:11:40. maybe it's something like an event organization app 00:11:40.08 --> 00:11:43. or maybe it's something that a lot of people can communicate 00:11:43.12 --> 00:11:45. on and you find that platform and you use ten acts 00:11:45.9 --> 00:11:49. like that you might start to say hey these abs are 00:11:49.72 --> 00:11:52. all using these particular monetization strategies 00:11:52.97 --> 00:11:55. are I'm getting push notifications from every single 00:11:55.48 --> 00:11:57. one of these at this time I wonder why they're all 00:11:57.91 --> 00:12:01. doing that or why do the reviews say this about this 00:12:01.1 --> 00:12:03. app, and so that just didn't exist a few years ago. 00:12:03.76 --> 00:12:06. And it does now. So when you pick these different, 00:12:06.78 --> 00:12:09. you know, we'll be templates emulating you. Khun, 00:12:09.82 --> 00:12:13. start to say, okay, now I know that there's a proven 00:12:13.64 --> 00:12:15. model, I know that I'm not gonna make it paid. I'm not gonna make it free. I know that this is what works with this type of app, and this is what works with us this time, uh, and that's that's, just an evolution of the whole business, which is a blessing in a lot of ways for for a lot of people, especially if you're starting out because there's just a lot less unknowns, which is great. So is there any other questions on I mean, I just wanted to know what have you done to create predictability and revenues with each of the methods? It's a really good question. So building from scratch. Is like heavy market research, right? It's going out and finding people that I'm going to monetize before I build anything and I go inside, all right, and this is in this case it was, you know, news, publication, businesses, you know, huge people who distribute magazines and newspapers because they didn't have a nap, they didn't have a way to get, and there was nothing in the store. So so we said, if we built this from scratch, we have we have a demand that's going to meet this supply. So that's, how you do with the scratch with the emulation, well, tool show. We'll talk about this in the market research, but a lot of it is just looking at past performance of very similar acts and how many similar aps have also achieve success. And how do I really guarantee or, you know, make the best possible educated guess that this app is going to have a similar impact and then third with the templates. This is more about. Understanding really good in ap analytics right it used to be back in the day you put half in the app store and like you know it's just going to get downloads and like a hot new theme and like puts into keywords in but now it's nice about templates is that you are buying hey this is really good retention this has really people uses ap over and over and over again it's a proven model and then you go out and you focus on how many are going to get more people in that and that's almost more of ah marketing exercise where you go talk to people you talk to bloggers you talk to your friends you talkto you know a sort of lead acquisition and that would be really successful so a lot of it if I to crystallize in the one statement I would say no matter which one you choose you want to be able to identify your demand before you you choose your path it could be half store users it khun b high end clients khun b doctors it could be celebrities I mean it could be anybody but once you know that all of a sudden the guarantee of revenue or whatever you want with the self guarantee like trying to promise yourself you're gonna make it back gets a lot more clear because you know where that money's gonna come from as opposed to saying well help hope this works out the absolute gives me give me some good at revenue so so the question here that came in from becky and becky says clarification when you say template you mean a template of code correct because becky says she's a graphic designer and as a graphic designer that's something that the developer may not know about we're fine so I just want to clarify when you say template you mean not like a design template you mean like an actual code template right that's exactly right yeah so back in great question and that you get the source code for the code source code code it's kind of interchangeable if I ever say one of the other that's what I mean because you're going to get the framework the source code framework you'll be ableto download your computer if you have the software you can press run simulator and you can watch the the after running your phone or on your computer whatever else and then it's up to you to create custom graphics and maybe add some new functions to it and make the ap a bit better a little bit different so that you're not uploading a carbon copy of what you just bought from, you know, a source code marketplace it's really similar as a web designer it's really similar something like theme forest where you could go on theme forest 00:16:16.873 --> 00:16:20. and download a wordpress theme and install it on wordpress 00:16:20.13 --> 00:16:23. and put some demo data in there and you've got a website 00:16:23.73 --> 00:16:26. right it's not necessarily the website you want it's 00:16:26.32 --> 00:16:29. not customized how you want it but all the source 00:16:29.13 --> 00:16:31. code has been written on the plug ins are installed 00:16:31.62 --> 00:16:34. all the scripture are the same way and then you have 00:16:34.39 --> 00:16:37. to have a great place to start as opposed to having 00:16:37.06 --> 00:16:39. a build that whole wordpress all the way from scratch 00:16:40.22 --> 00:16:42. so when you're buying a template that's what you're 00:16:42.28 --> 00:16:45. going to get you all also usually get documentation 00:16:45.52 --> 00:16:47. that comes with the source code so that it will say 00:16:48.26 --> 00:16:50. okay here's the file that you need to read it if you 00:16:50.72 --> 00:16:53. want to change your app I d or if you want to change 00:16:53.81 --> 00:16:56. or advertising idea if you want to be able to show 00:16:56.22 --> 00:16:59. your own ads or whatever it may be and you'll also 00:16:59.3 --> 00:17:02. get a developer who can help you out and support you 00:17:02.42 --> 00:17:05. in most cases so that if you have any questions about 00:17:05.1 --> 00:17:09. it you can always no hit them up and say I can't figure 00:17:09.62 --> 00:17:11. this out or do you have the recommendations of people 00:17:11.43 --> 00:17:13. to talk to you or whatever it may be so that's what 00:17:13.9 --> 00:17:17. you'll typically get with the template one more question 00:17:17.05 --> 00:17:19. that came in and this is actually multiple questions 00:17:19.59 --> 00:17:22. post different ways and a lot of votes so people are 00:17:22.0 --> 00:17:24. curious about this and I'll preface this by saying 00:17:24.51 --> 00:17:27. I know you're not a lawyer not going to give any legal 00:17:27.19 --> 00:17:30. advice but the question here is just about I guess 00:17:30.67 --> 00:17:34. copyright infringement on templates or emulators that 00:17:34.47 --> 00:17:36. people are just curious to know like how can you use 00:17:36.55 --> 00:17:39. something like a template an emulator and not either 00:17:39.81 --> 00:17:42. violate any any copyright infringements there or even 00:17:42.46 --> 00:17:44. maybe give credit to the original people who created 00:17:44.77 --> 00:17:47. it any advice you can give to people on that that's 00:17:47.02 --> 00:17:50. yeah that's really really important question and I 00:17:50.38 --> 00:17:52. am definitely not a lawyer so thank you for the right 00:17:52.9 --> 00:17:53. place for the preference 00:17:55.38 --> 00:17:59. if you steal something not okay if you went and you 00:17:59.82 --> 00:18:04. jailbroken phone and somehow got the downloaded the 00:18:04.03 --> 00:18:06. source code off of some server from somebody some 00:18:06.94 --> 00:18:10. other app and use that not cool you can't do that 00:18:10.72 --> 00:18:13. but if for emulation for example if you go out and 00:18:13.6 --> 00:18:17. you say hey I really like that app I want to use that 00:18:17.72 --> 00:18:20. as my framework it's like going to an architect and 00:18:20.1 --> 00:18:23. saying hey I've really liked their house let's build a house like that you're not going out stealing their blueprints you still have to look at it and build it all but you can still use that his inspiration you know you can still use it to resign so that's that's totally fine I would definitely recommend that you take and improve upon it so they make it your own and you make a new design and all that sort of thing but that's that's why that khun still work with templates the big thing is that you most often do not get full rights to the source code right so when I talked about building from scratch I talked about how we have intellectual property on that if on this app for example if I went out and bought that got this source code for ten dollars or whatever it may be I wouldn't be able to go for example resell that source code right? So if I bought it for ten dollars I couldn't goto my friend say also everyone to copy this for five bucks or whatever it may be I would have the right to go published this template in my own account because I got the license it's kind of like with the word press example you couldn't go sell that wordpress theme on your own wordpress themes site and then similarly when you buy a template no you wantto repurpose all the graphics so at blue cloud we would watermark the graphics just because that's just what you have to change them all no otherwise it's just first fire probably get rejected because it looks like other aps in the store and to that can be that commie trademark so there's a lot of ways to make sure is your own app and you know more often than not it just comes down to making sure that you're very honest and you're just you're trying to really make a really improve. Better version of something.