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The Different Business Models of Apps

Okay, so the second thing I want to talk about is choosing your path and this is an important one especially for people who have never really thought about how to get into the app business and what this is going to do is talk a lot about business models now this is a rule I always tell people when they're just getting started identify her path before you start right there's a famous quote by abraham lincoln and says you know you give me six hours to cut down a tree I spent the first four sharpening my ax this is the same idea we talked a lot about planning because we remember that picture of me sitting in that office with no furniture I consider myself on hustler you know I'm going to work so hard and I'm gonna get a million things done and it's going to be great I'm gonna build all these aps and I woke up a year later and I was like man, this is so poorly organized that I'm I've no idea what I'm doing and I'm losing all this money in level you know? So I really want to make sure that ...

we talk about the plan in the path that you can take so that you don't have that same faith that I did now the goals of this are all about realizing that there's more than one path it's a lot different ways we're going talk about three of them to is you want to play to your strength some people don't ask themselves what am I really good at what I'm really excited about they just say oh this is what everyone else is doing I'm going to that and finally you're going to choose a path that makes most sense and is most interesting to you there's a lot to be said for being excited about what you're doing maybe you want to build a passive income and go drink margaritas on the beach because you're at business that's totally cool and we'll talk about that or maybe you're a weekend hobbyists and you want to go out and have a really cool project to work on that school two we'll talk about that but understanding what gets you fired up what's going to get you out of bed is a big part of this so like I said we're gonna talk about three different models today first one is building it from scratch second one is called emulating which we'll talk about the third one is using templates which is relatively new but also very exciting building from scratch now the dreaded x code screenshot which everyone loves to look at shockingly ah lot of people actually really like looking at the coat and I'm I'm guilty of this on the website I used to code html website since a lot of ways it's cool to be a problem solving to see how things work and really build things from the ground up and what's great about building from scratch is you get complete customization I mean a lot of people out there people in the audience you might have it idea that's never been done before and so it's really hard to go and say well here's what it looks like or here's a template well but it's it's so different than anything I've ever built if you build from scratch you get that customization it's time consuming special if you're starting off you've never coded before you have to learn how to do it all in that sort of thing bug testing I say this because this could be one of the most time intensive parts where you kind of have to fix your own mistakes as you go right you know you'll never do it the right way and you're building from scratch and deep involvement you have every single piece of the puzzle you are you're looking at it you're watching it or your developer is now who is this really good for? Like I says for someone who's this has never been done before we gotta build it from scratch because you know it just has to happen you searched the absolute just there's nothing like it or you're really interesting from coding we're going talk about an example in a few minutes about a couple other reasons about intellectual property or having value to it and we'll talk about why building from scratch can be helpful in that sense emulating this is one of most popular methods one that I've seen a lot of students be really successful with emulating essentially means you identify an app that's out there and you have someone recreated and prove it we'll go through an example of what this is all about what emulating does is that mitigates your risk because it gives you almost a blueprint and you could handle someone and say hey this is going to answer eighty percent of questions about what happens here and when you when you click the xbox where ugo and all this everything it's less unique than building from scratch because you're starting from established framework you're still building it from scratch but you have a blueprint right? So you're still saying right we're going to build us but we know what we're building already this isn't out of my head it's already it's already something that's out there now here's an example that I just pulled off the app store this is one of the top aps in the app store and all this is really is a video app that they found in the app store that they you know they took off somewhere and they emulated and they made a little better now it's a vhs home recorder so that they have a regular video recording app but instead of doing it like everybody else this is the improvements they made so this might not be completely original but it's just incrementally better and because of that they shot to the top of the app store that's what that's the idea behind the emulation model and it finally hap templates and this is something that on blue cloud we talk a lot about can also be called abri skinning and this has evolved over the course of I don't know how in a couple of years now I guess it's been fun and this is always continuing to evolve it's kind of like the web where if you're going to go build a website you might not want to build a website from scratch because there's a million templates you can go get out there same ideas happening in the app store you start with the foundation you customize it and you improve it now this is a little different than emulating because you actually get the code itself you can go on to websites and purchased the physical source code and then redesign the package versus emulating where you have to build it just based on what you see that's the difference it's the least unique right it's you have the most repurposed part of the code it's also lowest cost so if you're getting started in naps and we say look, I've got a hundred dollars budget what dough I d'oh this is a great place to just learn about aps and actually get something in your pocket and say all right now I can get started because it's really really low cost it's also the fastest to market where you know you could get this done in a matter of weeks days sometimes and you're in the app store you're getting downloads maybe you're a marketer you don't want to deal with the app so I just want to focus on the downloads this gets you in the app store in the next two weeks boom like now you've something to go market I mean this is a great solution for that it's also a great learning process so if you say I wanted I don't learn how to code but I want to learn howto get in the business this could be great because it's really little cost and you can learn all the pieces very quickly here's an example these air tuapse that exactly to the first absent when they realize this whole idea of using templates you can imagine okay well we've got this great uh animal running game and here's how to play and then over here there's a panto app that is a little bit of how to play now moving forward I would probably try to make this an improvement you know add new functionality is and make it better and improve the app but you can you can see how I could make I think we made the elephant one and maybe a puppy dog want and whatever else that may be and the whole idea of this where you can go on by the source code it can really work out I just want to take a second right now I know we have our studio audience here and I'd love to hear where you guys are have you used any of these methods so far and your aps I'd love to hear where you're at right now and you're at business anybody want to share sure yeah I've kind of gone through all three of the different processes and you know turned the different pitfalls of each and yeah I definitely recommend if someone that's starting out to start with a template ing bottle want to learn the game really really fast yeah what did the what did you learn by doing the template ing model yeah I mean I was able to get something off the ground really really fast and just learned the process involved in getting something to the store and how long it takes to get a nap approved what's involved in like approval process by apple and just going the process of packing up and up and you know making sure that it works and focusing on the marketing side of things cool yeah I think that's a great point I think the a couple of years ago the template model might have been more of a hey I'm gonna make money doing this and now it's more of now I'm going to learn, really quickly, faster than any other way for a very little cost and that's a really, you know, powerful tool in itself really cost saving tool as well. Anyone else because built any absolute you have no, you I raised my hand is talking no at building, I've dabbled in templates for website design, but I do have a nap idea I related to disaster relief areas, and I have no idea, and I definitely like the emulating in the template. Yeah, not this scratch. Yeah, the I'm with you on that for sure and it's well, talk about a few examples right now, but we'll keep coming back that to so as we go through this process out let's, use that example so that we can help build your app as we go. Do you have a question around privacy? You know you've got this great idea, you start sharing with people, and then someone runs off. I'm not one to really think about stealing, but I do respect that a friend of mine was the one that was recently evacuated and came up with his ideas, so I do want to protect that that's a really, really good question. It comes up a lot and we'll talk about that with the developers, but to answer your question, it's really hard to you know, keep an idea completely private when you're building an app. That's, just the neat that's, that's, the nature of the game, you know, legally speaking, there's a lot you could do with n d a's and, you know, keeping the team, you know, having a team building and things like that often, it just comes down to trust and that's, just the nature of the business, but we will talk about when you're hiring a developer. Hey, I've got this great idea. I don't want you to go steal it, or if you do get an idea, whose idea was it? You know, where does where does that go? It's an important question and it's something that comes up a lot, so we will definitely talk about that.