You may have realized I’ve been very very busy lately. What have I been doing? Growing my clientbase on Elance? Becoming the highest paid freelancer the world has ever known? Not exactly. I’ve been building an iPhone App, and now that it’s launched, I finally have some more time to get back to blogging.
Throughout this journey, I’ve learned a lot about building a business, things I wouldn’t have expected if you were to ask me about it just 6 months ago. I started with an idea, acted on it, got the right people involved, and then worked my ass for a few months straight. Now I have an app in the App Store that’s doing really well. I’n not at liberty to tell you how much I’m selling (can’t let the competition know), but we’re making headlines and sales.
The App Concept.
I’m a snowboarder. I love it. Out of everything I do on a snowboard, I love riding parks more than anything. It’s this constant challenge to improve upon your tricks and keep polishing them until they’re as stylish as you can make them. Oh, and it’s really really fun when you get your friends involved.
When we’re out riding, a lot of us play games with one another. We’re always pushing each other to try new stuff. Usually one of us calls out a trick for everyone to try. We’ll do this all day, keeping score and everything. At the end of the day, someone usually comes home with a new trick.
The problem with the game we were playing is that it’s heavily biased. The tricks you call out are usually the same tricks you call out all the time. Your mind always gets the best of you, and the desire to stay inside of your comfort zone usually wins out.
In an ideal world, you would challenge your friends with completely random tricks. At the time I came up with the app concept, there were these things called Sno Dice. They’re a set of physical dice that you roll. Each face has a different part of a trick on it, so you get completely random tricks from using them.
While Sno Dice are awesome, they’re kind of hard to use when you’re lapping the park super fast with your bros. For one, you have to find a surface to roll them on. You can generally do this, but most people don’t want to stop snowboarding to do it.
I came up with up the concept for the Snow Dice iPhone App while I was playing with physical Sno Dice. I kept thinking to myself, “this could be easier… a lot easier.”
Snow Dice, Ski Dice, and Skate Dice are the extension of the “random trick” concept into the iPhone world. The pocket format makes it really easy and much quicker to play the game. You don’t have to stop anymore. You can just shake your iPhone to roll the dice, get your trick, and try it.
Building the app.
I thought about making the app for a few months before I woke up one morning and just started on the thing. The first Snow Dice App was a prototype. It looked terrible, but it worked. I wrote the first bit of the source code entirely in Javascript, using Sencha Touch as the graphics framework. It was a decision I would later regret as I learned the hard way that Objective C and XCode really are the way to go.
The first version of Snow Dice was too complex for the public, but it was something I really wanted to use. That’s all that really mattered at the time. Instead of featuring just one jump trick and one rail trick, it automatically started with a series of three jump tricks. I was stoked about this because I enjoy learning new lines while out riding.
My biggest problem was a lack of graphics. I’m no graphics designer. I honestly don’t know where to start with it. So the first version was all text. Everything worked just fine. It was just really ugly.
Getting partners onboard.
For a few months, I had this app up on the App Store. It wasn’t selling very well, and I knew it needed something extra. I didn’t know what to do for a while until I approached someone who’s pretty well connected in the snowboarding industry down in New Zealand. That’s when the actual business started to form.
Here’s what a lot of beginners don’t understand. It’s not enough to build the app. A lot of people build apps. You need to get someone to help you market your app, and by that, I don’t mean someone who just talks the talk. You need someone with real connections in the industry you want to pursue. Without that, you have to rely on people discovering you. It’s totally hit and miss.
I had to give up a portion of my app company to my partner, and I don’t regret it at all. He’s got the connections. I don’t. That’s the way the world works. It’s better to accept a smaller portion of a bigger pie than it is to accept the entirety of a much smaller pie.
My business partner brought on a graphic designer, got a pro skier involved, got the app in the top ski and snowboarding websites, contributes to design and testing, and functions as a sounding board for new ideas. He also channels feedback from our users so my finger constantly stays on the pulse of what’s happening with the project.
To make anything really take off, you can’t just be a one man band. You need to assemble some kind of team. All four of us are responsible for making this thing awesome and ultimately getting it to sell.
Marketing the app.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling socks or iPhone apps. You won’t have anything if you don’t have distribution. The App Store is a distribution channel all to itself, but it’s so crowded with other apps that it’s difficult to poke your head above the crowd. What you really need is someone in the industry pushing the concept. That’s why we got pro athletes involved.
People follow pro athletes. They pay attention to what pro athletes do. Pro athletes are really really good at presenting your product in the best possible light. With the right videographer, they make everything look as fun on video as it is in real life. Because of the pro athletes we got involved, we managed to grow our following by as much as 500%. That’s huge when you’re starting out small.
To market the app, we used a series of teaser videos. This is one of them. As you can see, it shows some of the fun possibilities of using the app while retaining that sense of mystery surrounding the product. We don’t explain what it does or what it is. We allow people to imagine it all on their own.
If you’ve just started building an app, you can begin to appreciate what this entire process involves. Do you have a nice camera? Do you know how to film like a pro? I don’t. That’s why I got other people involved. You’re nothing without your team.
Launching your app.
Launches need to be big or they don’t do anything. About a month before you actually launch, you have to start up a campaign to build anticipation for the app. If you don’t have media connections all on your own, you really won’t be able to do that. You need a marketer or you’re sunk before you even begin.
Our promoter setup a Facebook group dedicated to the app. We provided teaser videos before the app ever dropped. These are the things that got people excited prior to the release of the app. By the time we actually released it, everyone was so stoked about it that it sold a ton on the first night.
Now think about this. The App Store ranks apps by sales volume. If you get a huge spike, you can actually make it to the top 10 overnight. This happened with Snow Dice and Ski Dice. We continued to hold our position in the top spots, getting more sales and keeping our ranking. An app launch needs to be a big push or it doesn’t do anything at all for you.
Managing the incoming wave of user feedback.
I should have been celebrating on the eve of our launch, but that was probably one of the more stressful nights of my life. It’s the critical point when you start getting feedback from your users. People will find bugs, lots of them. Expect to spend the next few days cleaning everything up and preparing an update for the App Store.
With Ski Dice, we got a ton of awesome suggestions that went into effect almost immediately. I think people really liked to see such a high degree of responsiveness from us. This is where you show your true character as an app developer. Are you just in it for the money, or do you genuinely care? We care.
I’m stoked about what I got to build this summer. It’s probably one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done (aside from landing doubles). If you’re just starting, you’ve got all of my encouragement. It’s a challenging and sometimes stressful road, but don’t give up. When you find the right people, you can make it a real success.