Tablet Bucks

Here’s a little tip that I first heard through one of Trey Smith’s videos or maybe in his $1 app and game monetization guide. It won’t generate insane amounts of revenue (I don’t think) but it’s definitely worth implementing if you want to max out your potential earnings from an iPhone app.

Linkshare is Apple’s affiliate program partner. For those not sure what the means, being an affiliate allows for you to make commission on each purchase made through the affiliate link. Here’s the thing – with Apple’s Linkshare affiliate program, if someone navigates to the App Store with your affiliate link, ALL App Store purchases made in the next 72 hours by that person are commissionable. It’s not a lot of commission, amounting to only about 5 cents per $1 app sale.

But 5 cents here and there will surely add up and pay for a cup of coffee and certainly if someone makes an in-app whale purchase or decides to buy a video from iTunes, that could be quite a chunk of change.

Read more about Apple’s affiliate program.

Otherwise, what are you waiting for…

signup to Linkshare.

In the last year, there’s been a dramatic market shift from iPhone dominating the smartphone market to Android now significantly outselling iPhone. According to Forbes, Over the past quarter, of the mobile devices sold, 64.1% are powered by Google’s Android™ and only 18.8% are operated by Apple’s iOS! What does this mean? It means that it’s time to make money with Android apps now!

In 2012, free to play apps dominated the top grossing app list, driven by in-app purchases and in-app advertising. Also in the last year, Google developers earned over $125 Million in mobile display ads while iPhone developers earned only $90 Million. And this gap is potentially set to increase.

You’re interested in making money from apps, right? Well, building free apps for Android with in-app advertising is where you need to be focusing some attention. This can translate into some serious passive income.

The creators of the popular App Dev Secrets course are launching a new course called App Dev Empire for the Android. This course is very inexpensive and walks you through the creation of a killer Android app from installing the development environment to building a game right through to the marketing and distribution of the app.

And right now, the course is being offered at a deep discount of 50% off! This is something that you most certainly don’t want to pass up.

Head on over to the App Dev Empire for the Android site and grab a copy of their course today.

I’ve started a new community called App Money Makers.  The goal is to bring like-minded people together to discuss the biz of apps – share ideas, experiments, results.  The app game is becoming huge and if you and I are to succeed in building apps, we must understand the market and how to leverage the growing opportunities.

Check out my Welcome thread for more information.

That is the word…

Before you take a single step into developing your app, you need (NEED) to search for the app in the app store to see what currently exists.

“But wait – this idea is brilliant and I doubt someone has already capitalized on it”

If you think you have a unique idea, you’re wrong. Plain and simple. At the very least, it’s incredibly (super incredibly) rare to have a unique idea these days and that’s especially so in the App Store, where everyone and their neighbor is trying to jump on the app bandwagon.

3 years ago, I created an app called Spooky Sound Pad for the iPhone. It was about a month before Halloween when it was released and I thought I’d have a goldmine on my hands. I incorporated Apple’s iAd advertising with a banner ad on the bottom of the app. I thought for sure I’d have a winner and rake in some serious iAd cash.

The day that Spooky Sound Pad was approved by Apple, I searched for it in the App Store and whatever I had in the form of excitement quickly turned into absolute dismay. The app that sat directly next to Spooky Sound Pad in a search was called Halloween Sound Pad (or something similar). Then I proceeded to find many many other apps that were exactly the same – Halloween sound generators. And this was 3 years ago!!! I haven’t searched for Halloween related sound boards in the App Store recently, but I can imagine that if I did, there would be way way too many of them available.

Fortunately I had only spent a day creating Spooky Sound Pad. It wasn’t a huge loss and actually turned into quite a nice lesson.

Before doing anything, check the App Store for your app.

Of course, it’s fine if you still decide to release an app that already has a flooded market. Just ensure you know what you’re up against. As they say, there’s always room for another fart app.

Actually, nobody says that.

I recently read Design Rules for Free to Play Games, by Rob Fahey and Nicholas Lovell – the folks at GamesBrief.com.  It isn’t a long read, but the book is jam packed with brilliant information about how to make a successful free to play game – something where the downloads keep happening and the dollars keep rolling in.

Free to play games are the status quo in the world of mobile gaming.  Nobody is spending money to download an app these days and successfully monetizing a free game isn’t necessarily a simple task.  Sure – you can make an in-game currency and sell upgrades, but how do you determine the best way to do this?  What do you sell?  How do you make the value proposition good enough that players actually want to make an in-app purchase?  And how can you get a single player to make purchases on a regular basis?

It’s all answered in this fabulous book.  I one hundred and ten percent recommend that if you are interested in building a game for iPhone or Android (or any platform) or if you’re already building a game – that you read this book.  It’s a must and it’s under $5 for Kindle.  You’d be silly not to.  Serious.

Get Design Rules for Free to Play Games at Amazon.

Here’s another online app builder tool to help get your creation in the app store.  MobileIgniter suggests that all it will take just an hour to get your app off the ground.  Use their simple interface to build your app and once your creation is complete, click publish and Mobile Igniter wil do the rest.

The company offers multiple price tiers, depending on your needs and also offers a free 7 day trial.

Definitely worth checking out.  http://mobileigniter.com/

Also, MobileIgniter has a showcase of apps built with their tool on YouTube.  Here’s one example, a Christmas Carols app.  It actually looks quite slick and if it was marketed correctly, could have done pretty well, I imagine.

Some people suggest that making money in the App Store isn’t possible. I remember a figure released last year that said only 1% of developers make more than $1000 per year selling iPhone apps. That may be true, but the difference between the apps that sell in the 1% and everyone else’s apps is very minimal.

In Mike’s App Dev Secrets course, he shows you how to be part of the 1%, from start to finish, no loose ends. I highly suggest checking out App Dev Secrets so that you too can capitalize on the massive market that is the App Store.

App Dev Secrets

This infographic is from July 2011, but I imagine it’s still quite relevant. According to Distmo, in their July 2011 report, 72% of mobile app revenue (in the iPhone store) comes from in-app purchases.  Do you think this still holds water today?

You’ve heard of the grade school kid who made an iPhone app and began pulling in more income than his parents combined. You know the fart apps were crazy profitable. You’ve probably heard all sorts of stories like that and you too want to get in on the app building game and start earning some serious cash yourself. The problem is, you don’t know a thing about coding, or you might know some but the whole concept of pointers and memory management in C++ or Objective C sounds like gibberish. You’re not alone. And funny enough, many of the top app sellers are just like you.

So what to do? Face it – the more time you invest in learning complex language fundamentals, the longer it will take to get your app concept in the app store. In an already over-saturated app market, that is not a risk that you should be willing to take. So how can you get your idea out faster than the other guy, when the other guy already seems to have an edge?

I’ve listed out a few choice browser-based software for making apps (or app making tools), in no particular order, that can simplify your app development and enable a faster time to market.

All You Need is a Browser.

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