How to break into the mobile app business with little cash and no programming skill

Summary: Think you can make a bajillion dollars creating an app? David Gewirtz shows you how to get started. He doesn't guarantee you'll make any money, but with this step-by-step guide, at least you'll know where to begin.
 
I can't tell you how many letters I get from readers asking how to break into the mobile app business. Most tell me they have no software experience, little cash, and expect to make a bajillion dollars.
 
As I've written before, lack of experience, skill, and money is not a formula for software success. But as many of you have told me in no uncertain terms, who am I to insist that you can't dream? What if you're the one with the blockbuster idea and I, jaded old-school software entrepreneur that I am, just don't see it?
 
In this article, I'm going to take you through the steps you need to get an app up on the Android and Apple app stores. I'll outline tools, resources, and steps you'll need to take. I'll even show you some tricks for building your own apps without any programming skill whatsoever.
 
Whether you make any money is out of my hands. At least you'll have a starting point. Over the next weeks, I'll write more about how to really understand the software business. But for those of you who are impatient to get started, here's what you need to do.

Sign up as a developer

Let's get started with the basics -- getting access to the app stores. In this article, we'll look at the Google Play store and the iOS App store because they are, by far, the biggest players. Once you complete an app, you'll need to submit it to the app store and each company will go through a review process designed to determine if your app is up to basic quality standards (and, sadly, those standards are very low), and make sure you're not embedding malware or other nastiness in the app.
 

 
Once accepted in the app store, the two companies will list your apps and you'll get a percentage of the selling price. When Apple set up the original App Store, they paid 70 percent of the selling price to developers, taking a 30 percent cut for themselves. While Apple's 30 percent cut may seem like a lot, those who have been in the software business for a while know that's actually a pretty good deal. For software sold through retail stores, developers might see less than 30 percent of the final sale price. With app stores, developers keep a lot more.
 
In order to get into the game, you'll need to sign up for each app store. For iOS, you'll want to join the iOS Developer Program, which costs $99/year. For Google Play, you will need a Google Account, and then you can go to the Developer Console and pay your $25. Both programs provide some excellent developer resources, but I'd strongly recommend you tap into the Develop and Distribute tabs of developer.android.com for some great guides on both product design and marketing.

Decide what to build

Congrats! You are now a developer. Now you need to build an app. Later in this article, I'll take you through a number of app development tools that will help you build your first app without any programming background. You'll want to explore them in depth, because the capabilities of those tools will help you determine what you can and can't build. 

Even so, you have a couple of major choices upfront. Clearly, you're not going to be building a revolutionary new tool that uses all of the capabilities of smartphones and tablets. You'll need to learn to code for real to do that. If you're using a non-programmer's app building tool, you're pretty much limited to form and data-based apps, mobilized Web pages, and games.
 
There is, of course, no guarantee you'll see any money from any of these. The app market is a hugely competitive market. Even so, I'll start off by recommending you avoid mobilized Web pages. We are all used to getting our Web page content for free, and a mobile app that just reformats that information is unlikely to generate an app store sale. The way you can make money on mobilized Web pages is contacting companies with their own basic Web pages and offering to turn them into free apps. You won't get a stream of income from app sales, but you could get a decent services fee for creating such an app for someone else.
 
Forms-based apps are apps that interact with data entry, databases, and store the data for later retrieval. They're relatively easy to build and you might be able to build something based on an area of knowledge you have.
 
Games, of course, are games. Games are the hottest segment of the mobile app market, but concomitantly, it's also the most crowded segment and the segment where it's hardest to stand out. That said, building a game is fun just for its own sake, so you might want to give it a try.

Decide how to price it

Next comes pricing. Remember that apps are cheap by comparison to PC and Mac desktop apps. Just about everything is under ten bucks. More to the point, and here's a big hint, nearly all of the biggest money producers are apps that are free to download and offer in-app purchases.

Frankly, if you want to make money, I'd recommend you start with the in-app purchase business model. Personally, I don't like in-app purchase -- but you can't deny the success the model has had. After all, buyers can download, try, and get sucked in. If they find value, then they are far more likely to buy your in-app upgrades.

Next: How to build your app even if you don't program

~ David Gewirtz 

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