Creating an electronic application is one of the most important ways of making money from the Internet in the current period. Everyone depends on applications in various areas of life, such as social communication, entertainment, money transfer, and others.
Also, the use of applications is no longer limited to technology experts only, but that there are millions of people who depend on applications in their daily lives without having great or even medium technical knowledge, and without the need to own expensive smartphones.
In 2020, the profits of applications reached about 582 billion dollars, if anything indicates that the application market is a successful and profitable market.
Perhaps now you think that entering this field is limited to large companies, and this is not true. In this article, we explain to you in detail the steps to create an application for smartphones through which you can make thousands of dollars and more.
Steps to create a mobile app
1. Determine the idea of the application
There are several methods that you can rely on in order to determine the idea of the application that you want to create, the most important of which are:
a) Determine the need
The reason for the success of the greatest applications and websites is their ability to fulfill the needs that their users so desperately need to meet.
Mark Zuckerberg relied on individuals' need for social networking on the Internet to create and develop the Facebook application, Slack app developers relied on individuals' need to communicate directly and securely during work times, and many other applications.
In general, humanity cannot be satisfied with electronic applications, as we can say that there is more than one application for most of the needs of humans, however, you still have the opportunity to create an application that meets one of these needs. All you have to do is select the need you want to meet.
Like most successful app developers, you can start on your own. Ask yourself what application do I need in my life but can't find it? Is it a medical app? Or an application to increase focus? You may need an app to help you do your job better, the possibilities are endless.
Find one of the most important problems that you encounter in your life on a daily or periodic basis and find a solution by creating an application, do not worry about how the application works or design this is easy, and we will explain the easiest methods to complete it later in this article.
Also, identifying the need should not be limited to you only, but can extend to include the individuals around you. There are a large number of applications and even inventions that their designers have created to help their relatives and friends overcome problems they have been experiencing.
Your friends and relatives will be excited to discuss the problems they face on a daily basis when they know that you are thinking of a solution to them, and some of them may even become one of the sources of funding that you can rely on in creating your application as we will explain later.
Finally, you can search and see the needs and problems posted by users on social networking sites. Human lives are complex and sometimes circumstances occur that require new applications to confront them, such as the applications that appeared in the past two years to follow up on the famous epidemic.
The pursuit of fulfilling a specific need is one of the most important sources of ideas for creating applications for mobile phones, because it helps to reach an idea that has a demand from users. The greater the demand to satisfy a need of individuals the more they are willing to pay money to obtain it.
b) improvement
You may not know this; But Facebook is not considered the first social networking site (or application) on the Internet, it is just that Facebook is a development of social networking sites (scarce at the time) such as myspace, which disappeared after a period of Facebook's appearance.
Optimizing software and applications is a common technique used by many major technology companies.
Some companies are making improvements to the applications they already have, and others are making an improved application from an existing application, whether this application is owned by them or bought from another company, as happened between Yahoo and Maktoob.
Of course, the improvement goes beyond a change in design or colors. We are talking here about adding improvements that change this application radically. In fact, most of the new wonderful applications are improved versions of other applications that existed in the past.
Most of the conversational applications on smartphones, for example, are not very different from the applications we have been using in the past decade.
I am from a generation who use software like yahoo messenger and Hotmail messenger, and I can assure you that both apps can be considered the godparents of apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.
What I like about this method is that it enables you to create an application without searching for an idea and converting it into an application from scratch. Remember that you do not always need to come up with a new idea to create your application around it, on the contrary.
You can choose an application idea that has been implemented before and present it through your application in a completely new way. There are a huge number of applications that provide solutions to major life problems, but they fail due to technical factors, lack of interest from their developers, and many other reasons.
You can re-introduce the ideas of these applications after radically improving them in terms of technology and design, and you can also work on addressing the problems that led to the failure of these applications in providing their services and solutions to the satisfaction of users.
Of course you should focus on improving the way the solution is presented by the idea in general and not building an application that offers the same solution. Note that your application should be different from any other application for two reasons, the first is to avoid getting into legal problems, and the second is to stand out.
There are a large number of grocery delivery service apps. If you make an app that does the same thing, will you be held accountable or accused of plagiarism? Of course not, this will only happen if you make an app similar in look and feel to an existing app.
To excel in providing a grocery delivery service, for example, you need to know the problems of other applications and how you can solve them.
This is how you will have an app to deliver groceries to the home, but it is distinct and improved in terms of performance, delivery, etc. Also, in this way, you may have improved a solution that already existed.
Note that it is easier to convince users to use an app that offers a solution they know than to rely on an app that offers a completely new solution.
Finally, as a simple exercise, pick up your mobile phone and take a look at the applications you use frequently. Now review the performance of each application. Are you completely satisfied with it? Do you have ideas to improve it or develop the service it provides? If the answer is yes, then great. I found your app idea.
c) merging
The integrating approach to building applications is very similar to the optimization method, but only in form and not in subject matter.
Merging is one of the famous methods that can be relied upon to find an application idea. The idea is based mainly on merging two ideas into one application, provided that the merge is only abstract.
Abstract merging is the merging of only two basic ideas, such as making short-term (idea 1) videos (idea 2), Tik Tok merged the idea of videos on the YouTube platform with the idea of videos being short, which has been around for a while on Facebook.
Tik Tok relied on many other sub-ideas and combined them with its basic ideas, some of these sub-ideas included adding effects and filters, and all of them were ideas that were preceded by a large number of social media programs, on top of which were Instagram and Snapchat.
Now if you review Idea 1 with Idea 2 and some of the previous sub-ideas, you will know that the idea of Tik Tok is not new at all, if this indicates anything, it indicates that the merging method is a popular method in the field of creating applications.
Most of the financial and electronic payment applications rely on the concept of integration, but users are always looking for the comprehensive application.
In the case of these applications, all users are looking for an application through which they can conduct all their financial transactions, so we see many of these applications provide more than one type of financial services such as paying bills, transferring money, and even recharging the balance of electronic games.
You may think that financial applications have always worked like this, but the truth is not, each of the previous services had a different application in previous years, later one of the smart developers collected all these services and provided them in one application for users.
Users preferred to use one app for all their financial transactions instead of relying on several apps, note that this is better in terms of ease of use and security.
You can also combine more than one idea and service into one application. You just have to define your application area and research and study the leading applications in it, and how they can be combined or incorporated features from them to provide a completely new application.
2. Define the characteristics of the application
Some may confuse the concept of the application idea as including the characteristics of the application, and this is incorrect. The idea of the application is the solution that this application provides to its users, but the characteristics are how this application provides or presents this solution to the users.
In the previous grocery app example; The application fulfills the need of individuals to purchase grocery components without making any effort. As for the characteristics, we can say that they are the details of the application of this need and the advantages that the application provides in the field of grocery delivery.
The shortcomings in this example may relate to the delivery of these orders, the time of their arrival, or even the place of receipt or payment. Another famous example is financial applications. The idea of this application is to facilitate electronic payments and purchases for users.
The characteristics of these applications may be the ability to pay bills or link to electronic wallets or a bank account and so on. The bottom line is that you need to make a list of the characteristics of your application.
We know that you may have a large number of features and features that you would like to add in your application and this is great, however, it is preferable that you divide these features into primary and secondary features.
Core features are the focus of your solution or needs of the users you're aiming to help with your app, and therefore should be your primary focus in terms of thought and consideration.
Secondary features may include visual features, displaying data in a certain way, or even sharing it on social media. These features may be anything you want and are important, of course, but their importance is not equal to the importance of the basic application features.
Note that designing the application programmatically is expensive and to reduce the cost at least in the beginning you should focus on the basic features of the application only, of course later you can add all the secondary features you want, whether through simple updates or comprehensive updates.
Also, defining the basic characteristics of your application will help you to present it to investors clearly.
Investors need to know the most important thing that your application will offer to users, this will help them during the process of deciding to fund this application, and it can even be considered as the final decision in the process of financing this application or not, as we will explain later.
3. Study the market and search for the most popular applications in your field of application
Now that you've come up with the idea for your app... it's time to study your market. Whatever the idea of your application is, it belongs to a specific field in the world of smartphone applications.
If your application provides a service related to money then it belongs to the economic field, your application provides a form of communication if it is wished for social networking applications and so on.
You need to carefully study the market to which your application belongs, because it will alert you to important factors that affect the success of your application, such as:
The extent to which the market needs your application (depends on the size and scope of the market and the most popular applications in it).
The nature of competition in this market (competition in the financial applications market is fierce, unlike in the field of self-development applications).
The extent to which applications available in this market meet the needs of users.
The last point about users' needs brings us to a very important question... Is there another app based on your idea? This is another important thing to watch out for. Don't worry, the presence of this application does not mean that your application does not have to come to light, but it may be necessary.
Do not be surprised, as no single application can control a field completely. In any field, you will find a large number of applications that serve almost the same purpose. Facebook and Twitter are considered among the most important social networking applications, but each of them has a different form and audience.
Telegram plays the same role as WhatsApp with some additional features, however, both are considered different from the other and have a large number of users.
Rather, I will give you more poetry by one; There is a large number of users relying on several applications to perform one purpose, and this is not limited to the entertainment or social networking areas, but extends to financial and service applications.
Well, there are already existing applications based on the same idea as your application, how do you outperform it?
There are several things you can do in order to prepare for the competition of applications similar to yours, such as:
Do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis for your application and competing applications.
Download the top 5 apps that you expect to compete and use them extensively.
Find users' opinions on these apps and their top reasons for using them.
There is also a method with a guide to the previous method, which includes doing the following steps:
Write down the most important information about these applications such as; The name, the price, the rating, the number of downloads, the company that developed the application ... and so on.
Determining certain criteria that suits you by which you reduce the number of applications that you want to compete with (for example, you may not want to compete with an app that has a rating of less than 3.8 on the Google Play store or you do not want to compete with a paid app), this will give you fewer applications that you aim to compete with.
Find the features most requested by the audience of these applications and work to add them in your application.
Target vulnerabilities in similar applications and attempt to address them in your application.
Now you're competing 4 or 5 apps in your field of application and that's better in terms of focusing resources and ideas. The competition is always based on providing advantages and additions to the audience that competitors do not have, which is something that is easy to do if you follow the previous steps.
4. Determine which operating systems the application will run on
It is important that you decide which operating systems your application will run on. Operating systems are the marketplace for any application.
If you create an app that works on Android only, you will be competing with Android apps primarily.
This means, of course, that the more your application runs on multiple operating systems and devices, the more markets it will compete in. This at first glance may be intimidating, but it is not as it will provide you with greater opportunities for success and growth.
This also means that you will make your profits through several different ways. You can make the application available for free on Android and provide it as paid on the iOS system or vice versa according to the market study that you have done.
Each operating system has a different audience, and the presence of your application on more than one system increases the number of your customers and, accordingly, your profits.
Well, you may now be wondering which operating system to choose? The answer to this question is up to you. The latest statistics indicate that the number of Android phone users reaches 70 percent of the total smartphone users in the world.
This means that providing your own application to run on this system helps you to reach a huge number of customers, however IOS phone users have higher purchasing power, and so is the possibility of purchasing applications.
In fact, I could write an entire article about the pros and cons of creating an app that works on either platform… It's confusing I know.
My personal advice to you is to conduct the following studies on the following factors, which differ from one application to another:
Application field (the demand for applications specific to a particular field varies from one operating system to another).
The cost of creating your application on both operating systems.
Will your application be free or paid?
In general, most application owners aim to create their applications to run on the Android system and the IOS system at the same time, some of them may choose to launch their applications on one system before the other, but most of them target the two systems and it is always a profitable and successful option.
Use the results of previous studies in determining the first operating system that you will launch your application, after success and growth you can launch it on the second system.
5. Determine the initial design of the application (Design a simple form of the application form)
The initial design is meant for the user interface and pages of the application, not the software part of the application or the Backend, so is the design of the pages meant for Frontend? Yes and no.
The initial design of the application interface and its sections is the design and planning of the general appearance of the application, while programming these graphics to work when the user interacts with them and the way they appear is the so-called Frontend.
It is preferable during the creation of your application that you have an imagination of the shape of its interface and the order of the appearance of its sections, this visual design will be converted to the prototype of your application, which even if changed later is very important and we will explain later why it is important.
This is a very important step in creating your application, and of course there is more than one way to implement it according to your imagination of the shape of your application, we will first assume that you have an imagination of the shape of your application interface and its section pages.
Now you need to convert this design from just an idea to a sketch, either on paper or digitally on the computer. On paper, make an imaginary drawing of the shape of the application and its sections, provided that they are transferred to the digital image by you or a specialized graphic designer.
Of course, converting the idea to digital form directly is much better, but it may require some technical expertise or the help of a designer, as we explained.
However, there are several tools that you can use to implement your design in digital form, the most important of which are:
The above tools will enable you to convert your initial app shape design into a digital design. The importance of this model lies in the ease of implementation compared to building the entire application itself, which requires resources that you may not have available to you.
This model can be relied upon while communicating with the parties that hope to obtain funding from them. Of course, these parties prefer to see a complete application programmatically, but the presence of this model with the idea of the application and its characteristics provides a full presentation of the idea and design of your application.
Important note: This step can be overlooked and start designing the application directly. The design of the interface and its pages and programming is the responsibility of the programmer who specializes in programming the application interface or the Frontend developer in coordination with the designer of the application.
However, we mentioned it here, because in the early stages of the application (and even before obtaining funding or agreeing with the application designer) you may need to create a prototype for your interface yourself and the easiest way to do this is the tools we mentioned in this part.
Also Read: How to Create a Minimum Viable Product (Practical Guide)
6. Choose the name of the application
I know what's going through your head, why have you been so late discussing this area until now? In fact, choosing the name of the application is a step that can be completed at any time, and some famous applications have even changed their name more than once over the years of their operation.
However, the name of the application is closely related to its idea and characteristics, so it is preferable to choose it after completing these two steps. Market study is another important factor in choosing the name of the application, through which you may discover that there is an application with the same name you chose for your application.
You may also come up with suggestions for the name of your app based on the names of other apps in the field or what users are searching for.
Of course, this does not prevent you from choosing the name of your application before performing any of the previous steps (including defining its idea), but many experts in the technical field advise that, regardless of the two options available to you, and it is true.
Make sure to choose an attractive name that is easy for your audience to pronounce, also take into account the culture and nature of your target audience, will you target the audience of your country or the audience of several countries or aim to create an application that has a global audience.
Do not forget that the more simple and easy to remember the name of your application, the more it contributes to the process of spreading it among users.
Finally, it is preferable that the name of the application indicates the service it provides, this will make it easier for users to identify it, which contributes greatly to encouraging them to use it. Everyone prefers to use an app that knows what it is doing easily and here the name plays a big role.
7. Funding the creation of the application
The word finance may seem to some people intimidating, but it is not. There are several solutions that you can rely on to finance the process of creating an application, such as:
a) Rely on your acquaintances or friends to finance the creation of your application
We mentioned this previously and in general this method of financing depends on a large number of owners of start-ups and small projects.
We are not talking about a loan or debt here, but rather about a formal partnership between you and an acquaintance to finance the creation of your application.
It's easy and simple, but it must be completed professionally, do not let your relationship affect the decision of your friends or acquaintances negatively or positively.
Present the idea of your application and its features and the market study that you did to your friend from whom you would like to finance your application, explain to him all your application idea in detail, the amount you need to create the application, how you will make profits from it and when.
If your friend agrees, start immediately documenting the details of the agreement between you in a formal way that clearly guarantees each party his rights.
b) get a loan
There are a large number of successful projects that I started financing by relying on loans. Do not forget that creating an electronic application is a small project, and this type of project is very popular with those who provide loans at the present time.
Banks are the first party that can be thought of when we mention the word loan, and although some may not like to borrow from them, it is very common in the field of small projects and startups, especially because of the banks facilitating the terms of borrowing for these projects.
We know that banks are the best or common trend when we talk about loans, but they are not the only option. List all the parties that provide loans, including banks, associations, and any other party.
Now compare the details of each loan in terms of fees, terms and value. Through this comparison, you will be able to find out the best loan that suits you and the details of your application in terms of the value of profits and the time to achieve them.
Read also: Methods to make money from NFT (6 Different Methods Explained 2022)
c) Rely on crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is relying on presenting your application idea to a number of individuals in the hope of obtaining funding from them to create this application. Access to these individuals is through several well-known sites platforms in the field of crowdfunding.
Top crowdfunding platforms:
Register on one of the previous sites and know the idea of your application and receive funding from people who liked the idea of your application. Of course, you will pay this financing later with a small profit margin for each financier, but in general financing through this method is easy and its cost is simple.
d) Rely on private companies
Many private companies offer grants in various fields, believing in their societal role towards the countries in which they operate. Do a search for private companies that offer financing loans and study their conditions well.
Find private companies in your country and visit their websites to find out what grants they fund.
It is better to look for large and international companies, as they provide more funding amounts than small local companies.
e) Looking for grants
Every once in a while, some government and private agencies provide grants in certain areas such as information technology and application development. Find grant donors in your country and contact them to finance the process of creating your application.
In my personal opinion; Grants are the best sources of funding that you can rely on to build your application.
Relying on loans means the obligation to pay these loans and their interests, which, although they may be simple, they are still an additional cost that you will not fully benefit from, unlike grants whose terms are often easier, and may not need to be paid.
f) Looking for an angel investor
An angel investor is an investor who finances a project from his own money, provided that he has a large percentage in this project. Of course, the percentage is determined and agreed upon before starting the financing, but it is often greater than the percentage of the owner of the idea of the project itself.
Of course, any entity you will go to for funding will request several information about your application, which may include the following information or more:
Application idea.
Application properties.
Application name (or default name)
Amount of financing required.
Feasibility study for the stages of creating the application.
Market Research.
Approximate dates for application creation phases.
The characteristics and the basic idea are considered essential elements that must be requested by any funding body. However, having the rest of the elements you have will enhance your position towards these parties and suggest professionalism and seriousness, which are factors that greatly affect the approval of granting funding.
8. Forming a business team (or group of teams)
Let's be honest, creating an app is a huge process. Can one person do it? Yes, but not easily, especially in the early stages of the application creation process
The stages of finding the idea of the application, its characteristics, and even its name may be completed by one person within a short period of time. As for the advanced stages in this process, such as market studies and marketing the application, a team is indispensable to complete it correctly.
Marketing the application alone may require a whole team. Note that you may market a product that you want to publish globally and not only locally, not to mention that there are other factors that make the idea of relying on one individual to market the application almost impossible.
Other than the voltage distribution; Having a team working with you to help you manage and market the application is essential, even after the implementation phase and launching the application to the user, you will need to launch updates and address errors, in other words, you will need a technical team.
Of course, you can rely on the entity that designed the application to carry out maintenance tasks and updates to it, however, it is preferable to have a technical team available to you, even part-time, to solve urgent or huge application problems.
Well, the purpose here is not to complicate things for you at all, but rather to clarify what you need for your application to succeed in its field, now that we have explained the reasons why you need to have a work team or small work teams, we will help you on how to form these teams.
First, you will need to identify the tasks that need a team work, which are often:
Financial tasks (managing application finances and paying various expenses).
Legal tasks such as usage agreements.
Technical and software tasks (maintenance and updates).
Application marketing.
Public Relations (communication with investors and companies).
Now dealing with all the previous tasks needs some intelligence. You can arrange these tasks and categorize them according to their importance according to each stage of the application.
For example, financial tasks will exist at the beginning of the life of the application and continue thereafter. Marketing the application will not take place until after the completion of its design, or at least a short period before it is completed.
You will encounter legal tasks as soon as the application funding is received, especially if you rely on an angel investor or partner and so on.
After following the previous method, you will have fewer teams that you need to create.
Now we move on to the configuration methods, which team will take over any of the previous tasks, its final management will be directly subordinate to you.
Remember this well while choosing your work team, because one of the team building methods that application owners may rely on is to rely on their friends and acquaintances to be the basis of these teams, and this is an excellent method for forming these teams.
However, for business management, you may have problems communicating with some of your friends and acquaintances when it comes to issuing orders and instructions, but do not let this note stop you from following this method of team building, but rather take it into account while following it.
The first advantage of this method is that it can be very economical. We do not mean here that you save on the wages of your acquaintances and friends who will work with you, but that their wages (or part of them) can be provided in another way, such as shares of profits or shares in the application.
We are assuming here that your friends that you will rely on are not experts in the areas they will undertake, but rather have some knowledge and experience that qualifies them to take on these tasks.
In other words, the cost of their wages will not equal the cost of relying on specialized companies or teams to do the same tasks.
Of course, you can hire professional people to do these tasks, whether from freelance platforms or through an agreement with a company, the appropriate method of team formation depends on your personal opinions and your available budget in the first place.
9. Choose a design method
How will you create your application Will you depend on yourself? Or on others?
However, there are several ways in which you can create your own application:
a) Design the app by yourself
Yes this is possible and easier than you think, but of course it depends on the idea of your application (see step one),
For example, merging two app ideas is easier than creating an app based on a completely new idea.
It is easier, of course, if you are a programmer or have a background in the field of programming, but even if this is not available, do not worry, you can learn the appropriate programming language for the application you want to create… Do you see it difficult or western, I assure you that it is not.
The history of app creation is full of people who have learned programming languages themselves in order to build their apps, of course this is not the easiest and most reliable way to build an app but it might be the best.
Remember that you are the owner of the idea of the application, that is, you may be the most familiar person with how it works. Do not worry, learning programming is not as difficult as some imagine.
b) Hiring a programming company
Hiring a programming company to create your application is a practical and logical solution, programming companies will save you the effort and time of learning a programming language and training on it to create your own application.
Do a quick search for the best programming companies available in your country or even globally, and contact them to find out the cost of creating the application.
c) Hire a programmer
Do you think hiring a programmer to build an app is the same as hiring a programming company? Well this is not entirely true at least, hiring a programmer may be easier and cheaper than hiring a programming company.
There are several ways in which a programmer can be used to create your application, such as:
Hire a programmer you know (one of your friends or acquaintances).
Hiring a programmer through freelance sites (Feverr - Upwork).
Try to review the programmer’s previous work or resume before hiring him. Of course, it is preferable to use a programmer with experience in creating applications similar to your application or even in the same field.
d) Using App Builder
Application creation platforms enable you to create your own application without having to have knowledge of programming languages.
Here are the most important platforms from which you can easily create your own application:
Androm
AppsGeyser
AppMakr
Appy Pie
The previous platforms have a low cost, and some of them are even free and easy to use, there are a large number of world-famous applications created through these platforms.
10. Post-application tasks
After creating the application, there will be some tasks that you will have to do. These tasks can be divided into two types: the first type is tasks that are executed once, and the second is continuous tasks throughout the application period.
The tasks that you will do once is to upload your application to the application store of the operating system your application is running on. Each store has different conditions for accepting applications. You need to read these terms carefully and know the software and physical requirements of each store.
As for the ongoing tasks, they are tasks such as marketing, maintenance, and updates, and most of them are tasks that started with you during the construction period of the application. These tasks do not end, but their goals change every period.
The task of marketing the application is moving from the stage of attracting users to use the application only to marketing its new features that are added every period, maintenance and updates tasks are working all the time to solve problems and improve the performance of the application continuously.
These tasks are the secret to the success of any application. Creating the application and uploading it to the store without marketing will not bring you users, profits, and so on.
Important note: The order of the steps for creating your application that we mentioned in this article is indicative and not mandatory. It is true that there are always steps that will precede steps such as the step of choosing the idea precedes the design step, but this is not the case with all steps.
Regarding the generation of profits, we have provided him with a special article we have in the winners titled Ways to make money from Mobile Applications, which I advise you to review.
Conclusion
In this guide, we tried to explain the steps that enable you to create your own application with ease, you do not need more than to follow this guide to become one of the owners of successful applications and make huge profits in a short time.
Do you have ideas about what to watch out for while creating apps? Share it with us in the comments.
