Everyone knows that tech companies are some of the most profitable. One of the best strategies for making a ton of money in tech is by making a mobile app.
We talked to Amin Shaykho and Marwan El-Rukby, who created their own app, Kadama, when they were just teenagers. They started as an app to link students with tutors, but when COVID hit, they had to convert to online tutoring.
We’ll share the lessons learned by Amin and Marwan to help you learn how to create an app, the challenges you’ll face, and how to market mobile apps.
Read our guide start to finish, or click on any of the links above to jump to the info you need right now.
Amin and Marwan were barely out of high school when they met and started discussing how much tutoring sucks. They got talking about their interests and realized that they were in the unique position to build their own app for tutoring students.
You don’t want older tutors. You want tutors from people around your age because they become more like friends. That makes it more fun to learn.
They were both doing internships and earned the money for the original app development. Amin told us:
We paid a contractor $3K to create the first version of the mobile app. I learned the business side, my partner learned the app development process and took over as we learned.
They had to overcome numerous challenges including people using fraudulent tactics to get free tutoring, learning the trick to making videos that encourage users to join their app, the pandemic, and nearly running out of money.
Despite all that, they double to triple their income each year and are expecting to make between $20 and $30 million this year.
Now that you know a bit about their experiences, get ready to learn about the mobile app industry and A-to-Z development process.
When you create an app, the outlook will vary depending on the industry that you are in. For instance, Entertainment software tends to have higher profit margins than healthcare or information services; eCommerce apps are highly dependent on what products you sell.
| Type of Company | Gross Profit | Net Profit |
| Computer Services | 25.52% | 4.40% |
| Entertainment | 38.09% | -0.23% |
| Healthcare Information and Technology | 47.67% | 5.72% |
| Information Services | 32.72% | 3.49% |
| Software (Entertainment) | 63.43% | 20.35% |
| Software (Internet) | 59.11% | -14.32% |
| Software (System & Application) | 71.52% | 19.14% |
Mobile apps need to be developed strategically because they can be a source of useful information and fun, but also major cybersecurity issues. The mobile app development process will normally follow the steps below.
Get ready to learn how each step plays a part in the mobile app creation process.
Like any business, a successful app starts with a good idea. Effectively, you want to establish what problem you will solve and how you will solve it. Amin explained:
First to market is a huge advantage. If you can get in first and dominate, it will be hard for other mobile apps to catch up.
According to Apple’s app store, the 15 most popular types of mobile app ideas that are downloaded include:
Once you’ve identified a problem and come up with an app-based solution, you need to specify the requirements for a minimum viable product before you build an app. A minimum viable product is simply the features that will be included in the app to make it useful and earn money.
Like any other business, mobile apps need to make money. That means you need to research the demand for your service, the target market, and how competitors make money. You can use this tool to help document your research.
There are numerous ways to make money with an app. Some of the most popular ways to generate income as an app maker include:
Kadama is free to download. Then users pay for their tutoring sessions. Amin explained how Kadama makes money:
Let’s say they spend $100: We take $30, and $70 goes to the tutor, which is higher than people taking a salary.
He went on to explain how much Kadama makes with this method:
We made about $10 million last year from the 30% commission. About 80% of that is gross profit, while the other 20% goes to servers, advertisements, and to create application improvements.
Once you have established that there is a market for your mobile application, it’s time to build a prototype.
While the costs of making an app have gone down, part of learning how to create an app is figuring out how to pay for it. Some of the common ways to fund an app are:
Be excited for nos. We got 70 nos before we got a yes. If we had stopped any earlier, we would have failed.
He went on to explain that app developers should be careful when talking with venture capitalists.
Venture capitalists will try to scrape you for their data. There’s no such thing as an NDA in this world. Be careful what information you give them because they may be just trying to compare what you do to what one of their investments is doing.
Creating an app can cost as little as $60 per month and your time, but when you hire a designer and developer the costs can go up dramatically. Amin told us:
We paid a contractor $3K to create the first version of the mobile app.While I (the writer) was working as the content writer for an Australian development firm, I was able to learn a lot about the app development process. Custom software design for fin-tech companies often runs between $9K and $100K per month between the original creation of the mobile app and the ongoing maintenance.
Mobile app development should start with brainstorming about a user interface, or what the customer sees when they use the mobile app. App makers normally create apps by starting with a wireframe, which is a two-dimensional illustration of a page’s interface. It shows your web page, app interface, or product layout.
Wireframes help programmers and designers think and communicate the structure of the software or website they’re building. These prototypes also help stakeholders or customers understand what each page of the user interface will look like.
There are three main types of wireframes, with increased detail:
A user interface is a front end and the navigational elements that a user can see. Meanwhile, the user experience includes both the UI and other aspects like whether transitions from screen to screen work well, speed of loading, and predictive text.
UX might also include decisions like whether to use dropdown, fill in the blank, or checkboxes to simplify filling out information in app stores.
This stage of the app creation process turns the wireframe into a more functional-looking UI, but it still won’t have all the elements of the backend that require a programmer for the app development process.
You’ll basically be making the app visually appealing with smooth transitions and logical interfaces. There are some differences in the user interface requirements when you create Android apps and iOS app development. At the onset, it’s important to know:
When you create apps, it is extremely important to follow the appropriate guides because 6% of app rejections are because they don’t follow the different app stores’ design guides.
Once upon a time, you had to hire a development company to design and build an app, create the system architecture, create your own servers, and build your databases. Fortunately, there are no-code app-building platforms that work similarly to free website builders.
Alternatively, you can use legacy app development strategies and host your app on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
Once you’ve chosen what platform to use, you just have to begin app development. This can be as easy as using one of the no-code platforms listed above or spending thousands of hours on custom development. The app development will include:
Once you’re done with app creation, you’ll need to test everything.
When you build your own app, you’ll need to do application testing. The application testing process follows the steps below:
You’ll need to perform this process for each of the operating systems before you submit your mobile app development project to the app stores, which we’ll discuss next.
Next, you’ll want to publish your app in each of the app stores. This part of the app development might be complicated for people who aren’t devs. An app builder will have to submit both iOS and Android apps to the respective stores for the operating systems.
Pro Tip: When many people create an app, they start with an Android app because the Google Play Store is not as difficult to get into as the Apple App Store.
After your app development is complete and approved by the app store, you’ll want to market the app. While Amin is in app development, he is keenly aware of how marketing contributes to creating a successful app.
Don’t be too married to an idea.The Kadama team markets their mobile app primarily on TikTok, which is what earned them a 30 Under 30 award. Amin explained:
You have to catch [viewers’] attention in three seconds. You have to add a twist that nobody has done before.
He went on to explain:
Research, post a video on social media that’s funny, and get them to download app.It’s not without trial and error, though. They wasted a lot of money on ads before figuring out how to go viral. Then they changed their strategy to focus on content creation and only boost the content that had already gone viral. Amin explained:
It gets easier once you get to one million TikTok videos in a month. We started doing five videos a day. We just kept hitting more and more. You see a snowball effect.
App development teams will have to submit information to the app store. Like other search engines, you can use app store optimization (ASO) to increase your app’s visibility, reach, and conversion rates. Some of the ways you can optimize your mobile app for ASO include:
ASO can cost up to $2,000 per month, and some ASO tools can cost more than $10,000 per year. Check out Velvetech’s reviews of some of the different tools.
Many companies offer free trials, but you need to be wary of them as an app maker. Amin explained:
Free trials take a big hit. Overnight, we lost $30,000 and had to figure out how to [deal with] it. We also discovered that the people who used the promo codes never planned to buy and the people who would buy don’t care about the promo codes. So, we spent $50,000 to $100,000 to learn that.
This is consistent with my experience using apps. When I test a web app, I make it a point to use the free trials. Because I’m normally testing them to give my opinion on them in a blog, I have no intent of buying them.
An app maker should be looking for ways to identify the parts of their audience that spends money and focus on what is important for them.
When you create an app, you’ll need to monitor both the performance of the app on operating systems and how well it is performing with your target audience.
Depending on mobile devices’ tracking policies, an app maker may be constrained by the amount of tracking allowed.
You’ll want to at least monitor:
Your data can be a key component when you develop an app. It can help you find new features and even turn your mobile app from a money pit to a profitable app. Amin explained:
We launched in 2020 and we were profitable in mid-2022. We weren’t profitable, and we had three months of earnings before we would lose funds. We increased the profitability by raising our commissions from 15% to 30%.
I literally called our 200 best-performing tutors and convinced 99 that it would be better because we could invest in features that would make them more money.
Anyone wondering how to make apps might be surprised that when you develop an app, that’s just the beginning of your app-building journey. You should expect to keep building continuously. Some reasons you’ll want to keep building when you create an app include:
Professional app developers understand all this, but many people new to app development are surprised at how often an app builder needs to update a web app to comply with the Apple and Android app development requirements.
At this point, you know how to create a mobile app, but there are differences in apps created for iOS, Microsoft, and Android devices. Let’s look at some of the differences that affect the entire development process.
the Apple logo and the Android robot etched on it" width="1200" height="800" />
There are two main ways to create an app that will work for both iOS and Android users:
Let’s look at how to make an iPhone app first.
You’ll want to spend a lot of time on Apple’s developer site when researching how to make iPhone apps. They recommend using the programming language Swift and the software tool Xcode . Check out their tutorials on each to learn how to create an app for iPhone.
Once you’ve completed the app-building process documented in the sections above, you’ll need to:
You might be wondering how to man an app for iPhone for free. Let’s find out if you can.
Sorry, everyone. Unless you already have a developer account, you can’t get into the Apple app store for free. It’s only $99 per year, but every app builder who wants to include their app design in the iPhone has to pay the fee even if you are building a free app.
Other than that fee, you can build your app for free if you have a server and the coding skills to be an app builder without hiring people.
To begin Android development, you’ll need to follow the process below:
Pro Tip: For a more in-depth walkthrough, learn how to create an app for Android in this tutorial .
After the Android application development is complete, you’ll need to:
You can learn more about how to make an app for Android on AppInventiv .
Like iOS, Android app developers also have to pay to list an app. It’s a $25 one-time fee for each app you add to the Google Play Store. That’s why so many people who start in mobile application development choose to go with Android before building an iPhone app. Just follow the steps in the previous section.
Google Play Store requires a $25 one-time fee, while Apple charges $99 a year for individual app developers or a $299-per-year fee for your development team.
There are numerous ways to validate app ideas. Some ways to validate your app ideas include:
Pro Tip: Check out some of the best ways of validating ideas .
The average time to develop a mobile app is six to nine months. The app design process will vary depending on the programming language, desired features, operating system, and skill of the development team. Expect the mobile app development timeline to look something like this:
You can use automated testing to improve the time for testing and ensure the code is free of errors. If you’re set on learning mobile app development yourself, know it could take two to three years of training before you are up to the level of an experienced app builder.
We’ve broken down a complex concept by taking inspiration from Kadama’s success. While I, the author, am not a developer, I recommend starting with a no-code app builder to get an understanding of how to develop an app, then when you get stuck, hire an app developer to take your project to the next level.
What’s your app idea, and how do you envision making it profitable?
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