You’re Brilliant!
Having an amazing idea for an app is fun! You’re going through your daily life, and you realise hey, you should make a to-do app to help you list out all the stuff you want to do.
That’s awesome. You’re not gonna make much money with that though. Not with Android, and not unless you’re lucky (pretty confusing statements there).
You see, the ideas you have are really good. Everyone could use a todo app (heck even I am in the midst of making such an app).
The real issue here is how are you, as a small (most likely a 1 person army) going to compete against the monster big names? They are evil I tell you! Can you compete against Evernote or one of the bigger todo list maker?
Well, seriously, you CAN! You’ll need a pinch of luck, an ounce of socializing, a bucket of marketing, and maybe, just maybe a little pocketful of money!
Shoot them small…
What you can, and should do, instead is make or find a niche. You’ve got a brilliant idea, now make it brilliant-er! (I should trademark this!)
The idea that you can get a focused app would have lots of benefits:
– It helps you make a smaller and simpler app (the dismay of a failed app wont be too bad…)
– You will have people who have just that specific needs
– You can make 1 app into many niches (this is the where the money really is made!)
– Hmm, there was this other thing…
What do you do?
Back to our sample of todo apps. Here are some niche ideas:
– A shopping list – have special offers showing in the app, recommend good pricing options, highlight when a user is having an unhealthy item on their list
-A work list – list with multi-level options, such as a reminder when a deadline is near, an option to keep track of the time spent on each task, contact details and syncing with calendars
-A blog tips list – Useful for bloggers, you write in a list of TOC for your blog, or some tips that you get while you’re in a train, and upon clicking each item, you are presented with a big text input area to write in your content, option to email the blog entry or to post to your favourite blogging site
-A child immunization schedule – key in all your kids details, and their immunization schedule could be auto presented (based on date of birth), and users are allowed to modify the dates, with a reminder feature via alarm, sms and email (twitter too if you please) (heck throw in Facebook too while you’re at it!)
-ToRead list – a list of books that you want to read, and from this, work out some recommendation for users to get related books, give links to your amazon affiliate links so that when they buy the books, you get some revenue!
Steal them please! I beg you!!
You see, the above list has a standard core to it, you just need to make a todo list once, and you can then fine tune the app and release multiple different apps. Besides getting a niche app you now have multiple apps, which give you more exposure to more people to get more money to spend me!
Don’t just stop there though, make more of everything. You just need to niche it!
Till the next time…
Sayonara (hey I just niched the goodbye!)
