· 6 years ago · Nov 18, 2019, 03:26 AM
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2 {
3 "content": "<p><em>From idea to app<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Isn’t it odd how you always seem to conceive cool ideas in the weirdest of places? When taking a shower, or when you were about to fall asleep, or right when you shut down your laptop to go to lunch.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s as if ideas have a mind of their own, hiding in plain sight until they decide it’s time to show their colors. I like that about ideas; it’d be boring if you could just tap into creativity whenever you wanted.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Speaking about creativity, what happens to all those great app ideas of yours? Let’s talk about that next: The Creative App Building Workflow. What happens <em>after<\/em> you’ve come up with a great idea?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"thecreativeappbuildingworkflow\">The Creative App Building Workflow<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>I came up with this workflow a couple years back and it’s based on every app I built in the past 7 years. It’s the best process to get from idea to app, without running the risk of missing a critical step. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Ready? This is it:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n<li><strong>Research and Ideation<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Validation<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Design<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Develop<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Publish<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n<p>Throughout the workflow you <em>do the marketing<\/em>. It’s incredibly important! Oh, and once you reach step five you continue with step one – <strong>iteration<\/strong>. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/app_process_flowchart.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>\r\n\r\n<p>Let’s look at the steps, one by one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"1.researchingandideatinggreatideas\">1. Researching and Ideating Great Ideas<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Ideation<\/em> is just a fancy name for coming up with ideas. Often, the ideas you come up with are not very polished, like raw diamonds. Those ideas need to diverge and converge, you need to combine them with other ideas to make them great. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Perhaps you’ve got an idea for a novel app, but turn that into a successful business you need to combine it with more traditional thinking. Ideation, divergent thinking and consolidating your idea – onto a single napkin – can help you with that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Did you get stuck with an idea? Take a walk, get a coffee, sleep on it. You can’t plan creativity.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Research<\/em> is what you do after you’ve defined your idea. I like to think of research as a way to save time, to cheat, to cut corners. What’s already out there that you can copy, steal, or borrow? The greatest ideas aren’t necessarily the most novel or revolutionary, they often combine old things in new ways or new things in old ways.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Here’s some possible research questions:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Who is going to build this app? Do we have a coder and a designer? Where can we find ’em?<\/li>\r\n<li>What UI Kits, app templates, packages, libraries, open-source code can you use to build your app?<\/li>\r\n<li>Who are your potential competitors? What are they doing wrong? Improve upon it. What are they doing right? Copy that.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<p>Now that you’ve properly researched your idea, what’s next?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"validation:whowantstopayforthis\">Validation: Who Wants To Pay For This!?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Forgive me for sounding like a broken record: <em>You should validate your business ideas!<\/em> I know, I know, it’s much more awesome to indulge yourself in playing startup and build the Next Big Thing, but… it’s all in vain if no one wants to buy what you’re selling. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Validation<\/em> is the process of proving your business has potential for profitability. You find out whether people want to buy what you’re about to build, before you build it. Said differently, when you validate you’re trying to make your business fail as soon as possible, so you can move on to the next greater idea.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Strategies for validation:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Get out on the street with screenshots of your app, show it to random strangers, and ask if they want to buy the app for $ 1.99. Crazy, right?<\/li>\r\n<li>Talk to your greatest enemies. Don’t ask for feedback from friends, because they’re more likely to tell you your idea rocks just because they like you. Your enemies, on the other hand, will want to drag your idea through the dirt.<\/li>\r\n<li>Create a quick web-based sales page with <a href=\"http:\/\/strikingly.com\/\">Strikingly<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leadpages.net\/\">LeadPages<\/a> and send some traffic to it. Give visitors the option to buy or sign up, which puts them on an email list. When they “buy”, simply tell them you’re working on your app and ask them to become a beta member. You now have a direct line with a potential customer, so make sure you make good use of that by asking for feedback.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<p>So many want-to-be entrepreneurs and app makers spend six months in their ivory towers refining their app, only to find out no one wants it. It’s not entrepreneurship if you don’t come out that ivory tower, into the real world, and get real uncomfortable and <em>try to fail<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>OK, now that customers want what you’re building, it is time for…<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"design:makeitpretty\">Design: Make It Pretty<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Design serves a purpose: it gets apps from good to great. User interface design, graphic design, motion design, are all sides of the same coin: improving the user experience and usability of an app.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Users take design seriously. With the switch from iOS 6 to 7, some time back, that became very tangible. Apple switched to “flat design”, an emerging trend, and suddenly all old iOS 6-styled apps looked old, ugly and outdated. It became a way for new up-and-coming apps to differentiate themselves from the crowd and the established apps got a wake-up call: app design matters.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Where do you start with your app design? I’m a fan of using design kits and templates to offset the time it takes to come up with an original design. Especially if you’re bootstrapping your app you will have a future opportunity to re-do your design, so take that smartcut now. My favourite design kits: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sketchappsources.com\/free-source\/1794-stitch-ui-kit-sketch-freebie-resource.html\">Stitch<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baianat.com\/resources\/stark\/\">Stark<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.invisionapp.com\/now\">NOW<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In any case, make sure you’ve built a basic <em>mockup<\/em> of your app. It’s nothing more than a rough sketch, but it’s incredibly important to get the fundamentals right before you apply the design-sauce. An app I use (almost) daily is <a href=\"https:\/\/balsamiq.com\/products\/mockups\/\">Balsamiq Mockups<\/a>. They’ve got a great “Linking” feature, which allows you to add rudimentary interactions to your mockup as if it were a real app.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Ready for the real deal? Choose from a wide range of designers, of all shapes and sizes, from project board websites like <a href=\"http:\/\/upwork.com\/\">Upwork.com<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freelancer.com\/\">Freelancer.com<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Done that? Continue with developing your app in the next step.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"develop:makeitwork\">Develop: Make It Work<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The next step is the most obvious one: build the app. Most app makers skip right ahead and start developing their app the minute they come up with the idea. Although development is an important step in The Creative App Building Workflow, it’s not the only step.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Building your app means you either have to get your hands dirty yourself or hire a developer to build the app for you. Just like with your app’s design, you can have great successes with hiring freelancers from Upwork or Freelancer.com.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>When building your app it’s important to keep your minimum viable product in mind. What’s version 1.0 of your app? What’s version 2.0? Start with the features for 1.0 and make sure you don’t add any more features once you’ve decided on the basics of your app. That’s feature-creep: adding more and more features to your app. It’s a great way to never finish building your app…<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Check out these awesome tools and products that speed up the development timeline of your app: <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/xcode\/\">Xcode<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/xcode\/interface-builder\/\">Interface Builder<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/swift\/\">Swift<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/balsamiq.com\/products\/mockups\/\">Balsamiq Mockups<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sketchapp.com\/\">Sketch<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/fastlane.tools\/\">Fastlane<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swifttoolbox.io\/\">Swift Toolbox<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paintcodeapp.com\/\">PaintCode<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ParsePlatform\/parse-server\">Parse Server<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Building an app can be tough, but it’s all worth it when you’ve finally release your creation into the world. It’s time to publish!<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"publish:maketheworldmoreawesome\">Publish: Make The World More Awesome<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>OH YEAH! You’ve made it. Your app is ready, your customers are dying to get their hands on it, and you’ve got enough future features lined up to go from ninja warrior app to ninja-warrior-with-laser-machine-guns-riding-dinosaurs app (i.e., 1.0 to 2.0…).<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>JUST DO IT!<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Get your app out there. Upload it to the App Store and see what happens. Obviously, this step in the process is the shortest. What’s so important about publishing this step makes up one-fifth of the workflow?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Feedback and iteration<\/strong>. Use your published app to get in touch with new and existing customers. You can use ordinary email or fancy solutions like in-app messaging centers like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intercom.io\/\">Intercom<\/a>. Make data-driven decisions by implementing features like analytics and behavior tracking. You can get as detailed and nitty-gritty as you want, or just ask a simple question: “How do you use what we’ve built?”<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Try not to ask yes-no questions when asking for feedback. Just a “yes” or a “no” is too shallow a data point, you want to get to the core of the issue. Do people like what you’ve built? Why not? How do they use your app? More often than not I’ve seen uses of my apps I never designed or intended. It’s up to you to find out and adapt.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Adaption is what you find in <em>iteration<\/em>. It’s the last step of the process, to go back to where you begun with the knowledge and expertise you gained from the entire workflow. Rebuild your app, if you want, or simply make small pivots and changes. As all the greats will tell you: iteration is the key to becoming greater.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Speaking about becoming greater, you know what’s awesome? Marketing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 id=\"thewildcard:continuousmarketing\">The Wildcard: Continuous Marketing<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>I like to think about marketing as an engineer. What can I build to win the hearts and persuade the minds of customers? Great sales pitches, compelling landing pages, carefully crafted content, it’s all <em>engineering<\/em>. An engineer takes raw material and works on it like a craftsman, refining characteristics until it’s ready. Marketers and engineers are more alike than you think.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The entire workflow, up to this point, has been about engineering. Ideation, design, building, incorporating feedback – an engineers job. Marketing should be no different and it should be iterated, just like every other step in this workflow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Marketing should be weaved through the engineering process.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>When you’re thinking about features to add to your app, you’re thinking about what benefit the feature could have for your customers. When you’re designing your app you’re thinking about ways to add sharing and virality to it, so the utility of your app can spread to the people who might need it. Even when you’re asking for feedback, you’re increasing the exposure your app gets from new customers. We all want to see great apps succeed, so we talk about them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Ways you can engineer marketing:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Think of sales funnels as a well-oiled machine. The machine has several cogs that turn. Your car is able to drive up a hill and speed up on the highway thanks to an ingenious machine called a <em>gearbox<\/em>. A sales funnel is like a gearbox. What steps can you take to amplify the effect of your sales funnel gearbox?<\/li>\r\n<li>Viral growth is a great driver of success. It simply means you tell your friend about an app, and your friends tells two of his friend, and they tell two friends, and so on. What features can you build in your app that facilitate and encourage sharing?<\/li>\r\n<li>A good sales pitch taps into a conversation that’s already happening in the head of a customer. With todays technology in social media, e-commerce and advertising a lot of conversations are happening. How can you use tools like Twitter, Facebook, forums, etcetera, to chime in on the conversation?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<p>The Creative App Building Workflow can help you get out of the idea phase and enter the production phase of your app, ultimately with a great end result. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s awesome to see your ideas, your vision, come to life. Apply a continuous marketing effort and focus on research, validation, design, development to ultimately publish your app.<\/p>",
4 "tags": [
5
6 ],
7 "id": 919,
8 "thumbnail": "https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/app_process_flowchart_featured_image.jpg",
9 "excerpt": "Let's make a plan: The Creative App Building Workflow. What happens after you've come up with a great idea?",
10 "permalink": "https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/the-creative-app-building-workflow\/",
11 "author": "Reinder de Vries",
12 "date": "2016-04-27 15:24:34",
13 "title": "The Creative App Building Workflow",
14 "categories": [
15 "Guide"
16 ]
17 },
18 {
19 "content": "A while back I got a phone call from someone with an app idea. He had looked me up online, saw that I built iPhone apps for a living, and called me up to pitch his app idea.\r\n\r\nThe conversation went something like this: \u201cYes, hello, this is Zaphod [1]. I\u2019ve got an idea for an app and I need your help.\u201d\r\n\r\nOK, let\u2019s hear it then, I said. What was he working on? Zaphod replies: \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking: It\u2019s very annoying when you go over your country\u2019s border and still get charged for mobile internet, because you forgot to switch off mobile data on your phone. My idea is an app that switches off your internet when you cross the country border.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe continues: \u201cI think it\u2019s a great idea because it doesn\u2019t exist yet. Can you build such an app for me?\u201d\r\n\r\nI explain to him that his app idea already exists, it\u2019s built into the Settings app of the iPhone, and that it\u2019s probably not a great idea to build an app for it. Even if it truly doesn\u2019t exist yet, I continue, it\u2019s not worth it to pursue unless we would prove this is a real issue for smartphone users.\r\n\r\nOn multiple occasions, people come to me with an idea for the next big thing. Every single one of them claimed their idea was great, because it didn\u2019t exist yet.\r\n\r\nIn this blog I would like to debunk the myth that great ideas must be unique \u2013 they don\u2019t have to be.\r\n\r\n[clickToTweet tweet=\"Great ideas don't have to be unique\" quote=\"Great ideas don't have to be unique\"]\r\n<h2 id=\"greatideasarentuniquetheysolveaproblem\">Great Ideas Aren\u2019t Unique,\r\nThey Solve A Problem<\/h2>\r\nLet\u2019s talk about <em>invention<\/em>. Inventors like you and me, and inventors like Elon Musk, Nikola Tesla and Steve Jobs have one thing in common: we hunt for problems, and we live to solve them.\r\n\r\nSolving problems, as seemingly lackluster it may sound, is the pinnacle of an inventors work. Add a little salesmanship into the mix and you\u2019re an <em>entrepreneur<\/em>, able of both inventing and making sure your inventions spawn profitable businesses.\r\n\r\nI think inventors are awesome!\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, from the outside it kinda looks like inventors make great ideas appear magically from a black hat. As an outsider you don\u2019t see what\u2019s going on inside the black hat.\r\n\r\nYou only see an invention, a product, that didn\u2019t exist before. You see people want to buy it, therefore, you think that people will want to buy stuff that didn\u2019t exist before. <em>Uniqueness!<\/em>\r\n\r\nSo what are inventions then? They\u2019re <em>solved problems<\/em>. Often, great inventions are based on a <em>secret<\/em>.\r\n<blockquote>You think of inventions as things that haven\u2019t been invented yet, when in fact, an invention is just a clever (not even new) way of solving a problem.<\/blockquote>\r\nUnique ideas are elusive, got it. But if your idea is truly unique, why shouldn\u2019t you pursue it? Because\u2026\r\n<h2 id=\"uniqueideasdonthavecompetitionorsotheywantyoutobelieve\">Unique Ideas Don\u2019t Have Competition\r\n(Or So They Want You To Believe)<\/h2>\r\nUnique ideas don\u2019t have competition. Awesome, right? You should build your unique app idea as soon as possible, before any competitors enter the market.\r\n\r\nFirst-mover advantage isn\u2019t always a great thing.\r\n\r\nElectricity existed long before Edison found a way to bring it to your home. First-mover advantage proved a real challenge for him: the average person didn\u2019t know electricity, didn\u2019t know how to handle it, and frankly, got around fine with oil lamps.\r\n\r\n<img style=\"width: 500px;\" src=\"https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/spork_patent.png\" alt=\"Spork: novel utensil or over-engineered feat?\" \/>\r\n\r\nImagine your app is as unique as a \u201cspork\u201d (a spoon + fork) and you need to teach people how to use it. Instead of simply marketing your app to an audience, you now have to educate them too, because your idea is <em>so<\/em> unique.\r\n\r\nThe great thing about competition is that the marketing message of your competitor educates your audience too. It\u2019s especially helpful when your audience needs more information before they can buy your solution. As a first-mover, the absence of competition can be a disadvantage.\r\n\r\nUnique ideas have another downside. Inventors of unique ideas rarely research the ways a prospect customer is <em>currently<\/em> solving the problem the inventor is making a solution for. Let me explain.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s say you\u2019re making a prototyping tool, a fancy user interface you can use to create mockups of an iPhone app. Back in 2011 I had the idea to combine such a tool with the ability to work on the same design together with multiple people.\r\n\r\nI tried to market it for creative professionals and I thought it was a truly novel invention, something that didn\u2019t exist yet. The problem I wanted to solve was not being able to work on a prototype design or mockup together with colleagues or co-founders.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, I failed to successfully launch the app, because I didn\u2019t do enough research into finding out how my target audience was currently solving the problem I intended to solve. As a prototyping tool your competition isn\u2019t the next best prototyping tool, it\u2019s <em>pen and paper<\/em>!\r\n\r\nLater on, prospect customers I chatted with told me they would share their designs via Dropbox, or via Facebook Groups, or even via email. Their makeshift solutions weren\u2019t great, but they <em>worked<\/em>.\r\n\r\nAs the inventor of a tool that didn\u2019t exist yet I failed to realize there were already solutions out there, solving the problem I wanted to solve. My app was unique, but not as a solution, and the real competitors turned out to be pen and paper, Dropbox, and Facebook Groups. Uniqueness had clouded my judgement.\r\n\r\n[clickToTweet tweet=\"Inventions are not unique, just clever ways of solving a problem\" quote=\"Inventions are not unique, just clever ways of solving a problem\"]\r\n<h2 id=\"uniqueideasarelikethatcatyoucantcatch\">Unique Ideas Are Like That Cat You Can\u2019t Catch<\/h2>\r\nAre all apps already invented? The App Store has millions of apps, and even though many of them are copies of Flappy Bird, I\u2019m starting to think we\u2019ve run out of unique ideas.\r\n\r\nHaving said that, I haven\u2019t found an app yet that tells me in the morning what emails I should reply to. Also, I\u2019m still looking for an app that can plan my route with public transport based on my calendar entries. Yeah, and what about that brain-computer interface app from <em>\u201cHer\u201d<\/em> [2]?\r\n\r\nIn the book <em>Zero to One<\/em> Peter Thiel [3] explains how great ideas are based on <em>secrets<\/em>. Secrets are all around us, hiding in plain sight. To give an example:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Elon Musk figured out how to build an affordable electric car. Cars, electric cars, battery technology \u2013 it all existed already.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Bill Gates figured out how to put easy-to-use computing power into the hands of ordinary consumers (without building a single PC!). Computers, software, operating systems, it all existed already.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Commercial spaceflight is still a secret. We already have rockets, launch pads, and so on. Doing it affordably? One big secret.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nUnique ideas are hard to find, because they\u2019re elusive. I\u2019m doubting whether uniqueness still exist and I\u2019m sure that when I find it, I don\u2019t want it anymore. It\u2019s much easier to go look for secrets, increasingly harder challenges, and solve those.\r\n<h2 id=\"sowhatnow\">So, What Now!?<\/h2>\r\nTrue great ideas are solutions to problems, as ubiquitous as bottled water and as tough to crack as commercial spaceflight. Don\u2019t focus on finding unique ideas, because:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>The fact that it doesn\u2019t exist yet doesn\u2019t make it a great idea<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Unique ideas have no competition and that\u2019s a disadvantage<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Unique ideas often have competition from an unexpected angle<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Unique ideas are hard to find! Look for secrets instead<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nSo, what\u2019s next then? Focus on an idea that solves a problem, then find customers willing to pay for the solution to their problem!\r\n\r\n[1]. Zaphod is not his real name, of course, but I\u2019m sure <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy\">he brought his towel<\/a>.\r\n[2]. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1798709\/\">\u201cHer\u201d (2013)<\/a>\r\n[3]. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future\/dp\/0804139296\">Zero to One, by Peter Thiel on Amazon.com<\/a>",
20 "tags": [
21
22 ],
23 "id": 917,
24 "thumbnail": "https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/unique_ideas.jpg",
25 "excerpt": "Does your app idea need to be unique to be successful? On the hunt for the next big app, we're overestimating the importance of uniqueness. Unique ideas are BS, but don't agree with me just yet... See for yourself!",
26 "permalink": "https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/3-reasons-your-next-app-idea-shouldnt-be-unique\/",
27 "author": "Reinder de Vries",
28 "date": "2016-04-20 00:00:10",
29 "title": "3 Reasons Your Next App Idea Shouldn't Be Unique",
30 "categories": [
31 "Guide",
32 "Marketing"
33 ]
34 },
35 {
36 "content": "<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/stelabouras\">Stelios Petrakis<\/a>, an app maker from Thessaloniki, Greece, tells the incredible story of how Linkpack came to be. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Since starting out as a “scratch your own itch” app, their app has reached the front page of Hacker News, got a ton of upvotes on Product Hunt and was featured by several major media outlets.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Is that why Stelios and co-founder <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/petrakeas\">Petros<\/a> jump out of bed in the morning, inspired to get to work? No. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Read on to find out what motivates the founders of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.evilwindowdog.com\/\">Evil Window Dog<\/a> to do what they do.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkpack.io\/\">Linkpack<\/a> is an app to save web links for later. You can save, read and share your links with their iPhone app or the Chrome extension (and soon Safari). Saved links are stored right on your computer, and synced to your devices via Dropbox. <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/linkpack\/id953813916?mt=8\">Download and install Linkpack via the App Store<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure>\r\n<img src=\"https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/linkpack.jpg\" alt=\"Linkpack\" \/>\r\n<figcaption>Linkpack<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>How did you get started with Linkpack?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nI was a really heavy Instapaper user; I was saving all the articles there. Just looking at the list of articles was quite overwhelming, so I struggled to organize them all.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>So I started just drag-and-dropping URLs from my browser to my desktop. If you drag and drop a URL from your browser to you desktop, it creates a file. I organized those links into folders to keep them grouped into thematic categories. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then, I wanted to access them anywhere, so I placed the folders in my Dropbox account. Soon I realized that there was no easy way of reading those links from my iPhone, and that’s how Linkpack came to be.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Back then, did you know any other people that worked like this?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nActually no, I thought I was the only one who was doing this weird url-into-files kind of thing. I initially created the Linkpack app for myself back in the summer of 2013. Its development was going slowly because we had another project in the works, Horizon, which we launched in 2014.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>With Horizon’s launch, the Linkpack project was shelved so we could update and maintain Horizon. Last summer I started working on Linkpack again and we have decided to release it in January 2016.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Who is we? Do you work together with a team or co-founder?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nRight now, we are a company of two people, me and my co-founder Petros Douvantzis, called Evil Window Dog, and we’ve already created four mobile apps. Our main focus is creating apps for ourselves that try to solve an every day need, like shooting always horizontal videos (Horizon), finding the anagrams (Anagramma) or organizing your links (Linkpack).<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>I want to add that for the Linkpack project we had a friend, Stavros Korokythakis, helping us with the server development.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Do you have any plans to monetize the Linkpack app?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nRight now, the app uses the freemium model. You can download Linkpack for free and if you want pro functionality, like reading progress, narration and a few extra features, you can purchase a $1.99 upgrade to unlock this mode.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>This doesn\u2019t actually mean that this will remain the revenue model of the app in the future. We keep experimenting with things and based on the features we’ll add in the future, the revenue model might change.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Do you have a way to keep in touch with the users and the customers of your app?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nYes. The app features an email form that allows users to send us feedback. Most of the users actually used it in the beta to report features and improvements. We use those reports to create a backlog of things that we want to build for the next updates. There\u2019s a lot of work to be done there, and we are really excited about what’s coming.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>What kind of marketing effort did you do in recent months, to get downloads for the app?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nI can\u2019t say that we run an aggressive marketing to be honest. We had a beta running for quite some time, where users were able to apply via our website and we managed to get Linkpack featured on BetaList which drove a large number of users to our website, and resulted in a pretty significant number of users wanting to know when the app was released. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>When the app was launched, we emailed a lot of journalists and issued a press release. The app got featured on LifeHacker and on some other international sites. Most of the traffic though came through Product Hunt and Hacker News.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>What is the toughest problem you had to crack in terms of development, marketing and operations?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nThe toughest problem about Linkpack was working with the Dropbox SDK. Right now we are supporting one cloud provider and that\u2019s Dropbox. Having this one cloud provider was well…weird, because at some point last year Dropbox announced that it would change a lot of APIs that we were using.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>So although we had to make some sacrifices at some point, everything was working alright in the end.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Choosing to work with Dropbox was a really organic decision. As I have said it all started when I begun saving links on my computer as files. Moving those files to Dropbox let me access then from anywhere. But when I was on the move and wanted to read my saved articles, I couldn’t just use the Dropbox app for iPhone. So, I decided to make a prototype, and when that was working, I added more and more features like reading progress and Readability [distraction-free reading, ed.].<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It organically grew into something that right now is Linkpack. It wasn\u2019t like \u201cLet\u2019s do this project, with such and such features" kind of thing. The features were being organically discovered as the application grew.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>A word of advice though: It is better not to base your whole company’s business logic on just one third party API, that might close down or change in the future. On most cases you can\u2019t do anything about it. When Dropbox changes its API, or Facebook does the same thing, and you have developed an app based on those APIs, then as a developer you will find yourself in a really difficult position.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Speaking about Hacker News, how did you get on the front page of Hacker News?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nI really don\u2019t know what the algorithm is to get to the front page of Hacker News! It wasn\u2019t my first post on Hacker News, I do post links from time to time, for personal projects or for news but it is really hard to predict when you\u2019re getting to the front page. I don\u2019t have a clue on why it was picked up, but it drove a lot of traffic. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>A large number of users who read our post from Hacker News are also users that are willing to download and try new stuff, know how Dropbox works and they probably used a reader service in the past. The amount of conversions we had thanks to being featured was really high. Based on the statistics that Apple provides us, almost 50% of the people who viewed the App Store page downloaded the app, and that’s really great.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>What’s your advice for aspiring app makers?<\/strong><br\/>\r\nIf you are a beginner app maker, I think, your focus must always be to ship something. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>You may have the one billion dollar idea in your head, but unless you release it in the world and receive real feedback on what you have built, it’s not worth anything in my opinion. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Three things I keep in mind working on a project is build, ship and iterate. You build something, you ship it, you get feedback and then you go back to build and ship a new update, then build, ship and iterate again.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to release mediocre quality products. Unfortunately, in the way App Store works, with reviews and a star-based rating system, it’s really easy for your app to fall behind if it doesn’t provide an acceptable user experience. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>My advice would be to always also focus on user experience. Make it so simple, but so powerful, so the users can make sense of your UI without having to think twice about why certain elements exist or operate the way they do.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s easy to think, from an outside perspective, that app development is really cool and it’s probably easy money. The reality is that you have to work really hard and most of the time it isn’t so rewarding financially, because you can’t expect your app to be the next Instagram.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The way the press works is that they typically cover those successes and create the illusion that it’s really easy to take the first place on the App Store. It requires a lot of hard work. <\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>App making doesn’t always mean creating apps for yourself. There are all these companies looking for contractors or creators to create apps for their needs. There’s money to be made there. If you have the willpower to create apps, and you know that people might use them daily and their lives might get affected by them, I think that’s something that you must do. That’s how I’m waking up every morning, because I think that apps might change the way people live and think.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s very rewarding to have built an app that is installed on the device of someone that’s across the globe, and he’s happy with it!<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure>\r\n<img src=\"https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/steliospetros-2.jpg\" alt=\"Evil Window Dog founders, Stelios Petrakis and Petros Douvantzis\" \/>\r\n<figcaption>Evil Window Dog founders, Stelios Petrakis and Petros Douvantzis<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>",
37 "tags": [
38
39 ],
40 "id": 908,
41 "thumbnail": "https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/linkpack.jpg",
42 "excerpt": "Stelios and Petros, app makers from Greece, tell the incredible story of how Linkpack came to be. Since starting out the app has reached the front page of Hacker News, got a ton of upvotes on Product Hunt and was featured by several major media outlets. Read on to find out what motivates the founders of Evil Window Dog to do what they do.",
43 "permalink": "https:\/\/learnappmaking.com\/app-success-how-linkpack-got-to-the-front-page-of-hacker-news\/",
44 "author": "Reinder de Vries",
45 "date": "2016-03-08 20:20:32",
46 "title": "App Success: How Linkpack Got to the Front Page of Hacker News",
47 "categories": [
48 "App Success",
49 "Stories"
50 ]
51 }
52]