This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What's up my friends? I'm so glad you're here. This is Chris Guillebeau your host of Sodasville School. All year long, 2020, this is the year of interaction, taking questions, attempting to give some sort of answer, but also hearing updates from our listeners who are starting projects, doing all kinds of fun stuff all across the United States, Canada, North America, and beyond. We've got a worldwide audience of just wonderful people out there.
And I'm fortunate to make this show. So thank you. That's all I had to say by wave introduction. Just wanted to say thank you for listening. All right, today's listener wants to make an app, but needs some help knowing where to start.
I'm gonna give him three different paths to consider, none of which involve becoming a programmer. I'll also point out something that most non-technical people totally forget about when it comes to making an app or otherwise doing something that requires specific coding skills. I've seen this problem crop up time and time again, and it makes sense that someone might overlook it, but it's really important not to. So if you're interested in making an app or otherwise doing something high-tech and you're not a technical person, which I'm not really either, then you might want to listen to this answer. All right, let's jump in.
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Hi, Chris. This is Mark Wilkins from Dallas, Texas. And I've been listening to the show since episode one. I'm thinking about starting a side hustle to create a smartphone app. Do you have any tips for how to put together a development team and funding?
I'm concerned about sharing the idea with others because that's all it is, an idea that could be used to create a competing product. Can't wait to hear from you, and thanks very much. [Music]
Mark, what's up? Thank you so much for listening. Dallas, Texas is definitely going to be on my list for the spring tour coming in just, well, what is it, two months or so?
I can't believe it. I'll have to go back and do some work on that as soon as I finish recording this answer. All right, so a lot of stuff to talk about here. Let's assume first that Mark is not a developer. Otherwise, he might already know what to do, and his next steps would likely be quite different.
And that's because the best answer isn't, Mark, go and study programming for four years. Go get a degree in software engineering or whatever. Like, obviously, that's not the best approach. Most likely in this case, Mark is the one with a good idea. Let's assume further, since we're making assumptions, that it is a good idea.
It's a great idea. And he needs help bringing his vision to life. So at this point, he has a few options. And by the way, Mark, I know you also ask about your concern of sharing the idea, because it could be used to create a competing product. I don't want to say that's not a valid concern.
I just tend to think that the much greater concern is, how are you actually going to make this product? How are you going to make this app? Because right now, no one has made it. So technically, if you talk to people about the product, you could ask them to sign an NDA beforehand. But I think for a lot of stuff, unless you are sitting on a truly billion-dollar idea or whatever, I don't think you need to worry about that.
So let's focus on this practical aspect of, how do you bring this vision to life? So Mark's got three options here. First of all, he could outsource. And this might be the simplest option. He goes to upwork.com.
He goes to fiverr.com, maybe even somewhere like Craigslist, or maybe a local university, or some other source. If he's in a different part of the world, not in Texas, there could be some different networks. But upwork.com is usually where I send people first in this situation. And there, he could hire someone to help him with the technical part of the app making. That's option number one.
Option number two, he could partner up. He mentioned something about looking for a team. So in this case, he brings his idea to a developer who is in search of an idea. And then they team up and go on to make millions, let's say, which is not totally unheard of. It does happen.
Here's an example, episode 627. I really like this story about a rehearsal app for actors that earns half a million dollars. And that was a while back. So maybe by now, it's actually a million or more. If you wanted to learn the backstory of that one, again, it's episode 627.
Now the third option is private label, which is a bit like outsourcing. But instead of a completely customizable solution, where he's hiring a developer to build this app from scratch, he chooses a company or a platform that allows you to use an existing app template, essentially, or a shell to make his own. There's a number of companies that do this now. I'm going to link a couple of them up in the show notes page. On the one hand, this doesn't sound great, because he may have to accept some constraints and limitations that don't allow his app to be as great as it could be.
On the other hand, it's going to be a lot cheaper, first of all, and it might be easier as well. Finally, here's the thing, what I alluded to in the introduction-- very important concern that non-technical people tend to forget about when it comes to making apps. Let's imagine that Mark is able to contract out the app making. He doesn't need funding because he's able to bootstrap it, and the app works exactly as he hoped, so everything is great. And he pays the person or agency who made it.
He lists it on the App Store or the Google Store, and he sits back to count his money as sales and subscriptions come in. So far, so good. But then, just a few days later, Apple releases an important update to its operating system, and millions of iPhone users begin migrating to the new iOS. They don't all do so at once, right? Because sometimes you hear that you have to update your phone, and you wait a few days, or you wait a few weeks or months before you do it.
So for a while, if you're supporting this app, you have a lot of users on the older system, as well as some on the new. And it just so happens in our scenario here that something about Mark's amazing app doesn't work with the new update. Ruh-roh. You can probably tell where I'm going here, because if you've got a smartphone, you're probably used to your apps being updated constantly. And sometimes it's because there are improvements and lots of new good stuff, but often it's because something isn't working.
Something stops working. Something doesn't work with the system update. Some other problem or bug or hack. OK, so the point is, building the app isn't the only development issue you need to think about. That's why it might not be the best idea to contract your app building to somebody who basically then disappears when the job is done.
You want to think about the whole process, not just the development, but also the long-term support. All right, I know that was a lot there, but I wanted to make sure I got Mark a good answer. So Mark, let us know what happens. And listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're going to be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects.
This one was episode 1148. I hope you do one thing today to get closer to a goal you believe in. Then come back tomorrow as well. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. from the Onward Project.
