Why You Will Lose Money on Mobile Apps

The average person spends 5.4 hours a day on their phone.

It has never been like that before.

And when you have the attention of your customers, you can do a lot.

You can deliver information about your products.

You can know your customers better.

You can upsell.

There are enormous variations of how businesses can use the attention of the customer.

That’s why Mobile Apps is a common goal and product focus for new and aspiring entrepreneurs.

But it is also the most competitive time.

There are more than 2 200 000 Apps in the AppStore. And even more in Google Play – more than 2 700 000 Apps.

So, when you release the new App, it is one of 2 million.

The result?

9,999 in 10,000 Mobile Apps will fail.

And it is not just scaremongering. It is statistics. According to Gartner, less than 0.01 percent of all consumer mobile apps will become financially successful throughout 2019.

When you see such figures, you immediately know there is the risk. It makes sense – 9999 out of 10 000 startups do not survive.

But the conclusion people make is strange – “one must be able to take the risk.”

Or “just take the risk.”

That is “let me jump from the fifth floor, suddenly I will survive” or “let me do this thing – suddenly it will fly up,” or “nobody could do it, I can do it.”

That’s why people are losing money on mobile apps.

Everyone does the same steps that sound quite logical:

1. Get an idea
2. Make the function list/specs/mockups
3. Hire mobile developers or a development studio
4. Get a prototype or MVP
5. Show Prototype/MVP to the partners/investors and receive good feedback
6. Finish app and get it to the AppStore and Google Play
7. Put money in advertising promoting your mobile app

Done! Money is lost.

You may ask why?

On every step, there is its reason why. But there is one root cause.

Everyone does the same — all these 9 999 companies for every 10 000.

Just take in mind – that 5.4 hours a day are already occupied.

Meaning there is no more time left for your app. Unless it makes sense for the user to switch from the current tasks to your app.

Then instead of “just take the risk,” it will be much more efficient to learn how to work with uncertainty on every step.

Then instead of “just let’s make the Mobile App,” it will be much more efficient to learn how to work with uncertainty:

• We are not sure whether our excellent idea is a real need
• We are not sure whether the users will accept our solution for the demand we already verified.
• We are not sure whether our new solution that users generally accepted will be able to replace something people doing already. In other words, replace the old product(s), just as the car replaced the horse.

These are specific, right questions on which you can work with to be in those leading 0.01%.

When the question is specific, you can do a step to test a particular concept. Then there are quite good chances, within several steps, that you will be in the lead.

Adventurers are at risk.

Successful entrepreneurs test concepts.

When testing concepts, you can know at the right time that the concept did not work and move to the next one. Or modify the idea then and there.

Applying a proper step-by-step approach allows you to search and find a working business model for your app without spending enormous costs.

So successful Mobile Apps are not about risk.

Successful Mobile Apps are about the ability to test concepts quickly and with a reasonable budget.

That’s precisely the reason why we, as a mobile consulting company, never begin a Mobile App with a discussion of the technical features.

At the first stage, we work with the Mobile App’s business model.

If the business model is not formulated, at least as a concept, we will not start.

By business model, we mean quite a simple thing: understanding if a Mobile App can occupy any part of the market. We want to know if the user is likely to switch his phone time to that Mobile App.

Most companies, instead of that understanding, have just a set of functions and features.

But then we don’t start the project at all.

We do it for a selfish reason – for us, it is not interesting to develop a project that is likely to die soon after launch.

And that’s why we work with Mobile Apps in a different way than ordinary development company does.

We spend quite a large part of our time drawing a business model (fortunately here we have one of the best expertise on the market). After that, we check the outcoming business model. Only then the creation of the Mobile App may begin.

As a result, the projects of our customers “fly.”

Instead of taking a dumb risk, we help entrepreneurs to master the uncertainty of the Mobile Apps world.

If you feel the approach above is right for you, we may help to check if your Mobile App concept is ready for the first step.

Each month we give away four free 60 minutes phone or skype call timeslot to help people check their concept and save money before you start the mobile app.

If there is no free time slot left, you can get a paid one for 300 USD as a one-time fee for the initial consultation.

As an average Mobile Apps costs at least 50K for the first version with 100-150K as average, we found it quite a fair price to save about 100K in at least 90% of cases.

1 from 4 left for this month. We will sign an NDA before the consultation if needed.