AppMasters.co – Steve P. Young
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About the Episode
Coming up is my interview on the Hustle and Grit podcast where I share how I went from side hustler to full time entrepreneur. Also, listen to the one strategy that allowed me to publish 23 apps in 30 days.
Show Notes
Publishing 23 Apps in 30 Days
If Guinness Book of Records is keeping track, Steve might just be the record holder for the most number of apps created in a month: he created 23 apps in a month. Steve was able to do this by reskinning. For those who has not encountered this word before, reskinning is creating an app by giving an existing source code a different look. Steve took this further by being the enterprising and creative entrepreneur that he is and created SOPs. The SOPs are purely done by Steve’s and then he passes them to someone else for actualization. Being the entrepreneur, he creates the ideas, visions and processes and once they are in place, he then has a team that works on them.
Create a Prelaunch Buzz For A New App:
- Find a platform for your app at least 2 weeks before the launch date. For OSnap, Steve chose Preapps. It is free and it is theplatform that press people go to when searching for new apps to cover.
- Post blogs about your new app 2 weeks before the launch date. Steve chose Medium because he had a following there and he did not need to generate traffic so much. Choose a catchy title. Steve chose “Hey, Apple! I Just Fixed Your Camera App”. Then hope that the press will pick up.
- Press coverage. As luck would have it, Designer News picked up Steve’s app after he had done the blog in Medium. He was actually creamed for being egotistical and presumptuous as to have “fixed” something of Apple’s but the controversy drew a following as Designer News has a solid audience by the thousands. So Steve got 10,000 views from this and 150 email subscribers.
- Track. Steve recommends using a tracking tool, Banana Tag, to track the emails of all people who actually opened the app.
- SEO keywords. Steve emphasizes the importance of key phrases. For instance, “App for Selfies tap Anywhere and Take a Pic” worked more than any other catchy phrase because of the phrase “Take a Pic”.
How to Maintain the Buzz after the Launch
- Add features – OSnap did not have a lot of features so Steve improved the app by adding a few features and improved its ASO.
- Give the app for free for a couple of days.This got Steve 30,000 downloads. Of course this does not make money but on the upside, Steve gets a bump in paid sales also after more people have downloaded the app.
Q&A in Hustle time:
- What has made the biggest difference to your success and why?
Joining Mastermindwas one of Steve’s moves that had made such a difference in his career. A Mastermind is a group of people that shares a common mindset and Steve got the encouragement and support that he needed to make that all important leap from corporate employee to entrepreneur. Until now, he values the contacts and eventual friendships he had made through Mastermind because he finds value in their advice and inputs.
Finding his focus is another difference that Steve attributes to his present success. It is better to focus on 1 or 2 things and work on them until they are done. Do not start on anything new until these 2 things you have set out to do are done.
- What is your favorite resource?
Banana Tag is the resource Steve finds most useful and thus his favorite. It allows him to easily track his important emails.
- What is the one tactic or piece of advice that listeners can implement right away after they finish listening to this episode?
If you want to build an app, the easiest way is to download a source code and build that app in one weekend. Start with the smallest win and build on that. It will give you the energy to do more. Do not take a lot of time to build the perfect app. Just finish it and get it up there. You will find that once you have put an app out, you will have the energy to do more and better apps.
- I am always trying to give our audience as much value as much as possible in helping them in their journey as amobile app entrepreneur. Have you got something for them today that can help them with that?
In Udemy, I have a course about ASO strategies that costs $97. I will give it for free to the first 100 people who will go there and use the Promo Code: Hustle.