How to make money from your Android apps

Thinking in reverse
First of all it’s key to understand who your target audience is. What are they looking for and what’s important to them? Although this sounds obvious, many developers come up with a cool idea, build it and then try to figure out who they should sell it to. Successful ones usually do the reverse. They identify a need, try to understand who the customer might be, what they want and then build something that might be of interest.
“There are numerous ways to do this,” says GetJar’s Mork. “One easy way is to do keyword searches on Twitter and see what consumers are saying about certain applications. For example, you might be thinking about building a mobile game using a puzzle theme. You could do a search on mobile puzzle games and see what consumers are saying about the topic. Likewise, you might have decided you want to make a great Android social networking app. You could then find out what the top downloaded apps are and see what consumers are saying about them.”

Once you’ve identified the top Android apps in your chosen sector of the market, Mork advocates looking for what kind of features might be currently missing and whether they work on some handsets and not on others etc. Another way is to do mini acid-test focus groups and although this may sound expensive it really doesn’t have to be. Once you’ve identified who your target audience is, it’s just a question of reaching out to a couple of people that you know, inviting them and their friends for a couple of beers and then just having a discussion with them about the particular application you want to build. You might be amazed at how much info you can get from this process.
“Another easy way to research your application is to check what consumers are saying about your potential competitors,” advises Mork. “For example, on GetJar.com you can check out apps and see what reviews people have posted on them. In some cases, developers will even answer the posts and discuss upcoming product features and improvements. Again, you’d be surprised what kind of information you can find here.”

Distribution solutions
GetJar has more advice on how you approach the distribution of your Android application. The company says that, essentially, applications are like consumer goods and that no matter how much time you have invested or how good your application is, it’s very likely that most consumers will only keep your application on their phone for a period of days or weeks at most. Consumers tend to lose interest quickly unless your application really becomes an important part of their lives.
“What does this mean for you?” asks Mork. “Find as many distribution channels as possible. Use carriers, handset manufacturer pre-installs, application stores and look for business development deals with platform developers who can support your application. It’s like selling Coke or Pepsi. The more outlets you use, the more downloads you will do. The more people download your application, the more they will recommend it to friends.”

To pull this off, once your Android app is built you should seek out the easiest distribution channels first.  Carriers may seem to offer the biggest avenue to consumers, but it may also take you six months to crack a deal. Application stores are faster to get on and generally don’t pose a lot of onerous restrictions on what you upload, how many handsets you cover or whether you’ve really tested your application.

GetJar says that once you’ve gotten some traction on an application store you can always use that data to go back and try to get the carrier deals or attempt to get your application pre-installed on a manufacturer’s handset. At least then you’ll have some numbers to share with them. The company also suggests that you do plenty of homework and find out ahead of time which application stores require testing or certification, to understand their approval process and find out whether the application store allows you to promote your content in the store. GetJar, for example, has a beta testing service, which allows developers to ‘soft launch’ applications and get free testing.  Find out who offers this type of service and what it costs to use it (GetJar’s is actually free, but feedback is totally voluntary).