Don't make your app boil the ocean!

I you haven't dived into the app marketplace, what are you waiting for?

If Flappy Birds can bring in so much attention and cold, hard cash, who's to say you can't crank an app out in a weekend and be a contender.

I'll give you one simple tip in this blog post. One tiny tidbit of information that just might spell the difference between you getting an app out the door and not.

I'm not going to advise that you take a certain course or watch a few hours of online video or go back to school or hire a marketer or a business manager. It's much simpler than that and cheaper too.

Make a simple app.

Reduce the scope.

If you reduce the scope of your project to something simple you will be doing yourself and likely your potential users a favor. Your app doesn't have to boil the ocean. It doesn't have to do everything. Some apps do everything in the world, but they're run by big teams and developed over long periods of time. They're not usually done in free evenings and weekends. And despite this fact, they might not make as much money as some runaway success apps.

Don't be a perfectionist.

If your app has a glitch, someone will find it. If you've provided support information (which you should), then someone will let you know. You'll fix it. Your users will feel like they're using a dynamic app from an attentive developer and they'll be more apt to use your stuff. Nobody is expecting your app to be perfect and polished right out of the shoot - unless you're Facebook or Vine or something.

Follow up.

Don't fire and forget your app. Put it out there and then babysit it. Keep an eye on the downloads, the ratings, and the reviews. If nobody is talking then track some people down and ask them explicitly to try it and give you some feedback. Tell them you're looking to improve it. If they have only good things to say and start using, then you've got a good product that you can market. If they don't find it relevent or useful then shift to something else. If they find issues then fix them.

The nice thing about these apps as a form of modern, digital expression is that your artwork is alive and within reach. Unlike an oil painting it's not out the door and out of reach. You get to iterate. It's less like a bullet you fire and then pray hits its target, and more like a torpedo. Launching it is only the beginning. From there you get to track it, track your target, correct the course, and hopefully, eventually watch it go BOOM!

I just put an app in the Windows Store called KidSuite Pop. It's about as simple as it gets, yet I know that there's at least one user in the world that absolutely loves it. That's because I made it specifically for him. My son is rather fond of spending free minutes popping virtual bubbles on the Surface while confidently calling out the colors - "RED" *pop* "BLUE" *pop* "YEDDOW!" *pop*

If this tyke finds it fun, I'm hoping a few other tiny fingers will open it and tiny eyes will ignore the ads while still earning me money for his college tuition.

KidSuite Pop in action...