$ 63,896.21 USD last month?
Looks impressive? I bet it does!
But now, let me tell you the ugly truth.
It looks like I am raking in money now, but the truth is that it was not always like that! Just 6 months ago I was completely struggling. I had no programming skills, no team and no money. The only thing I had was a great desire to create the game of my dreams.
Since childhood, I always had a dream to make it big. I was thinking my game over and over again and again during the sleepless nights, imagining the characters and heroes, levels, gameplay tricks… etc.
Does that sound familiar to you?
To be honest, I am a big fan of the iPhone, so I did not even consider the idea of creating games for anything else but the iPhone or iPad.
But I was missing the main thing – I had no team and no programming skills at all.
Even worse – I did not even have a technical education!
Over and over again I have been reading the blogs and reports about the Gold Rush
in the Apps Store where small guys like you and me achieved immense success by creating simple but great applications or games!
Did you know that guys from the Top Applications part of the App Store are selling over 35,000 copies a day!
35 thousand!
If you sell your app for $0.99 and get $0.70 from it after all apple commission cuts you are left with pure profit of $24,500 USD per DAY!
Well, you can’t live with that but that is a good start, isn’t it 🙂
This thought would not let me sleep well. Of course I did not live in the illusion that I would get on top with my first app but you know me already
– I am a kind of guy who always wants to reach the stars!
So my target was to get into the Top100 Apps at least.
Here is what I did. I decided to take it really seriously. First, I bought all the books available in my local Barnes&Noble store and on Amazon as well.
Everything from Iphone Development for dummies to the advanced experts-stuff.
Oh boy, that was a real head ache to read all that stuff. It took me about 3 months alone to read all those books.
And you know what?
After I tried to implement the knowledge I was totally disappointed – most of the printed books turned out to be completely outdated.
You know it is a long process after you write a book, it goes to the publisher, stays in editing for weeks, then the printing office keeps delaying it again and again. Then you need to distribute it throughout the country to local shops etc.. And the things change so fast. Once iPod was released, next year iPhone, then iPhone3GS, then iPad, then iPhone4, iPad2, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5… the list goes on and on. Things change so fast and these printed books can’t even catch up. Most samples were outdated and never worked for me.
What a bummer.
So finally after reading all this crap my head was ready to explode and I decided to take action. My first game was supposed to be the simple “Hidden object” game –you know where you tap the screen to find the hidden objects. I found out that these kind of games are very popular among people and I figured out it is pretty easy to make it – you simply need several images properly cut into layers and a little bit of coding.
Getting a developer account with Apple was pretty easy, so I went ahead and opened it and started the development.
Since I had no one to help and guide me – I guess I spent 3 times longer than average creating it than I actually needed to.
In about 2 months of sleepless nights my game was finally ready. The approval process from apple took about a week.
This week of waiting was the most frustrating time for me, it felt like time itself stopped… I got so nervous my hands even shook.
What if they disapproved of it? I have read tons of horror stories about developers failing because Apple did not accept their game or delayed approval for months.
I could not even sleep. I was checking my email and Dev account every minute to see the desired “your App was approved” message from Apple.
I was so noxious I even sent 3 followup emails asking apple why it takes so long. Don’t do that guys, I heard you only make the reviewers angry if you display impatience!
Finally I got approved and the sales started! I went to bed dreaming about loads of cash rushing into my pockets.
And can you imagine what happened?
I failed miserably!
The next day, when I checked my sales, I saw the devastating numbers – 16 copies sold. Total net profit: $9 … Well, obviously not the kind of numbers I was expecting…
Next day – 11 copies, then 8 copies, then about 2-3 copies per day during the next week. After 2 weeks my total net profit was around 50 bucks.. Sounds like now I have enough money to invite my girlfriend to McDonalds, right… what an epic failure.
And here is why.
Creating a great app or game is only part of the story. The most important part is how to sell it successfully and get on top of apps store sales.
That’s what most developers are missing, failing one after another in their efforts to live their dream.
They put all their efforts into the development and miss the most important part – successful marketing!
Even the best app can remain totally unknown if you fail to market it properly.
Once I realized this, I decided not to give up. So I spent the next 6 months making the comprehensive market research.
I contacted 135 top apple apps and games developers asking for help and advice.
As you may expect, 90% of them simply ignored me. But you know I am not kind of guy who gives up easily.
Those 10% who replied gave me knowledge you’d never find in books or on the internet.
I could personally meet some of them and receive the most valuable insider information on how this market works. Oh you can’t imagine how it turned my worldview upside down. Nearly everything I learned before…
…was wrong.
That’s how top developers keep the information from small guys like you and me so they can rake in money, while we can’t even sell 10 copies! Did you know there is a list of elite developers who get fast approvals, premium placing in “What we are playing” and other top ratings & benefits?
All this information is well kept secret from us…
… so no surprise thousands and thousands of new developers who enter the market fail one after another. While you get confused reading and learning hundreds of ways of advertising your app – these guys use only a couple of ways that really work and don’t even waste their time on others…
- Where to advertise the app? How to get traffic to the page? Should I order paid reviews or not? Should I create blogs?
Do I need to make support forums for my game? Should I make my app free and earn money only by selling Ads inside, or is it better to get rid of ads and sell the app itself?
All these questions could leave the newbie developer totally confused and as a result – on the road to total failure in achieving success in the apple store.
Let me tell you this.
Like Tony Robbins once said “Become the best by modeling the best”.
Find out what the best developers do and mimic their techniques, use their secrets and tricks and you will become successful.
Don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Use what is already working!
Don’t spread out efforts on useless stuff that takes up your time but never brings results.
And you know it already – you’ve seen the proof before. Once I started implementing these ideas my sales started to go up and up.
Literally, through the roof. Now my girlfriend and I are even thinking on opening our own McDonalds on the franchise next year on a $506,000 investment and
45k/year franchise fee so we can secure my profits in some real offline business. Well.. Ok ..maybe mcdonalds sounds too crazy, but if not McDonalds,
I can predict we’ll buy some luxury apartment on the California coast for sure.
But after all that, I still realize that I owe my success to the few generous people among the top developers who decided not to ignore me and help me out by sharing their valuable knowledge with me. Without it, nothing could be possible.
That’s why I decided to gather all my knowledge and resources and put up a comprehensive course on iPhone and iPad development secrets.
My main goal was to make a full multimedia course that I can easily update on a monthly basis instead of writing the boring printed book
that will become outdated even before it comes on the store shelf.
Secondly I wanted to make my course really newbie friendly.
The arrogant expert authors are so proud of themselves that they don’t even bother to explain the details for people who are just starting out and don’t have any programming knowledge at all. They all assume you are at least expert in C++ before you start learning XCode and other iphone development stuff.
I decided to change this approach completely. You know I had no programming skills at all when I started out so I don’t expect you to know anything about programming. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge. If you can operate your iPhone and basic computer software – that’s all we need to start.
What does that mean to you? Well it means that you won’t have to spend 12 months and tens of thousands of dollars figuring this out like I did. More importantly, it means…
… you can start creating your own app or game today and making money with it tomorrow.
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Here is what my course is all about. |
During the 4 weeks, I am going to take you by the hand and follow through the whole process of creating your first app or game.
I promise – we’ll do it the easy and fun way. No boring theories, no hard core programming, no useless stuff.
Only practical information and step by step instructions!
Here is what we are going to cover in the first week.
Like I mentioned before, I don’t expect you to be an expert right of the bat, so first of all we are going to cover the great variety of basic information on how to start and apply yourself in different areas of game and application development: from creating your first “Hello World” application, to developing your first game with Cocos 2d toolkit. Did you know that Cocos 2d is considered one of the easiest ways of creating good Apps and will be the most used toolkit next year?
You will also discover how to create your first web using iWebKit and animated application using Adobe Flash CS5. We’ll also discu ss how to debug your application and get rid of the bugs so you have all the knowledge necessary to dive into more in-depth information over the following weeks. And like I said – it’ll be painless – we’ll do it the easy and fun way.
In Weeks 2&3 you will discover different iPhone development tools starting from simple Xcode to more advanced stuff like Cocos 2d & iWebKit secrets & tricks. Let me warn you – even if this may sound complicated – I put my information, tutorials and samples in such an easily understood manner that you can feel yourself becoming an expert even if you are a total newbie!
We are also going to learn the 2d and 3d editing software for game and app development and some sort of “cheat”-kinds of software & tricks – for those of you who want to use advanced stuff without wasting months on learning it. That’s why I call it “The lazy person’s guide to success” – I just give what you really need and don’t waste your time describing stuff you will never use!
As a result of week 3 you will have your first game or application ready to go!
In the final week we are going to cover the most important part of the story – how to market your game and finally
make money by selling it in the App Store. Time to get the money rolling 🙂
Let’s be honest with each other – after all, you want to make good bucks with it, don’t you? I have prepared a lot of good, fresh, updated stuff on how to market your game, and where to get the dirt cheap targeted traffic!
We’ll also cover the most recent trends in game development – what genres are popular now and in the next year, what are the best converting ways to promote the game today and next year.
