5 Things Publishers Need to Know About Mobile Apps

By Jason Boog 

At the Tools of Change conference, Ken Yarmosh spoke about the “Business, Strategy, and Marketing of Mobile Apps.” We’ve collected five crucial points publishers and authors should remember.

Yarmosh runs a boutique app agency and wrote App Savvy for O’Reilly. He has worked on apps “everything from financial accounting systems to automated search marketing platforms.”

1. Mock up your app before meeting with developers to “reduce risk and overall time it takes to build the app.” He recommended publishers use programs like Keynote Kung Fu to sketch out a prototype first.

2. Find developers on hiring sites with app-specific sections. He recommended sites like Dribbble to find designers and explore samples of the designer’s work.

3. Apps are expensive. A simple app will require $15,000. Projects that last a couple months cost more like $50,000. The really big apps (like a newspaper or magazine app) start at $125,000.

4. Plan for updates on your app. Many users expect at least one or two updates every month.

5. There going to be 500,000 plus apps. Just because you build an app doesn’t mean it will get attention. Without the proper marketing, the whole investment could be wasted.