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Business

Planning your development costs

app development costs

The bar for successful apps is high: if you want your app to stick out among a million others, it needs to be well designed, user friendly and working flawlessly, all of this comes with significant development costs. In this article, we give an indication of the types of costs you need to take into account when planning your app.

Costs can differ wildly depending on your platform and type of app. A mobile game with 3D graphics will have a radically different cost structure than a weather app. The range goes from $5,000 for very simple apps to hundreds of thousands for extensive apps. Often cited, Twitterific estimated their development costs as high as $250,000 back in 2010. Use common sense when thinking about your costs, be realistic and plan for cost overruns.

Here are some costs you need to take into account.

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Business Platforms Tips

11 revenue models that bring in more cash

revenue models, developer salary

Developers have a range of options to choose from when it comes to generating revenue. This choice is, to some extent, dependent on business model, scale and target market. Which revenue models are most popular, and which are most profitable?

Key insights and recommendations:

  • Selling your app B2B (commissioned apps or pre-loaded on a handset) is typically much more lucrative than selling the app directly to users through app stores.
  • Models with recurring revenue from users (subscriptions, in-app purchases) come out ahead of the ‘traditional’ models like pay-per-download, freemium or ad-supported. Despite this, they’re less popular with developers, although in-app purchases are on the rise across platforms.
  • You can use multiple revenue models concurrently. It’s not an either-or decision. On average, app makers use 2 models concurrently.
  • Your choice of revenue model should be tuned to the category you’re in and the platform you’re using.
  • For iOS, an opportunity exists to produce expensive niche apps. Also, in-app purchases are more popular on iOS than on other platforms.
  • It’s more difficult to make money on Android. Your best bet is commissioned apps or a subscription model.
  • The viability of revenue models changes extremely fast. Keep a constant eye out for trends in your category.

Related tools: In-app purchasing and virtual goods | Ad networks and mediation engines

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Business Community Tools

Will you rise above the app poverty line? (Or: what everyone else is earning)

app monetisation, developer salary

Most app makers are not primarily in the game to make money. The primary reason for developer platform selection is not app monetisation, but reach; irrespective of platform, 54% of developers adopt a platform because of reach, while 43% cite low cost and 30% cite revenue potential. Moreover, out of the eight types of app developers we identified, only three segments (Explorers, Hunters and Guns for Hire) are directly motivated by money when committing resources to a new platform.

Among those of you that are in it for the bling, developer profitability is a hotly debated topic. Apple’s iOS is generally thought to support greater revenues per application, compared to Android, but the evidence is mostly anecdotal. Many stories of overnight successes circulate the internet, but it’s not clear if they are replicable.

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To stay above the app poverty line you need to make a sensible budget plan for your app.  This requires that you have realistic expectations about the costs and revenues that you can expect. Based on VisionMobile’s Developer Economics 2012 survey, we can now offer you an informed opinion.

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