Why freelance iOS developers don't develop their own apps

coryliu.com

5 points·coryl··3 comments

Marketing the app truly has been the hardest part for myself as well... would really appreciate any pointers from fellow iOS devs on "what has worked" to get more reach for your apps. Has anyone tried a professional marketing company for example?

The first thing that obviously can't be stressed enough is that your app MUST be as polished as possible. But the "what now?" question still seems to be quite open for most indie devs...

I wouldn't use a marketing company unless they specialized in app promotion. Apps are such a weird, new and nontraditional medium. I think we generally look at optimizing in two places: within the app market (soliciting ratings, reviews, keywords, titles, screenshots, and volume of downloads) and outside the app market. Since we have no clue how internals work, its probably better to spend time on external marketing.

Some basics that all devs should get down:

- a hit list of blogs that target your audience, pitch to them and get coverage

- submit to app review sites

- start building an email newsletter (integrate mailchimp into your app)

- if possible, cross promote through someone else's newsletter

- have a landing page + centralized FB page. Try to build up "Likes" so you can communicate with users in the future.

Another issue that the article does not completely touch on is, that developing and successfully selling an app is not just writing code. It is creating a software product business, which requires a lot of other skills. So some developers are freelancing to build up those business skills slowly as freelancing is somewhere between running a business and writing code, others just have no interest in building a product company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com