B00A3OGH1O EBOK (14 page)

So if you’ve been meaning to learn how to code, give it a try. Don’t wait until next year. Don’t wait until next month. Just go on your favorite search engine and start looking for coding tutorials. There are plenty of free ones out there. The sooner you start learning, the sooner you can start selling your apps or programs for profit.

Here’s how I motivate myself to not procrastinate on my apps: Since some of my apps make thousands of dollars a day, I ask myself, what if I delayed one of those apps by a day? I’d lose a day of sales. And I’d never be able to turn back the clock to get those thousands of dollars worth of sales. I basically lost a few thousands of dollars, because I delayed the release of my app by a day. If I delayed it by a week, I’d lose tens of thousands of dollars. If I delayed it by a month, I’d lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. By putting that into perspective, I get motivated to stay up all night to finish that app one day sooner or one week sooner or one month sooner.

My mindset is so honed to success that I almost always feel guilty when I’m having fun and not working. I think to myself, “I could be working right now and making more money instead of watching this movie or playing this video game.” The only way I can stop myself from feeling guilty is by doing those fun things with someone I care about. Then it becomes a selfless act. For example, if I took my mother to Disney World for a week, then I could enjoy it and not feel guilty about not working as well. I still have my priorities straight, because I’m putting family before work, instead of fun before work.

The truth is that an idea for an app isn’t worth much. Anyone can come up with an idea for an app. The real difficult part is the coding, graphics, and marketing. So, unless you bring something to the table other than just an idea, then no app developer will want to work with you. You can bring money to the table, but keep in mind that apps can be expensive. There is a shortage of competent app developers for hire, because most of the large firms have picked them up or they’re working on their own projects. Also keep in mind that your app may not make back the money that you paid for it. If your app fails to take off, you’ll probably end up making only a few dollars on the app. And since most apps cost thousands of dollars to make, then you’re already starting from a deep hole.

The projects I like to work on are with other competent people. I can do graphics, coding, and marketing all at the same time, so I work best as a consultant or someone who can fill in the gap for a missing team member. I have a proven track record on successful apps, so I don’t really come cheap either.

I don’t have recommendations on who to hire, since I’ve been doing all of my work myself, and never had to hire anyone. I would highly recommend looking at someone’s portfolio before you hire them. Also, you should make sure that the price is negotiated before you start the project. There are greedy coders out there who will low-ball the price of the project to get you to hire them. But then, they’ll say that the project is taking longer than they expected and expect you to pay more. And since you already paid for most of the project, then you’ll have no choice but to pay them more to finish the project. Don’t fall for this trap.

You will not know until you actually release the app. If you have features that people are looking for and have little competition, then you probably have a successful app. Sometimes apps are only successful for a short period of time. For example, if you create an app about the U.S. Presidential election, then it will probably be popular around the time when there is an election.

Once you release the app, you will know within the first week (even the first 2 days) whether your app is a success or not. If your app fails to get into the top charts of any category, then it will not be able to self-promote itself. You will be stuck trying to promote the app yourself (perhaps through forums or social media). However, I would suggest you figure out why nobody is downloading your app in the first place before you promote your app further. The only time you should be promoting app intensely is when you know your app is actually desirable. Otherwise, you'll be wasting your time promoting an app that nobody wants when you could be spending that time coding features into the app that would make people want to get that app.

You’ll also know if your app is successful or not by looking at the user reviews. If you are constantly getting 5-star reviews (maybe one or two a day) with very few negative reviews, then you have a great app that’s worth promoting. But if you get more negative reviews than positive ones, then you should either scrap the idea or keep improving the app until it got to the point where people like using it.

Coming up with an original idea poses a greater risk, but bigger reward. There is a chance that the market doesn't want what your idea provides. And someone might steal your idea and compete against you. If you look at any of the current popular things, you’ll notice that they were all stolen ideas (e.g. Facebook was not the first to do social networking, Google was not the first search engine, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, and the iPod® was not the first mp3 player).

It also worries me that if an idea hasn't been popular yet, then there might just be no demand for it. Necessity is the mother of all inventions as they say. But if you truly have an original idea that you think will be a big hit, then by all means, try it (and even patent it if you can). Even my 5-0 Radio has been emulated many times, and those competitors are making somewhat decent money by mooching off the popularity of my app. So I'd definitely say it is much safer to improve upon an existing popular app and compete. That's the basis of capitalism after all.

But if you want to make the big money, then you’ll have to take the risk and release an app that nobody has made popular before. By this I mean that the idea can still be unoriginal, but it must be an idea that isn’t already popular. Most of the time, people will see your app as a knock-off and not download it. It’s very hard to get people to switch from what they’re used to.

If you read my book, you’ll already know how important it is to have a high average rating for your app. But the problem is that when first release an app, you will not have an average rating until you get at least five or so ratings. And without that average rating, people will not know how awesome your app is.

Fear not. You can get your friends and family to download the app and leave reviews for your app. But keep in mind that if they use a promo code, there’s a high chance that they will not be able to leave a review. You might be better off making the app free for a day to get your friends to download the app for free at first and leave a review.

If you do not have friends and family to help you, then you can leave reviews for your own app. I would highly suggest against this, because if Apple catches you doing this, then they will ban your app or even your account. But if you’re willing to take the risk, then you’re going to have to create a lot of iTunes accounts to get your ratings up. To create an iTunes account for free, you just need to have an email address. Try to download a free app while logged out and you’ll get a chance to create an iTunes account without entering your credit card information. Apple will then ask you to confirm your account information. You can only confirm up to three accounts per device (whether it’s an iPad, iPhone, or computer). The trick is that you can go to your local electronics store that demo Apple devices. Validate your accounts through their test devices. Almost any device that can load iTunes can help you validate your account.

Keep in mind that Apple changes their procedures frequently, so these methods may no longer work in the future. But at the time of this writing, they are verified as working.

Frequently Asked
LIFE Questions

If I’m starting from scratch, what should I be doing to become wealthy?

Your focus should not be on getting wealthy. I did not start any of my ventures because I expected to get wealthy. I did what I enjoyed and it bled into my work.

In fact, I know more people who think their projects will make them millions, but end up with projects that make close to nothing. So, focus on getting a stable job first. This will ensure that you are paying rent and putting food on the table. This is something that wealthy kids can skip, because they have financial backing from their parents. They have that advantage over us, the ones with more humble beginnings. But don’t let that deter you from ever trying break out of your financial class.

If you are starting from scratch, you should get yourself a good job first to pay the bills. Afterwards, use your spare time to pursue your side businesses. Find your strengths or create new ones. If people love what you do, then they will naturally want to pay for it. For example, if you are good at making websites, then eventually, people will want to pay you to create a website for them.

Once your side businesses start making more money than your full-time job, then that's when you need to make that tough decision of whether you should focus all of your time on your side business or continue it as a part-time job only. It took me over a year before I became confident that my app business was going to generate income for a long period of time. When it comes to sales, you will never know when your business will flop, and you end up with little to no income. Thus, I didn’t want to risk losing my great job at Columbia until I was sure that my iPhone apps would stay popular for longer than just a few months. And that’s really something that rarely happens. I know a few developers who made hundreds of thousands of dollars the first few months that they released an app, and then they quit their full-time jobs. Later on, people stopped downloading their apps and they started making less than what they made prior to quitting their jobs. Worse off were the ones who already spent the fortune they earned on luxurious things and ended up having to sell them at a loss, because they could no longer afford to keep them.

Becoming wealthy should be a side effect of your work. If you start getting greedy, it might negatively impact your work. It is also very rare for someone to get wealthy in the first place, so that is why I always tell people to do what they love doing. That passion for your work will show in your projects. And even if you did not get wealthy from doing what you love, you will have at least enjoyed what you did. And that is more important than getting wealthy. The greatest thing you’ll enjoy with successful life is not a fancy car or a nice house. Instead, you’ll be enjoying the fact that you are rarely doing what I don't enjoy doing.

So find something you love doing, and make a hobby out of it. Then figure out a way to monetize it to turn it into a small business. I can’t really tell you what that is, because it's hard to predict whether a business will be successful or not. If you make something that you would find useful yourself, then there is bound to be other people who would find what you made useful as well. Those will be your first customers in your path to getting wealthy.

Let’s fast forward and assume that you already got your life sorted out. Here are some more tips on choosing the right path to becoming successful:

1. It is easier to become successful by working for yourself, because your income is only limited by how hard you work rather than by what your company wants to pay you.

2. It is also easier to become wealthy by selling your products to the general population rather than doing services for individuals. Those who do services for individuals are limited by how much time they have. Those who sell products to the general population are only limited by how many people are in the world with disposable income (there are a lot of those).

3. Network. The more people you know, the more help you can get in starting/expanding your business. Just be wary about surrounding yourself people who don't know what they’re talking about and don’t “walk-the-walk”. There are a lot of posers out there who will do nothing but waste your time and/or money.

4. Don’t buy things you do not need, but invest in things worth investing in. The more money you save, the quicker you become wealthy. Save/invest money here and there, and you will accumulate more and more wealth.

The list goes on for the things you can do to get wealthy. You will find the rest of the tips by reviewing this book.

College is part of the methodical stage that society pushes you to go to. It is a boot camp for the office job that society wants you to take. But if you don’t go to college, are you doomed to fail?

Your knowledge is limited by your own ambitions and not limited by your choice of schooling. This means that you can still self-educate yourself to fulfill your ambitions (as long as your career path doesn’t require a license to operate). If you plan on becoming a doctor or a lawyer (both of which require graduate schooling and licenses), then yes, you should go to college. But what if your ambition is to become an app developer like me? I can tell you that I could have learned how to code apps without going to college. College actually never taught me anything about coding apps. Apps weren’t even around until after I graduated.

Keep in mind that colleges are still a business, and they've effectively drilled the notion into our minds that knowledge and an opportunity at a good job must be bought for $100,000. It is not true, and many successful college drop-outs can attest to that. Parents who've never been to college see their friends go to college and make lots of money. So, they send their kids to college without paying for it. They’re hoping that their kids could make a lot of money like their college-educated peers. However, colleges should be for intellectuals. An idiot with a degree is still an idiot. The difference is that that idiot is now drowning in debt for a piece of paper that nobody cares about.