Building an app that meets societal needs in this dispensation can be a life-transforming venture as it can make you stupendously wealthy and accord you recognition you could never have imagined. I dare to say, apps are the real gold mine of this digital era. If you are a developer or intend to be one and have stumbled on this post, you’ve found something akin to a treasure. This article unravels the secrets you need to succeed as a developer, as it encapsulates a testimony from one of the renowned app developers, Erikas Malisauskas, who makes over $4.5M yearly through his apps without spending a dime on marketing.
Erikas Malisauskas specialises in building Shopify apps to empower Shopify merchants with innovative apps that drive revenue growth for sustained business success. He has built over five apps, including Kaching Bundles, Kaching Post Purchase Upsell, Kaching POP Discount Upsell and Kaching Cart Drawer AI Upsell. During an interview with Starter Story, he disclosed the secrets to his success and what one could do to succeed as well, including how to find platform-specific ideas, how to run an async team with a 90% margin and the unique marketing strategy that helped him grow to $4.5 million a year in just two years.
Opportunities for building apps or platforms
According to Erikas’ submission, there are two key areas of consideration: Solo Developers and Indie Hackers who have built apps, but their apps’ user experience is usually extremely poor, while another type of apps, like VC-backed Apps, have a great user experience but turn out to be very slow. So, if you discover any of those essential features lacking in any app and can improve on yours, it already means you have a place in that app’s ecosystem.
“I wasn’t sure that I would be able to compete with bigger companies, but like a year or two years after doing Shopify apps, I realised that it’s possible to compete with them as well”, he said.
How to find ideas for building apps
There are already lots of Apps dedicated to solving various problems and making our society a more seamless place to live, however, there are still several areas yet to be covered. Also, most of the already existing apps may have some limitations that you can improve on. For instance, Erikas revealed that one of the profound ways he gains his idea is to study other people’s innovations and know where his competitors are limited, e.g, there may be a particular app already solving a problem, but yet has some limitations, all he does when he stumbles upon such apps is to study it and know where he can improve on it.
Process for building apps:
Erikas revealed that as soon as he gets inspiration for building an app, the first thing he does is to check the competitors. Evaluate what your competitors have done, and take note of what you think they did right and where they didn’t do well. Thereafter, you’d have a clear picture of what your app should look like if you want to beat the competitors, and being able to achieve this has already put you on the right path to come out with something unique.
Note: There are times when you can not achieve some projects by being a solo developer, so you’d have to bring in a co-founder who will work with you to bring the idea to an innovative, tangible project.
Marketing the App:
Erikas explained the processes he uses in marketing his apps and moving from zero user to capturing numerous real users and eventually taking over the market and becoming well-known.
Here is what Erikas said about how he markets his apps: “When you’re just a new app, you have zero users, you have nothing, and you are right at the bottom of the app store listings. I knew that we needed to onboard as many users as we could manually, so I just went to all of the communities and asked all of my clients and all of my friends who are using Shopify and asked them to install our app and try for themselves. I made the app free, and this way, you can get more installs and of course, more installs can be then converted to more reviews, and it’s a source of deriving more revenue, and it helps you know how to improve your products, hence you get all of the feedback”.
Review and Customer support that changed the business:
Let’s go a little bit deeper into the customer support and review strategy that changed his business and brought the turnaround. Perhaps you can also apply the same strategies in your business, whether you’re a startup or an established one; these strategies are evergreen.
This is what Erikas said about Reviews and Customer Support: It’s crucial for us to get those five-star reviews. We optimise all of our processes towards it. So, first of all, we ask the users of our products to analyse which deals work the best, track conversion rates and see how much additional revenue it generates.
Also, we have a monthly email that we send to our customers that shows how much revenue the app has generated for you for the month and in that email, we also ask for a review. I think around 95% of our reviews for our apps come from customer support. Our customers support is top-notch, all of our customers support agents are technical, so they can dig into your code and and fix things and yeah we provide 247 customer support right now.
App Launch Strategies
Erikas succinctly explained the strategies that have worked for him whenever he’s launching a new app, here is what he said. I always launch for free, and that’s because it reduces the friction. When we’ve got enough organic users, then we start monetising the new users. Secondly, we offer free 14-day trials, and lastly, we offer a full refund on occasions when clients are not satisfied with our services. This is because we don’t want to take the risk of receiving something like one star in our review, so it has helped us.
Advice for new developers
Here is what Erikas has to say to new or aspiring developers; in terms of number of employees, he advice for a maximum of two for starters, he said “I think that for starters, two people are enough, you just have a designer and a tech guy, and and you’re good to go, hence you will be doing all of the customers support yourself to know what your clients are struggling with, and once you start getting more tickets and tangible growth in your product, then you can start hiring customers support and growing business and of course, your team.
Another advice I will give to starters is to constantly hang around other people who are building, because community is helpful, in the sense that you can easily learn from other people, including learning their mistakes, and maybe you can even find a co-founder in those communities.
