How I built and sold my first android app.

Quick backstory

My background is a little different than others in the technical field, but that didn’t stop me from learning how to code. I used to be a lawyer, but I decided to learn how to code because I saw much more potential in this field and I really liked the idea of building something that others will use, like a mobile application. So, I got into learning android development and after several months I got a job as an android developer.

Things change quickly in the android field and you have to keep yourself up to date with the latest tech stacks in order to find better paying jobs. If you really want to improve your coding skills, I think that it’s important to learn/code in your spare time as well, otherwise you mind end up falling behind.

App idea.

While I think that it’s ok for some app ideas to be unique, generally, you should stick to what already works and avoid trying to reinvent the wheel. I got my idea by checking out existing apps on play store and stumbled upon a cool customisation app that allowed users to apply different styles to their phone’s volume sliders, so I decided to try to build something similar.

This wasn’t the first idea that popped into my head, most of my previous app ideas were abandoned after a short while because new ideas always seemed more shiny. I believe that the research phase should be done diligently, something that I haven’t done properly for most ideas, hence the quick abandonment.

So is it necessary to have an original idea?

Definitely not. If you see apps on the store that are already successful, it means that consumers want those apps and you can try to replicate their success. The goal is to build something better than those competitors, not just straight up copy their apps.

App launch.

So I got to work, built the app in a few months and launched it on Google Play. I know that most people consider that it’s better to get customers before actually building an app, but I’m not sure if that is always the case.

Let’s say I was going to build a landing page for the app, pay for some ads and try to get people to sign up for the app. Who was going to sign up for customisation app that hasn’t been built yet when they could also get alternative apps which were already present on play store. Maybe I would have gotten some users, but we’ll never know.

After launching the app, I posted about it on Reddit - r/androidapps and Producthunt. Reddit post gave the app some nice traction, but Producthunt was a flop since I hadn’t researched beforehand their launch process.

A few days laters, my app got featured in a couple of tech blog posts that resulted in the app getting a few hundred downloads. This was all organic, I haven’t paid anything for the promotions. The app design was really simple and pleasing and judging from those blog posts the authors liked the UI which probably was the reason for including the app in their posts.

These sort of promotions kept happening over time, I found out that my app was included in all sort of YouTube videos, TikTok videos and a few other blog posts.

So, build it and they will come?

Well not entirely, but you should focus on building something that’s simple, useful and has nice UI. It’s more likely that people will share your app if it’s UI is really pleasing or if they enjoy it’s functionality which will help you get more organic downloads.

Listen to user feedback.

It’s important to have an app that works great, so try to fix reported bugs or crashes, otherwise you will end up getting bad reviews. Some users will give your app 1 star reviews nonetheless, even if your app works perfectly, but you don’t need to worry about those.
Also, if your app performance drops a significant amount, your play store ranking might get affected, so try to keep the metrics below the bad threshold.

Avoid feature creep.

You don’t have to build every feature that is requested by users. Sure, if a lot of users ask for a specific feature and it makes sense for the app to have it, then you can build it. Otherwise don’t waste time building features that are only wanted by a small number of users.
Try to keep the app as simple as possible.

Getting an offer

Roughly one year after I launched the app, I got an email from someone who was interested in purchasing my app.
At first, I didn’t think about selling it because I considered that the app hasn’t reached it’s full potential yet. At this point, my app had been downloaded about 300k times, while 2 competitor apps had around 5-10 million total downloads, so I thought that there is still a lot of room for growth.

But after thinking about it for a while, I decided to sell it because I wanted to spend my time building other projects, rather than focusing on growing this app further.

Their initial plan was to offer me 2-3x my app’s yearly revenue, but after some negotiation we agreed on 5x yearly revenue.

TLDR
Built and sold my first android app.

A few takeaways:

• Spend more time in the research phase and come up with something that has nice potential.
• Focus on product quality and design. I think it’s easier to get organic traffic when your product is in good shape.
• Don’t agree to the first offer you get.

Next plans?

Currently working on 2 other mobile apps:

• AppBlocker - an android app that increases productivity
• Carena - car specs - iOS/android app that you can use to fetch car specs and easily compare stats with other cars.

Just launched on producthunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/carena-car-specs