The blog of Matthijs Hollemans, indie app maker and author of The iOS Apprentice

Some people seem to have all the cool ideas. I’m not really one of them. Until recently, I used to find it hard to come up with ideas for apps. So I got curious: where do those people get all their product ideas from? And more important, how can I get more ideas of my own?

It might be that some of us are by nature better than others at finding new ideas. Maybe so, but I also believe that these “idea people” have trained their minds to become better at recognizing problems and possibilities.

Here’s a thing that you can do to train your own mind:

For the next 30 days, come up with at least one app idea per day.

Write your idea down in a file somewhere. It doesn’t have to be a fully fleshed out idea, one sentence is enough: “An app that finds recipes based on what food you have sitting in your fridge.” That’s all you need.

It also doesn’t have to be a good idea, or an original one, or even something that is actually possible — it just has to be something that you came up with.

More than one idea per day is fine too. In fact, once you get started with this exercise you will find that ideas start to pop up everywhere.

Don’t get disheartened if the ideas for the first ten or so days are pretty bad or if it turns out that they have already been done before. If you keep at it, you might surprise yourself with how many good ideas you will have in addition to the bad ones.

The point here isn’t really to have only great ideas, but to generate ideas in the first place.

I did this exercise in September last year and of the 100 or so ideas that I wrote down over the course of the month, about 20 were actually pretty decent, and two or three were really good ones. I wouldn’t have discovered the good ones without going through the bad ones first!

There are many small annoyances in our lives that we are unaware of and have learned to accept or ignore or work around. We no longer question these issues; they have become blind spots. But when your mind starts actively looking for things that can be improved, you’re slowly becoming aware of these annoyances again. They are excellent candidates for app ideas (or other inventions).

For example, I often view recipes from American or British websites on my iPad while cooking. The problem is that they have measurements in cups, ounces, lbs, Fahrenheit and other silly units. I’d love to have an app that scans the web page with the recipe and converts all the amounts to the metric system, so I don’t have to do each calculation by hand.

How often do you think, “I wish I had an app for that?” If you are an idea person you probably think this all the time.  The point of this exercise is to get yourself thinking like this too.

Give it a shot. It doesn’t have to take more than five or ten minutes a day, and you’ll never be without app ideas again.

Photo Credit: Diego Dalmaso

The other day I received an email with the following question:

“I have this great idea for a game, but I’m new to iOS development and this goes way over my head. So I’m wondering if you could help with the development or know anyone else who can? Of course, we’ll split the profits.”

Since this isn’t the first time I’ve received such a request, I thought I’d put up my answer here.

It’s not easy getting started, that’s for sure. It can take a long time to go from noob to someone who can make quality apps. Also, not everyone is cut out to be a programmer.

Having a great idea is only the beginning, but the money is in the execution. If you don’t know how to execute, then you might need to take another approach to get the app made.

Even if you can pull off the programming part, that is not enough to make your app a success. You also need to get it to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. That also takes certain skills.

Sell your idea to find your team

Here’s what I would do: To find someone to work on this with you (for a part of the profits rather than work-for-hire), you’ll have to convince them of the potential of your idea. The best way to do that is to make a short demo video. Appsterdam’s Mike Lee wrote a good blog post about that.

With that video you can set up a project on Kickstarter or a similar site, that allows you to raise money from small-time investors and at the same time attract attention from developers and even potential customers. With that money you can hire a professional programmer, designer, and anyone else you need.

Let’s say you raise only $5,000. That by itself won’t be enough to pay for the development of the app, but it will serve as a decent down payment for the people you will hire. With some up-front cash and a convincing demo video, professional developers might be more willing to work for profit sharing.

In other words, if you don’t have the programming or design chops to make the app by yourself, you will have to play the role of a producer (like a movie producer) instead of a programmer, and gather a team of people who are willing to work with you.

Most of these people — if they are any good — aren’t interested in working for profit if you’re not also bringing something to the table. Asking someone to work on your project for a share of the (hypothetical) profits is asking them to invest their time and talent into your idea — and by extension, your leadership — at their expense, based on nothing but a promise of a fat payday. You’d better be ready to deliver on that promise!

But what if someone steals my idea?

You’re putting your great idea out there for the world to see in order to attract investors and talent, so what’s to stop others from simply copying it?

Here’s the thing: it is incredibly hard to make a hit game or app. If your idea is something anyone can build in a handful of days that is guaranteed to sell itself without any effort, then keep it to yourself. These are one in a million ideas and chances are yours isn’t one of them.

Your idea will take many months of dedicated effort to turn into something real and many more to find its way to customers. No one will steal it because no one else will care about it as much as you do or is willing to put in that kind of effort.

It’s not the idea that is worth money, it’s the execution of the idea. Most of the hit games on the App Store are not 100% original ideas — for example, Angry Birds and Tiny Wings are both based on other games — just very well executed versions of those existing ideas.

The idea isn’t really yours to keep

Now personally, I believe that you have to let go of the notion that you can “own” an idea. An idea by itself is nothing. That’s why you can’t really “steal” ideas. On the other hard, you can certainly own the execution of the idea, and that is protected by copyright laws and by the fact that’s it’s just a lot of hard work.

The only way you will ever profit from your idea, is to make sure you are the one with the best version of that idea.

If your idea is truly good but you put out a very basic, average implementation of the game that you programmed and designed yourself, chances are that hardly anyone will care about it. But it might inspire some other developer and a few months later some other team makes a lot of money from your idea but done better. You will have blown your opportunity.

So if you want to be the one with the hit app, you need to be the one making the most amazing version of it. And that requires programming help if you’re not a very good programmer, design help if you’re not a good designer, and marketing help if you’re not a very good business person.

So start working on that video!

Illustration by Oscar S.R. / miutopia (from openclipart.org)

The iTunes App Store is wonderful in many ways but from the viewpoint of an independent developer it also has one big flaw: no access to customer data. As an iPhone/iPad developer, you simply do not know who your customers are.

Apple owns the customers

The problem is that the customer isn’t really yours, but Apple’s. People might be using your app but they bought it from Apple, not from you. And Apple won’t tell you anything about these customers, not even their email addresses.

This is a problem for growing your business. Selling new stuff to existing customers is much easier than finding new customers, because existing customers already trust you and know what you can deliver. But in the case of App Store sales there is no such relationship, so finding out who your customers are and staying in touch with them is essential.

The bare minimum that you need is a list of your customers’ email addresses. Apple won’t give you those precious emails, so what is a poor software developer to do?

Ask your users to email you

A handy tip I picked up from the excellent book The Business of iPhone App Development by Dave Woolridge is to put a “Send Feedback” item in your app.

This helps you in several ways:

1. A disappointed user is now more likely to complain to you directly rather than in an App Store review. This gives you an excellent opportunity to turn a sad customer into a happy customer and it avoids a bad review on the App Store. Do anything to prevent bad reviews! They are hard to respond to and will scare away potential buyers.
2. A happy user is more likely to tell you how much they like your app. Another useful tip from the book: send a thank-you reply and ask the customer to leave a review on the App Store. It works!

I implemented a Send Feedback button in the latest version of my Reverse Chord Finder Pro app and as soon as it became available on the App Store, I started receiving many more emails from users. This makes me happy because I am finally getting to know my customers! And almost every time I’ve asked a satisfied customer for an App Store review, they were kind enough to write one.

Get even more emails with a newsletter

I also added a sign-up button for my newsletter, both in the app and on the web site. (And of course, if people email me, I will point them to the newsletter page and ask them to sign up.)

This newsletter will be used to let people know about new versions, tips and tricks, and so on. Should I have a new product to promote in the future that may be relevant to my subscribers, then I’ll be sure to let them know in my newsletter.

As an added incentive for signing up, people get a free download of an e-book on chord theory. So far I’ve been getting a good rate of subscribers. I wish I had done this earlier!

If Apple won’t tell us who our customers are, then we’ll just have to find out for ourselves…

Marketing is everything you do, whether you’re aware of it or not.

If you want people to use your app, it a) has to be of some use to them and b) they should be made aware of its existence. These two things are what I consider “marketing”: relating your app to the market.

Marketing is not the step after programming

Marketing shouldn’t be something you “tack on” after development is done. It is more than sending out press releases in the hope you get some reviews somewhere. Every decision you make, including each decision about design and programming, has to be done with marketing in mind.

Before you begin designing and programming your app, ask yourself this question:

Why are you making this app?

Not just for the money, I hope. There is nothing wrong with making lots of money from your hard work, but if you are not so passionate about your app’s problem domain that you would even do it for free, then how can you expect anyone else to care about your solution?

Without passion, the development itself won’t be much fun, and any subsequent promotional activities will be much worse. Your app probably won’t be very good anyway and everyone will ignore it.

On the other hand, if you do care about the problem your app is solving, then there are most likely other people who care about that problem too. And if you had the needs of these people in mind every step of the way, then they will find your solution worth buying.

If the thought of doing any type of marketing fills you with dread, it doesn’t have to be that way. What could be more inspirational than talking to the people who are experiencing the problems your app is going to solve? They will welcome you with open arms… if you care enough about them.

If you don’t know your users, you don’t know your problem

It is not a good business strategy to develop an app in isolation, submit it to the App Store, and wait for the orders to come pouring in. They won’t. You probably solved the wrong problem (or solved the right problem the wrong way) for customers that don’t exist.

You have to think of marketing — will this benefit my users? will this help me to reach my users? — every step of the way. If you don’t, you’re still sending a message to the market: I don’t care about you.

Figure out for whom you are making this app. Then you will understand your user’s needs better, it will help you to build a better app, and it will allow you to direct any promotional activities with more precision.

Think marketing every step of the way.