Top blog articles for startup founders

How to monetize my app? Affiliate sales.   You can sell products and services on your app provided by other companies. You can find offers of products through pages like Zanox, CJ, Linkshare,… Mobile commerce. You can do like e-commerce but for a mobile application. However, it’s not easy. Check this article to see how to do it successfully. In-app purchases.   This is the most important business model for apps in term of volume. It means that your app is free but you can buy virtual goods inside the app. For example in car game, you can buy petrol. Ad supported.   Like a website you can keep space to put banners and widgets of partners. Now you can also run some video inside your app and get a price per video watched inside your app. Data collection . If with your app you collect valuable information about users, their desire, their search you can monetize it. Your app could later be sold to a company interested in this infor

4 free tools to market an app You should use social networks. Why? It’s statistically proved that people thrust more a friend or acquaintance recommendation than any other advertising coming directly from a company or add agency. You should make people speaking about you online and with their friends. According to my experience, here are the four main tools. You could also add linkedin if your app is a business tool for example. 1.    Facebook. You should build a company page and an app page. Use your company page to build a community of fans. Only when you have more than 1500 true fans, you can start to organize competitions and sell your app. Don’t forget to use facebooks insight to see the virality of your posts. One of the best tools to build a facebook competition is easypromo .  According to some studies the best moment to publish posts is between 03:00 and 05:00 pm. This can change from one region to another. Check the one of your target audience. 2.   

The best online marketing tools for your app Beside the free existing ways to promote an app as seen in my previous posts you have the paid ways. If you have money this is the most secure way of getting users. More downloads you get, higher you go on the ranking of the Appstore. However, don’t start this without knowing how your apps is working. Make first some user tests. Be sure your app has enough engagement. Be sure people will not delete it after a few days. Check you have no bugs or crash. If all the above is satisfactory you can start to pay per downloads or per action in your app.  Don’t forget to have a clear objective. What position do you want to reach? In which category (Games, Social networks, Lifestyle,…? In wich platform? In which country? If the following tools are efficient for the Apple store, there are not so efficient for Google Play. Google Play uses complex algorithms taking more values than the number of downloads into account. You actually have fou

What team/skills do I need to build a successful app? To develop a successful app you need the following partners or skills. Please note that many of those partners/skills can be externalized. However, at one moment you will need them. Designer.   Someone able to work with Photoshop, Freehand, etc. If he has experience with mobile applications it’s better.  Take into account that picture definition change from iOS to Android for example. UX/UI expert   (User experience).    Your app must me be easy to understand and to navigate. Behaviour of an iOS and an Android user changes. Make UX texts and prototype before developing your app. A good tool to test your app is   justinmind . Testers.   People able to make quantitative and qualitative user tests. Testing should start as early as possible in the process. Mobile Developer.   There are many different platforms (Android, iOS, HTML5, Blackberry, Windows,…). So priories where you want to be and with which functions

Silicon Valley, the place where the money is smart. Silicon Valley is the name of the bay area of San Francisco, north from California. It’s the world most famous place of innovation where companies like Apple, Google, Facebook are located. It’s a place and a model resisting to the crisis and that keep attracting the best start-ups and talents worldwide. Why there?  It all started with the University of Stanford and its close collaboration with US ministry of defense. To work with the department of defense allowed companies to benefit from a generous founding and a secure market. Today the Silicon Valley is the perfect mix of three main factors: Knowledge (The University of Stanford and Berkeley are ranked in the 3 best ones worldwide), Money (one third of the world risk capital is located in Silicon Valley) and the proximity to the biggest ICT and biotech companies. Why is the money smarter there than anywhere else? Today start-ups need to think global and to exec