Why I decided to make and market an iPhone app as a high school student
For the past few months, I have been working on my iPhone game, Color Spinz, as a sort of passion project on the side of my school and other work. I launched Color Spinz in early August, and I learned a few valuable lessons that I hope can inspire other young programmers to make their own apps.
First, a bit of background on me: I am a 15-year-old attending high school in Arizona. I self-taught myself programming with the help of the internet when I was about 12, and I learned about Swift and the Xcode IDE about a year ago.
I got introduced to iOS programming when I attended an summer camp called App Camp, and there I learned about the basics of XCode and Swift. After that camp, I kept building my knowledge by creating various apps (most of them being clones of existing apps) such as a calculator app, a notes app, and even an app for a friend’s blog.
After a while, I began to fall in love with app development, as it was much easier to build products that you could immediately use and see the relevance of. In the beginning, I considered building these apps just a little hobby I could share with my friends, but after some time I began to dedicate myself to a project that I would eventually put in the App Store. In this post, I want to take you through what it was like developing an app as a 15-year-old high school student, and hopefully inspire other young minds to do the same!
The Beginning
In the beginning, I honestly had no clue how to go about this. I had a vague idea in my head, and a time frame that I wanted to make the app in. Here’s where the first mistake came. If you want to make any sort of app, and are reading this, the one thing that you absolutely, positively should NOT do is dive right into the code.
Being myself, that is exactly what I did, ignoring the advice of pretty much everyone on the internet. What resulted was weeks of time lost, as I went back and forth with ideas. On multiple occasions, I would spend 3–4 days including some feature, then delete the whole thing because I had decided it was not very useful. After a couple weeks of this, I finally decided to lay out a plan for my app, which probably saved me a month of work in the long-run.
After I had my app laid out on paper (features, design, etc.), the next step was to turn it into a game.
Here’s one of the images that I drew up:
Developing Color Spinz
Coming into the project, I dreaded this part of the process. However, the actual development aspect of the project was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
To start, Apple already provides A LOT of help for developers with their Spritekit framework. To add to that, there was literally not a single problem that I had that I could not solve with a couple Google searches. Sure, it was frustrating, but in the end I was thankful that the development process was made much easier by the internet.
Pretty much every day, I would wake up and write out a list of features that I would complete that day. This was immensely helpful because it gave me actual, concrete goals that I could follow instead of just the vague “work on the app.”
The biggest thing that I learned when developing my app was the idea that I could learn along the way. You don’t have to master iOS programming before you can start building your first app. Just about every 2 minutes I would hit some snag that I didn’t know what to do about, and every single time, I would learn something new. Whenever I got stuck on something, I would just google it. Usually I could find someone who either had the exact same problem or something similar, and using their solution I would fix my own problem. Slowly, I got more and more confident just diving into uncharted territory.
At the end of about 6 weeks on and off, I had a “finished” game ready for submission to the App Store.
Submission
Once I finished my game, I started looking into what the process of App Store submission actually entails. Within a few hours, I had the screenshots, the previews, and the descriptions written on iTunes Connect. Here are some of those promotional images:
After a few more Google searches and Stack Overflow posts, I managed to also get all of the signing certificate stuff done, and archived my build. From there I hooked the build up with iTunes Connect, and pressed the “Submit for Review” button. Color Spinz was now in Apple’s hands.
A couple of days later (much quicker than I had expected), I got an email from Apple. Color Spinz had been rejected…sort of? Apple gave me a very vague reason, saying that I had to confirm that I had not included a bunch of specific features in my app. I had not, so I replied to them saying so. A couple days after that, I got another email from Apple saying that my app had been approved for sale. I rushed to the App Store and checked. Sure enough, there it was.
For a second there, I was probably the happiest man on the planet. I didn’t express it very much, but on the inside I was screaming. My app had been approved! I knew that the hard part was behind me, that it was easy sailing from here.
Boy, was I wrong.
Marketing
After my app launched, I didn’t really look at it for a few days. My family was on vacation when my app was approved, so I just enjoyed the rest of my vacation, knowing that my app was now in the App Store.
When I got home and checked my iTunes connect, I expected my app to have at least 100 downloads. So, when I saw the actual number, my heart sank. I had 8 downloads. Eight downloads, and 5 of them were friends and family. I did some quick math, and calculated that this meant only 3 people (maybe less) had downloaded the app who didn’t know me. I had no clue how this had happened, but after a bit of thinking I realized that a possible reason that barely anyone downloaded my app is because no one knew it exists. Hmm…probably should have seen that earlier.
Anyway, I went back to Google to figure out how I could get more publicity for my app. Basically everyone was saying the first thing I should do is try to get a review from some popular blog or site. So, I crafted a pitch and a press kit, and started sending emails out. I got a couple of replies, mostly with pricing options, but none of the replies were really getting me anywhere. I continued trying to generate publicity by posting on various forums and sites, and, after not really getting anywhere, I realized that I really don’t care if this app catapults to the top charts or becomes very popular. It would be really cool if this happened, but I also realize that, especially being 15, I was able to get a lot out of this experience. This is really why I am writing the article, which is to try to get more and more young people like me into this kind of stuff, because it really does teach you a lot.
Lessons
- Learn on the job. In this whole project, I think one thing I have realized about life in general is that you don’t need to be an expert to start something. Working on this project, I have gained a lot more confidence just diving into hard problems and solving them effectively. Whether it is when you are building an app or at the workplace, I have learned just how much truth there is to Richard Branson’s famous quote, “say yes — then learn how to do it later!”
- The actual product is only half the job. After you have made your product, whether it be an app or anything else, unless you are in some big corporation or you are famous, you’ve only finished half the job. The other half is getting people aware that your product exists, and showing people that it is useful to them. If you do not do a great job marketing, then, in the eyes of the consumer, your product does not matter. That being said, marketing does not necessarily mean you need to spend money.
- Listen to the user. After I had my first version ready, I gave it to people I knew to test it, telling them to give honest feedback. The response that I got back was almost the same from everyone, which was that the game’s mechanics were too unnatural. After many different versions, I finally got to the point where the mechanics felt natural to everyone. It may have been a bit of extra work, but if I had not changed my game according to what the user thought, my game would have been unplayable.
After going through this whole journey (and continuing to go through it), it feels amazing to be able to share my story and the lessons I learned. I hope some of you, after reading this, will be inspired to build your own apps/games! I hope to be able to sell Color Spinz and give the money to charity, so I can pursue another app idea that I have.
Anyways, if you liked reading this, my email is kasychakra@gmail.com if you would like to share any thoughts, questions, etc. :) If you liked Color Spinz, you can download it here.
Thank You! :)
-Kasyap