tl;dr

I was inspired by an article I read about how common people are making fortune developing mobile apps, I decided to try my luck at it.

Wallpaper One — Easily preview, download and use premium designer wallpapers made by famous artists on the web! We went through thousands of artists and wallpapers, handpicked the best so you don’t have to.

You can download it from the links below — FREE
Apple App Store: http://bit.ly/wallpaperone-ios
Google Play Store: http://bit.ly/wallpaperone-android

The Long Version:

Research

I stumbled upon an app that was sold on Flippa for $100k and was making $1k per day. I spoke to the owner and figured out how his business model worked and verified the earnings over teamviewer.

I did some research using sensortower.com and appannie.com and thought I could do it better than him. That was about it. I started right away.

I downloaded some 20 wallpaper apps, wrote down all their features, where they were getting their images from and reverse engineered their process.

Design

Did some scribbling on my own, check out the screenshots/wireframes here -
http://i.imgur.com/kkme7FL.png
http://i.imgur.com/jzztIPN.png
http://i.imgur.com/coGrmcx.png

Next, I assembled a team. I had 2 close friends who were app developers (iOS and Android developer). I explained the concept to them and they were sold, just like that.

We all sat down and worked on the framework, curating images, storing it, in app purchases, image copyright, technical difficulties, third party api’s to be used and so on.

I wrote down a detailed document that included all the above discussion. We were hooked to the idea.

I used to run a creative agency before and was thinking I would hire an UI designer and get designs done from them. I spoke to few people on dribbble, most of them quoted $2k and above. It didn’t make any sense to me.

I spent a day learning how to design for mobile apps, downloaded few UI templates (paid) and icons from thenounproject (paid) and created the first version of app UI. It was pretty basic so the developers could understand the flow.
Screenshots -
http://i.imgur.com/Ox9UQEc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/1ukJW55.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iHeKW5s.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/yKSCpXv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/6N9M2Qc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ok0HRB0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Lh7Eb0i.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/eZkmDgF.jpg
and there were more…

We all met again, the developers worked on how they would hack together the whole system.

Development

We spent the next 2 months writing the code and integrating 3rd party API’s

Integrating 3rd party API’s
We used Facebook’s Parse SDK for our backend (storing images, push notifs, analytics), Crashlytics for crash reporting, Social Media API’s — FB, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp etc.
We hired our close friends/programmers to test our app, fixed lots of issues.

And after 3 months of hard work we were finally ready with our final build.

Uploading to the app store

We hadn’t anticipated this would be the hardest part, only for iOS though.

I created a logo under an hour
Screenshot
http://i.imgur.com/HSD8tZ5.jpg
Yeah, that’s the best I could do, other designers were asking me $100+ for the logo itself.

Apple requires you upload 5 screenshots for 3.5, 4, 4.7 and 5.5 inches, that’s 20 screenshots. This took like forever.
Screenshots
http://bit.ly/1plv11i
http://bit.ly/1uvmDyk
http://bit.ly/1okrO1m
http://bit.ly/1uvmM4R
http://bit.ly/1zwbkHn

And ofcourse the new app preview video which you can only create on Yosemite using an iPhone device. Video Preview — http://on.fb.me/1x8kcR0

Then there was writing the description, studying ASO to come up with keywords we could rank for and 100 other things.

The wait

We uploaded our first binary to app store and two days later realized there were a typo, we pulled it down and uploaded a new version.

Screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/jsDnuck.png

Then Apple took their own sweet time to review the app, there was a lot of going back and forth.

Pre-Release

During the waiting period, I put together a website http://wallpaperone.in, collected emails from friends and family, so I could notify them when the app was live. I was able to get 60 double opt-ins.

Launch Day

Our app is finally live in App Store and Play store.

We used Facebook Ads and spent $500 till now and managed to get 579 app installs.

Countries I’m targeting — USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Singapore, Italy, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and Russia.

I also plan to open social media accounts on FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr and publish 3–4 wallpapers a day for next 3–6 months, link them to my app so they can download more images.

Post Launch

After 10–15 days of launch, we plan to localize our app into other languages. Launch an iPad version and see where the journey takes us.

Monetization

I have placed Banner Ads, Interstitial ads (displayed after downloading 3 wallpapers in a row). Screenshot -http://i.imgur.com/PGtGU27.png

In App Purchases — Users can remove ads by paying $0.99

Experience

I have been developing websites for last 12 years and this was my first time working on developing an app, we had a great time working together and thoroughly enjoyed our journey.

Your Feedback

I know this isn’t probably our best effort, but we just wanted to get out there and try things. I’d love to hear any feedback you guys have.

Finally, go ahead, download the app (its free) and have fun. Leave a 5 star review if you like the app
Apple App Store: http://bit.ly/wallpaperone-ios
Google Play Store: http://bit.ly/wallpaperone-android