My not a Billion-Dollar App!
Wouldn’t it be cool, to build our own apps!? This rhetorical question developed an interest in me to learn app development and now it’s been a year since I started my journey in this domain.
I created lots of apps and was very happy, but there was a problem. The somewhat nice apps couldn’t be released due to lack of resources and money, and other apps were just too naive. It almost made me feel like all the efforts were wasted, but one day I had a revelation. Let’s start fresh and make simple apps that require no money, but are genuinely useful to users. Wait, how do I find such an idea?
The best way to start is by recreating the existing apps with a few different features. I searched the Play Store for hours, but couldn’t find an idea that was nice and simple to implement. I asked myself a question, “What apps do I use daily?”. I quickly checked the phone and saw the little icon of my PDF maker app. We use this app daily (since the pandemic), it's a necessary tool and simple to create. That’s how I got my idea😃.
Wait. Again,… is it worth making this app? There are plenty of PDF makers out there already.
From my perspective, that’s what makes my idea more appealing. Neglecting the competition part, the demand for such apps is very high. Users couldn’t find satisfaction with just one app and they always want something more.
PDF with Abby!
On June 11, 2021, I woke up and sat in front of my laptop, started writing code and within 6 hours, the app was ready! Yup, I was able to make it in one day.
The app allows you to make unlimited PDFs for FREE.
Key Features:
◉ Adjust the size of the PDF without losing the image quality
◉ Pick photos from Camera or Gallery
◉ Edit, Crop, rotate, and scale images
◉ Edit or Rename the created PDF.
◉ Drag and drop to reorder the sequence of images in your PDF
◉ Share the PDF files with other apps
◉ Create or Scan QR codes and Barcodes
All these features were easy to implement as they required very basic logic and most of the things were handled by pub.dev packages.
Play store link:
Please check the app and if you like the app, do leave a rating and share it with your friends.
Technical Aspect about the app
If you aren’t a developer, or not keen on the technical aspect of the app, then you may skip this part.
I made this app using Flutter (Dart). It is a cross-platform framework from Google. It allows us to make apps for both Android and iOS (even web now) using a single code-base. Initially, it was a UI toolkit but with its advancements and the growing community around it, today we can pretty much achieve anything with it.
There are many amazing packages that will do most of the work for you. Mentioning the most important packages for this app:
- syncfusion_flutter_pdfviewer
- share_plus
- image_picker
- image_cropper
- firebase_messaging
- path_provider
The architecture of the app is very simple. The data (PDF files) are getting stored locally on the user’s device. As of now, there is no need to store the files in a remote or dedicated database also it is quite infeasible economically for an individual. So this app contains only one tier which is the frontend.
GitHub Repository:
Let’s talk about money
You hear “App”, you think about startups and lots of money. All apps are not meant to be billion-dollar things. Some may create apps simply because they like to or just for fun. Although we can earn some pocket money from such apps, having good knowledge before stepping into this is always better than regretting later on. I have learned a lot from all the apps that I made before. So, here are some facts that I would like to share from my personal experience:
- Do not focus on money but focus on your features and the service/product provided by your app. That should always be your priority over anything.
- While recreating others’ ideas, avoid extreme plagiarism, you’re trying to create a new app, not the same one.
- Ads are the best way to make quick money, but users hate ads. So if you are opting for placing ads on your app try to keep it minimal.
- Play store does not pay you for any number of downloads unless your app is marked paid.
- You can earn through premium features or subscriptions in your app if you think that the users will find the features worth paying for.
Such apps might not be the best for you, but they will give you tons of experience. Use it wisely and keep pushing yourself to work even harder.
The Money is secondary, Experience is primary!
Being passionate and interest to make the world a better place will give you your Billion Dollar idea.
What are you waiting for? Go and explore the opportunities. Look for simplicity, optimize the idea, add something from your side and you are good to go!
If you find this blog helpful, do leave some claps 👏 which will motivate me to write more.
