How My Mobile App Got 900K Downloads in $0
This is the story of an app that grew up to get 150k downloads within just three months of its release. Currently, it has more than 900k downloads and is one of the top listed in the category.
Our incredible story
Rewinding back to 2014, we were a prime name in Bulk SMS and Web communication technology. We saw many apps providing free SMS services on the web and iOS as well. We mastering the technology of web communications randomly thought to develop one such app.
It all started with a random Idea
Now I knew that I want to develop an app based on the online communication system. I thought I would grow it as an experiment and would try to succeed or get some lessons as to where I lacked. The plan was to quickly develop a handy app, get some thousands of downloads and make some thousands of bucks.
(I had no clue I was to go pass far more than that.)
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Now to start, I needed an Idea. I chose to keep it simple. Develop an app that falls into the category of my mastery. What would be a better option for a person dealing in the bulk SMS business? I decided to go for a free SMS app. The idea wasn’t unique, but I intended to be better for my services than my peers. Other such apps like Way to SMS and others were doing great, and thus I had a bit of customer validation there.
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The key goals of developing the app were to provide great SMS services charging nothing to the users. The features which I intended to add are
Unlimited daily SMS
Unlimited character support
SMS templates
Fastest deliveries with delivery reports
Multiple groups messaging
Live cricket scores
Development
When decided this is what I wanted to develop, I started with the further proceedings.
First of all, I thought of the best name I can get.
The app was supposed to be simple and handy and thus the name ‘Just SMS’.
I was lucky that the name wasn’t taken. I then hired best developers I knew and began with the design of the app.
Soon we came up with several designs and with some revisions I finalised the design.
We kept it reduced and yet illustrative. We then spent some time for the perfect logo and symbol of the app.
Done with the designs, we now were ready. We started the development part and soon our app was ready to hit the Android market. The development team did it well, and I approved it with a few corrections and fixes.
Now the plan was to let it run without marketing. I was surprised to see some of the users downloaded the app without any advertising.
Marketing of the app
Coming to the marketing of the app, I wasn’t in favour of spending much on that front. We were to provide a service to our users for free, but we had to pay for the same. So spending extra on marketing would have drowned us in an ocean of debts. So now I was seeking ideas of organic growth.
- Invite Friends Option
- Social Share Option
- We added “Send free sms using Just sms https://goo.gl/mMCCWZ" at the end of every message
Invite Friends and Social Share did bring us a good number of users but the most effective one was the message at the tale of free sms. Later on it also became one of the monetisation method for us.
Within just three months, my app reached 150k downloads. That was amazing.
Monetization
Now the app was doing good in making people download it and use it. With the increasing user base, the cost of providing SMS services also rose. Now it was very important for me to bring in a way of making money from the app. Considering all the options I had, I came up with following monetisation options
- Google Admob: Obvious first choice for anyone
- Little add message at a tale of free SMS
- Adds through notification
- Full-Screen banner add at the start of app and was restricted to once per day
Now we had a great app working wonders for us. The app started generating revenue of INR 18,000 per day, and that was a wonderful number for me. The app went right up to top the chart in its category for a while and currently sits at the third spot. Currently, the app has more than 900k downloads and is still counting.
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About The Author:
Varun Choudhary is a Full Stack Developer and Founder of multiple startups like Abaxsoft and Mashupcorner and is an expert in Planning, Monitoring and Delivering Development and Marketing Solutions for Clients worldwide. To Know more about Varun, Feel free to reach out to varun@jainvarun.in or through any social media channels below 🤗
