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$80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

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Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#11

Post by AndrewWarner »

colinplamondon wrote: post #8
AndrewWarner wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, this interview wasn't about creating another "iPhone gold rush" story. It was about understanding how they could build an app business without coding or designing. They even hire someone to write their descriptions for a few hundred bucks.

And they weren't afraid to make a slutty business. For every startupy person trying to 'change the world' and 'make a dent in the universe' with a me-too social network, there's five with a slutty free app business banking it each month.

Colin, they didn't say much about their marketing. Do you think they're doing any app store SEO?

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#12

Post by d_r »

It would be interesting to see more people chime in here about using sites like Elance. Have you had good/bad experiences with this approach?

Outsourcing seemed to work great for these guys (good for them!) Is it because the apps were fairly simple, or did they get "lucky" with picking the right developer(s)?

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#14

Post by stevenp »

colinplamondon wrote: post #8
AndrewWarner wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, this interview wasn't about creating another "iPhone gold rush" story. It was about understanding how they could build an app business without coding or designing. They even hire someone to write their descriptions for a few hundred bucks.

And they weren't afraid to make a slutty business. For every startupy person trying to 'change the world' and 'make a dent in the universe' with a me-too social network, there's five with a slutty free app business banking it each month.

This is a great point. Looking at these apps, they're certainly not anything like ConvertBot or Instagram. As an app developer myself, I think I could have easily made most of these apps in my spare time without a ton of design skill, yet they're really successful. Definitely food for though.

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#15

Post by AndrewWarner »

stevenp wrote: post #13

Hey Andrew! Curious why your podcasts don't show up in the iTunes feed until a few days later. I'm having to manually download this one because I'm so excited about it. :)

I didn't know that was happening.

For some reason keeping my itunes up date has been a struggle. Thanks for telling me.

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#16

Post by eru »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #7

After posting the interview I realized that the guy I was emailing about an interview was probably a virtual assistant. I assumed he was working in their office because he responded to my interview request so quickly. I wish I asked them about it.

I tried timesvr.com last year. They were usually quite quick, even with the standard account. If you throw more money at them, you can probably get arbitrarily good response times.

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#17

Post by colinplamondon »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #11
colinplamondon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they weren't afraid to make a slutty business. For every startupy person trying to 'change the world' and 'make a dent in the universe' with a me-too social network, there's five with a slutty free app business banking it each month.

Colin, they didn't say much about their marketing. Do you think they're doing any app store SEO?

At a glance, for sure- there's a few where they didn't, but for the most part they did a solid job of it.

For the ones where they didn't, I'd guess (based on nothing but a glance) that they depended on cross-selling to get rank traffic, instead of search to get rank traffic.

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#18

Post by jws7 »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #7

After posting the interview I realized that the guy I was emailing about an interview was probably a virtual assistant. I assumed he was working in their office because he responded to my interview request so quickly. I wish I asked them about it.

Hi Andrew, I'm no VA - just a buddy of Mike and Quoc's helping out with BD/Mktg/PR lol. Great interview btw!

Re: $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

#20

Post by davidedicillo »

d_r wrote: post #12

It would be interesting to see more people chime in here about using sites like Elance. Have you had good/bad experiences with this approach? Outsourcing seemed to work great for these guys (good for them!) Is it because the apps were fairly simple, or did they get "lucky" with picking the right developer(s)?

When I started 39 (my company) I was outsourcing my iPhone development via Elance to a firm in Ukraine. We got some good simple apps out and made some money. But quickly they weren't reliable; they fit your job in a pipeline with other jobs, so you can't just tell them "today just stop whatever you are doing and work on this important stuff". Also you need to be very lucky with the people you hire.
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