

Why freelance iOS developers don't develop their own apps - coryl
http://coryliu.com/post/16914257988/why-freelance-ios-developers-dont-develop-their-own

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epaga
Marketing the app truly has been the hardest part for myself as well... would
really appreciate any pointers from fellow iOS devs on "what has worked" to
get more reach for your apps. Has anyone tried a professional marketing
company for example?

The first thing that obviously can't be stressed enough is that your app MUST
be as polished as possible. But the "what now?" question still seems to be
quite open for most indie devs...

~~~
coryl
I wouldn't use a marketing company unless they specialized in app promotion.
Apps are such a weird, new and nontraditional medium. I think we generally
look at optimizing in two places: within the app market (soliciting ratings,
reviews, keywords, titles, screenshots, and volume of downloads) and outside
the app market. Since we have no clue how internals work, its probably better
to spend time on external marketing.

Some basics that all devs should get down:

\- a hit list of blogs that target your audience, pitch to them and get
coverage

\- submit to app review sites

\- start building an email newsletter (integrate mailchimp into your app)

\- if possible, cross promote through someone else's newsletter

\- have a landing page + centralized FB page. Try to build up "Likes" so you
can communicate with users in the future.

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kls
Another issue that the article does not completely touch on is, that
developing and successfully selling an app is not just writing code. It is
creating a software product business, which requires a lot of other skills. So
some developers are freelancing to build up those business skills slowly as
freelancing is somewhere between running a business and writing code, others
just have no interest in building a product company.

