When starting to build your app, or more importantly while still in the planning stages, know exactly what your ROI is going to be and what the real costs are. First and foremost, after you know how you want to make money from the app, you need to understand that prices to build apps start at $5,000. That’s the bare bones minimum. Now, take into consideration the updates and bug fixes, the enhancements once the next generation of higher-resolution screen phones comes out, and the marketing of the app, and you’re looking at easily five figures of investment.

Will your app be free, or will you charge? If you charge, how much will you charge? How many apps will you need to have downloaded before you break even? How will you advertise and market your app? What is your cost-per-customer, and does that align nicely with your app pricing model? If you have a free app, will you offer in-app purchase incentives and additions? These are just a few of the many many questions you need to ask yourself and your team before the first line of code is written or even before you make your first call to an app developer.

Plan on your app costing you 3x more over the life of the app than you initially plan and get quoted. Now, how will you make that money back? ROI actually doesn’t have to be cold hard cash. ROI could mean that you receive a great deal of publicity, or it’s an incredible enhancement to an already desirable product, or it can even be just for internal purposes only and by creating one you can also create a more efficient and less costly way of conducting business operations.

We have a few other posts also dedicated to actual payment for your app and monetizing applications and we urge you to check all of them out using the links below. Just remember that there are always hidden costs with mobile apps and tablet apps, because the market is still going strong and innovation is moving at the speed of sound. If your app is on the market to the public, then you’re going to have to keep up, and keep marketing it, if you want to make a big impact. It’s not impossible. Actually, anything is possible…with the right strategy.

Successful Mobile Apps are designed to do either of four things. They provide us with entertainment, information, connect, or enable us to make our lives a little easier. Let’s say you’re a chiropractor in Seattle. Making a mobile application about your company and services wouldn’t help anyone. Why would they want to put that App on their phone? However, think about creating an App which has some benefit to the downloader and user. Creating a Mobile App which helps inform people about common back pain issues, how to prevent those issues, and maybe even tie in some database information or videos which show preventative exercises or relief techniques, would be much more popular, and give people a reason to purchase the App (or at the very least, download it for free).

Apps are more for the entrepreneur who has ideas on how to make Apps either entertain, inform, connect, or improve their lives or help them become more efficient. The local paint shop having an App with a GPS map to their store and an auto-dial phone number is nice, but probably won’t be worth the money it costs to create the App. However, if that painter provided a Pantone color chart, and some tips on how to paint your rooms and/or house, now you’re giving people a reason to download the App. An idea for them would be to set up some affiliate accounts with paint suppliers and give the user the ability to buy paint straight off their phone. Now, you’re thinking about monetization and how to get a return on your investment.

Action Item: Do you have an idea for an App? Is your company large enough to have many tech-savvy customers who would want to download your App, have it on their phone, and voluntarily use it from time to time? What ways could you provide an App to your customer base which would be worth the investment to create the App?