App Building, Keeping Your Money

Building our app, an iNovel titled, Spoon and the Moon, was a wild ride! Is it possible for novice app builders to jump into the tablet market? Yes, even when you are not particularly computer savvy. When the Wickedly Sisters (Marie Davis and Margaret Hultz) decided to build our first app, we knew we would need to hire some help, but a shortage of money was problematic.

Fortunately, we brought to the app building project twenty years of experience working as creative professionals, so our lack of money was daunting, but not defeating. First, we hired help for the actual execution our app idea. It took some negotiating skills, but we managed to snag a great deal. We thought of hiring a company abroad for a lot less money, but this was our first app. It was important for us to work locally with someone who would let us get some hands-on experience, where we could discuss ideas and brainstorm in a room eye-to-eye with our builder. Yes, that sort of help was more expensive, but we needed to know about the entire process and this was our opportunity to learn the business. If we had farmed this out to Thailand or India, it would have been nearly impossible to ask the amount of questions that we needed to ask. In short, we created our own classroom, where we were the only students. Knowledge does bring more money, and now we are better equipped to work on our second iNovel.

The second thing we did to be thrifty was to hire friends. True, hiring friends can be a bit risky. However, we looked for friends who already worked professionally in a particular field that we needed help in. We found friends were happy to help out, and at a reasonable price. We promised them more money next app, so they saw it as an opportunity to build their own business. However, heres a caution, be very careful when you hire friendsmake sure they have qualified experience. We did run aground with one set of acquaintances, which we tried to hirebut quickly ended up severing our ties. What happened? They were nice people, just not qualified to meet the promises they made.

Our app, Spoon and the Moon has oodles of sound effects. We were able to find sound effects very reasonably priced at different sound effect libraries, and after looking around, we settled on AudioMicro. On this site, you pay for several credits and sound effect prices are based on the length and type of each effect. We knew that we needed quite a lot of sound effects so we joined their monthly plan, which allows you to have a huge host of sound choices, at a reasonable cost. However, make certain you print out your receipts and keep them on file for each download, to avoid any future rights issues.

In addition, we found some musicians to work with us via YouTube. This took some haggling and a bit of cajoling, but for the effort we found brilliant, original music from a number of up and coming talent. We also fished in our local pond of talented folks. They were also happy to help for a reasonable price and the exposure for their music that we were offering.

As you go through all these adventures, do not forget to keep all your receipts! Check with your accountant, but in most circumstances you can deduct money spent for gas, travel, hired help, office expenses, IT assistance, sometimes even business lunches and dinners. Just to be on the safe side, Margaret and I kept receipts for most everything, and made notes on more vague receipts, for example who we took out for a business lunch and why.

No matter how frugal you are, when you complete your app build and it is in whichever app store you wish, they will usually take 30% off the gross sales. Some people grumble about this, and maybe they are right. However, Margaret and I think it is a rather reasonable price to be in an established global marketplace. We hope that this article helps some our fellow app building entrepreneurs and we would love to hear from you. Email us at, spoonandthemoon@yahoo.com or to find out more about our app go to:
www.spoon-and-the-moon.com .