Step 0: Let go of the worker mentality

I have been doing iOS independent development for nearly four years. During this period, I have tried to mobilize my friends to do things with me for many times, such as providing a stable background for me, creating an Android version or an H5 page for my iOS App, and finding a designer to help me do UI design.

But most of them turned me down without even thinking about it, because they didn’t believe it would make money and they would be better off outsourcing. But in this way, in fact, there is no difference with you to work to make money, take time for death wages, never get the liberation of time.

In the beginning, unless you are lucky, your extra income will not be able to match the salary offered by a first-tier Internet company. Because they already have a business model, and you get paid because you’re in that model.

But only if you have your own business model, even if it’s 10 new users a day and $30 more a day. Only then will your income turn into after-sleep income, where the App hangs and you lie waiting for the money to come. Instead of you working overtime, there’s no end to getting paid for hours.

I don’t encourage you to quit your job and develop independently full-time like I did, but I hope that you, with your development skills, can also have your own product, which can make money.

You’re not really short of resources

I have been doing independent development since my sophomore year and have been working and resigning since graduation. My classmates and colleagues who knew this all thought that I could do it because of the “full stack”. They thought that “App+ background + design + product = making money”. They only knew how to develop App, but nothing else, so I earned extra money while they only got salaries.

But I’m not full stack, I’m full stack, I’m just trying to make money…

  1. I wouldn’t write my own backend because an integrated service like LeanCloud is more stable than my own back-end code, and time is money. I wouldn’t write a single line of back-end code unless I had to. For those of you who still refuse to make your own product because you can’t write the backend, check out how popular BaaS (back-end as a service) is now.
  2. Gif Master, the second App I made, had over 10 million downloads and still makes a small amount of money today. You can go see if it needs a design. Apple and Google have developed a design language for iOS and Android, respectively, that ensures that if you use the official recommended UI controls in your App, you can either use the default theme colors, or you can borrow some nice color schemes from existing products, The App can basically achieve “not ugly”. If you look at the default apps of the official system, almost all of them are permutations and combinations of system controls, which have no design cost for you.

Recommended reading

Getting Started: How do indie developers solve backend problems

Getting started: I can write code, how to do indie development

Step up: How do developers use data analytics to achieve exponential revenue growth

Advanced: How indie Developers can Monetize In-app Purchases — Subscription

To read more, head overMy paid column, KyXu, teaches you how to monetize independently, this is a column that teaches indie developers how to make money and monetize your development skills quickly!