C H A P T E R  3

You’re Not Selling an Application, You’re Selling a Culture

Hopefully, you have answered all my questions about your Android applications that were laid out in Chapter 2. For the sake of argument, let’s say that you have a good start on the Android application itself. If you haven’t, then I will give you something else that you can think about while you are constructing the next hit Android application.

I never like to make promises that I can’t keep, so let’s talk about how much money you will probably make. It probably won’t be a lot, at least not at first. If you go to the Android Market, you will find that a lot of applications that have been abandoned by developers. You can usually tell because there have only been 50 to 100 downloads, a sign that the application may have tried to capitalize on a trend that peaked too soon. That, or the developer tried to do too much and put out an application that was shoddy, and the application received too many bad reviews. In other words, the developer was probably hoping to put his or her application out on the Market in order to make a quick buck. This is a short-term goal, and although you might make some money, it won’t last long.

Think about the applications that are huge successes. Start by thinking of the ones that have passed the test of time, for any platform. This can be difficult, as the mobile application world isn’t even a decade old, to this writing. I can think of a few applications that have made their mark, like Dropbox, Evernote, Pandora, Shazam, Google Googles, and Barcode Scanner, as well as other gaming/entertainment applications like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope.

Perhaps it would be better to think about any software that has made its mark. I’m sure that we all use programs from Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and other programs from billion-dollar software companies on a daily basis.

Let me take a giant step in this illustration and ask you to think about anything that has been a huge success. I’m talking about Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Lady Gaga, or Oprah. What these companies and celebrities sell isn’t their products, it is a culture.