Sales Goals

Now that you have a marketing plan, you will know what you will do to market your application when the time is right. You should also make a sales goal chart to plan out how your money will be spent. You might have the money to market your application put aside, or you might have investors who are footing the bill. Either way, you are going to need to keep track of the expenses, and part of making sure that you can at least break even is to see where the money is going to go.

Eventually, you are going to have to come up with a number for what you expect to make. Granted, it’s always good you make more than you expect, but keep in mind that your numbers might be slightly less than you expect. There are many factors to consider, such as paying Google, who takes 30 percent of sales.

Part of calculating this amount depends on how many downloads you want per day. If you set your goal high, then should try to get a lot of publicity in order to make that goal. You could hire a PR firm to do this for you, provided you have the budget.

A great part of setting sales goals is figuring a price for your app. Considering that most applications are at the $0.99 to $2.99 price point, you had better be offering something completely mind-blowing if you go higher. This is where you have to ask yourself, “Can you afford to offer a lower price?” In case you’re launching your app for free at first, I discuss other ways to make money in later chapters, including offering a “Lite” version of your application.

You may have a case where you have a completely unique application; then you definitely have a leg up on your competition (because there isn’t any). Or, as I have said in previous chapters, you might be the type who is offering something better than your competitors. Just think how cool it would be if you were offering it for a cheaper price too!

Let me speak to those developers who are going to be sending out multiple applications into the marketplace. As someone who has done a lot of business on eBay, I always have items that I know will win an auction at a high price, and those that probably won’t sell unless they are priced cheap.

I guarantee that you will never enter into the Android Market with a handful of gems. Chances are, you will have a few diamonds that make you a lot of profits, some rare stones that give you a worthwhile secondary income, some colored stones that will make enough profits to justify staying in business, and a handful of worthless rocks that you are going to have to either abandon or do some serious work on. Similarly, marketing people have four categories: stars, cash cows, problem children, and dogs.

In other words, not every application you develop will succeed. Marketing will help, but the worst application cannot be saved by the best marketing.