Keep your app, or sell it?

Part two ended with a real app on your phone and two people from your club tapping through it. Then one of them asks the question that changes things: “Can I have this?” This part is about the three honest answers, and why you should pick one before you touch the stores.

1. A tool for one is a finished product

If the app fixes your Tuesday and nobody else needs it, you are done, and done is rare. Keep it on your own phone, keep the project folder, and update it when the phone’s software changes. No developer account, no review, no privacy policy. A surprising number of useful apps live their whole lives this way, and the people who built them got exactly what they wanted.

The trap: feeling that an app “should” be public. It should not. It should do its job.

2. Giving it away buys you users and their complaints

If other people have your problem, a free app is the fastest way to find out what they need, because they will tell you, often rudely. You get the first ten users (the next post in the Start shelf is about finding them by hand), you get a list of the screens they wanted and did not find, and you get a reason to keep it current.

What free costs you: the store accounts ($99 a year for Apple, $25 once for Google), a privacy page, a support email you actually read, and an afternoon every time the phones update. Budget those as the price of the feedback.

3. Charging: what small apps actually make

Most small apps make a little, a few make a living, and the screenshots of monthly revenue that fill social media are the worst possible guide. One of the best-known solo app makers has said plainly that it took years to reach $10,000 a month, and that many posted numbers are fake.

The useful facts:

• Apple keeps 15% of what you charge under $1 million a year through its small business programme, and 30% above it. Google is similar.
• A subscription earns more over time but has to keep earning it: the app has to improve, or people leave.
• A one-time price is simpler, and fine for a tool that does one job well.
• A tip jar, where the app is free and people pay if they like it, works for apps with a community behind them, such as a club.

Charge when the app saves someone time or money they can name. “Saves the treasurer three hours a week” is a price. “Nice to have” is not.

4. The plumbing, in order

People do this in the wrong order and lose months. The right one:

1. The support email and the privacy page. Both stores require them before you can list anything.
2. The store accounts. Apple’s needs an ID check and a few days. Google’s needs ID too, and for a new personal account, the closed test: 12 testers for 14 days before anyone else can download.
3. Payments, only if you chose to charge. Inside the app, digital things must go through Apple’s and Google’s own payment systems, which take their cut. Physical things and real-world services (a booking, a meal, a lesson) can use a normal payment provider.
4. A company, last. You can sell as a sole trader in most countries. Set up a company when the money or the risk says so, not before.

5. Decide before the stores

Every one of those steps depends on the choice: a private tool needs none of them, a free app needs the first two, a paid one needs all four. Deciding after you have started the listings means redoing them.

So decide this week. Write one line at the top of your project notes: keep, give, or sell. Then do only the plumbing that line needs. Everything else in this series was about making the app. This is the part where you make it someone else’s too, on purpose.

If you are still at part one, start there: pick a starter in the App Builder, rename it, and get your own Tuesday problem onto your phone first.