The iOS store or App Market has exploded in the last few years. New apps make it to the top of the Hit Apps List every day. Flappy Bird, Clash of Clans, and Tiny Wings are just a few of these hit apps. These games are pretty simple, but just how much work goes into developing an application may surprise you. First you must come up with an idea that is unique, something no one has ever thought of before. Once you have your hit new idea, there’s still plenty to do. It’s important to know a couple of things.

Who and why? If you’re creating an app and don’t know who it’s target audience is, or think your target audience is everyone, you have a bit more work to do. Your app should appeal to an audience for some specific reason. Simply put, why would anyone purchase your app? Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon said, “If you build a great experience, customers will tell each other about it. Word of mouth is very powerful.” Hundreds of thousands of applications already exist on the app store. Apps will only be popular if they stand out, and to stand out they need to be special. If it’s not then who’s going to download it?

Once you understand what and why you’re developing your app, the next, and final, step is how. Before you think of seeing the app on the screen, you need to grab a pen and paper. You need to understand your app on paper before you head into programming and true development.

Single out the features your app will support. Where does this button take you and what does that screen do?
Which devices will your app be compatible on? You may have started developing only for iPhone, but what about iPad, Android, etc.
Decide if your app will be a paid app or a free one. According to Udemy.com Apple charges a fee of 30% for every copy of the app sold. That means if you’re charging $1.00 for your app, you’ll only make $0.70 on every copy sold.
Testing is important to make sure on release it’s everything it was meant to be. Decide on how and when you’ll do this.

Once you’ve got this all on paper, it’s finally time to begin the programming phase. There are two ways to go about this. The first way to do this would be hiring a programming team; outsource your application to another company. The cost of this really depends on the difficulty of the app being developed and the team programming it. According to bluecloudsolutions.com, the price could range from $1,000 to $250,000. Your other choice is to program it yourself. Whether you have programming skills or not, there are plenty of free online courses that can teach you the ropes on how to program your app. This again depends a lot on the difficulty of the app, but keep in mind a lot of these online courses only teach the basics and will probably not make you a programming professional by any means, and programming your app with little prior programming knowledge will sure to be stressful. Once you’ve finished all these steps you’ve finally become a published app developer.