How much does it cost to create an application or the whole truth about money
Having learned that I am engaged in the development of mobile applications, my friends from time to time, ask: "how much does it cost to develop an application?". And I honestly answer: "from 200 dollars." The application will write on the screen HELLO WORLD, it will not be allowed into the store because of the “bad user experience”, but the application will work!
The most amazing thing is that a huge number of developers really create something for $ 3,000 and even post it on the App Store.
Some stories of Russian developers strikingly resemble a wandering fairy-tale story "about a magic helper": in the spirit of a humpback salmon or a goldfish. Designers and composers appear from nowhere and create exciting things for free, and programmers with the humility of Cinderella write ingenious code at night ...
')
One would like to look into their eyes and ask heartfully:
- Guys, what are you from which fairy tale?
And then in my harsh reality, developing a high-quality, if not a big app for the Appstore is long, difficult and expensive.
The main items of expenditure when creating a project:
The entire layout will be made on the example of our application " MyEmotions ". The application is free, all functionality can be viewed.
When designing an application, we set the task to create a “tool”, which, when properly applied, allows a person to consult with his subconscious and receive an adequate and accurate response from him.
But back to our budgets.
For all items of expenditure are "adequate" market prices. That is, those prices for which you can hire a competent specialist or outsourcing company. Obviously, you can find a person for pizza and beer, but this is not a professional approach. So you can make one application, but not build a studio.
Before you start working on a project - you need to think of it. We will need: a general concept of the project, art bible, defining the style of the project, sketches, examples of content, a diagram of the screens and a description of the main technologies. The more invented at the beginning, the faster and easier to do later.
The saddest thing is trying to save money at this stage. We spent too little time on this work and then paid too much alterations.
For ourselves, we have developed a principle - at the design stage, we must make the documents so that the project can be given to outsource and be sure that everything will be done as it should.
5 weeks, 40 hours, $ 65 per hour (cumulatively) and the first $ 13,000 leaked from the project budget.
From the point of view of an ordinary person, artists work not just leisurely, they work delightfully slowly. Moreover, most of this work takes place either in their head, or in small changes in color, shape and angle completely imperceptible to an unprepared person. This leads to the fact that a full-sized, full-color picture with a decent level of detail requires two full working days.
No, a separate drawing can be made in a day. But if you need to make them 62 as in our project - do not even hope. 2 days is a minimum. At the same time, some of the pictures will not work and they will have to be redone. Sad arithmetic - 20 hours per image, 20 dollars per hour, 62 images in the application - and, voilĂ , we just spent 25 thousand dollars.
We didn’t have a lot of 3D and animations - doors open, elevators drive, mirrors turn. Only 5 independent scenes. On modeling, skinning and other 3D-shny fancy took 210 hours.
Another 250 hours of time ate the rendering of all the screens of the application. If they ask me what they drew there for so long, I won’t be able to answer. But I know for sure - especially it could not be faster - no one was freebie and everyone worked in full force.
I noticed a strange pattern: if you ask a programmer how long it will take to create a “visible” product in terms of size, the answer is always the same - 2-3 months. It seems that the projects are different and the platforms and languages ​​Ђ “but still 2-3 months.
Even more strange that is true. In two months, you will have an almost working prototype of your application. They will be impossible to use, but most of the functionality will be present.
And time after time, in different projects, it turns out that modifying the functional to the mind requires 3-4 times more time than prototyping, which the programmer ego cleverly passes for the finished product.
In our project, we had to throw out a prototype created on the Cocos2D engine, since the cheap pseudo-3D we wanted to use looked shabby and writhed like a half-dead cockroach under the user's fingers, instead of fluttering with a butterfly and flowing with silk.
In fact - programming until almost release took 8 months and cost $ 45,000
In today's AppStore, there are more applications than residents in Irkutsk. This means that just a regular application will not interest anyone - neither buyers, nor journalists, nor Apple itself. There must be something in the app that really distinguishes it from the rest. This may be unusual physics, unique gameplay, special speech recognition technology or psychedelic art style. But whatever it is, it will take time and that means money.
In our application, scientific psychology has become so unique (as opposed to popular, which is in women's magazines). To obtain primary data, we conducted a large-scale study in which more than 500 people from several dozens of countries took part. We had to pay for the creation of the methodology, and for attracting people to research, for statistical processing and for scientific expertise by the psychology department of St. Petersburg State University, for reviewing the literature on the topic (yes, having scientific degrees in psychology, we still ordered literature reviews on a given topic , to be completely self-confident) ...
As a result, we obtained a projective technique that works on a mobile device and ensures accuracy in diagnosing a person’s emotional state more than 75%. Luscher with his dough nervously smoking on the sidelines.
The total budget for the development of "psychomechanics", as we called the scientific side of our application, was 10,000 dollars.
The application requires depth. Otherwise, the user will have “nothing” to use in it. In the navigator, these are maps, in evil birds there are levels, in our application there are 5 different use cases and 62 possible outcomes. When multiplied, they give 310 different interpretations of the result. 310 moderately short, meaningful, meaningful, beautiful and literate texts.
This is a hell of a lot - it's a whole novel, consisting only of short chapters. Our texts were written jointly by a team of psychologists and science fiction writer Svyatoslav Loginov.
The Russian market is small. For a product with a price of a few dollars, it’s not easy to make money in the Russian market, for this you need to initially create something that everyone will like, but it’s sharpened specifically for Russians.
The global market is 50 times bigger. But to do something for him, you need to speak in the language of the client. Each text must be translated by a professional translator and read by a native speaker with the right education and experience. We localized our product (70,000 characters) in English and French. It ate a lot of time, nerves, and $ 3,000 (and yes, it was very inexpensive).
The entrance to the building where our office is located is locked with a security lock. This lock has a unique feature - when you press the buttons and open the door, there is no sound. And although the code works - in half of the cases I have to meet guests who, having pressed the buttons, did not understand that the door is open.
In the application almost any user action should be announced. 43 different actions - and for every sound. And there must be music. And it should reflect the atmosphere of the application, and in a good way should grow out of the pants of the early 90s MIDI files and sound orchestral polyphony. Some time ago I bought the game Bastion only because of the amazing music - especially since the game is not much more expensive than the album.
We were lucky - the music and sounds were written to us “out of friendship” by Alexander Dmitriev, who voiced projects for Rovio and Mountain Sheep. In our humble application there are 20 minutes of music written especially for us. For all we paid a meager 1000 dollars.
Musical theme of anger
Polishing is such an ugly process when almost nothing changes in the application and everyone is busy. Move there, correct it, reformat here a little, here the behavior is not obvious, but here the application suddenly hung altogether.
It took a month and a half to polish - the work of the artist, the programmer and the project manager. And even now the project is full of rough edges that catch the eye of professionals of all stripes. 6 weeks, $ 20 for an artist, $ 35 for a programmer, $ 15 for a manager (he, thank God, is not on one project) - and now we say goodbye to $ 17,000.
The previous two parts of the article are written about marketing:
How to become a millionaire in the AppStore or a few formulas about promotion and sales. Part 1
and
How to become a millionaire in the AppStore or a few formulas about promotion and sales. Part 2
We spent about $ 10,000 on research and experimentation. They made a successful exit in the Russian AppStore, having received the 3rd place in the category and 40 in the overall rating. But they flew away so fast that they had to study how the market works and what is wrong with us.
We changed the name and icon. The number of downloads increased 10 times. In order to go to the United States and the world it would be necessary 50 000. But we will lay 30 000.
And finally - the whole process has to be managed. Even in a small project, more than 10 people are employed, their work must be coordinated, we must keep in one head what is happening, and what result we want to get in the end. It is necessary to watch the resulting and resolve conflicts. In general, you have to spend money on a person who, during the entire project, does not create a single byte of the application. With a total development time per year - simple arithmetic begins to resemble a horror film series - $ 15, for 40 hours a week, for 50 weeks a year - for that kind of money you can buy a new decent car ...
Yes, it could have been made cheaper.
It could even be made much cheaper.
It was possible to save on many things, but not to do a part.
But was it worth starting to make a tasteless hack? I do not know any secret of success, but I know exactly what to do what you will be proud of yourself.
The most amazing thing is that a huge number of developers really create something for $ 3,000 and even post it on the App Store.
Some stories of Russian developers strikingly resemble a wandering fairy-tale story "about a magic helper": in the spirit of a humpback salmon or a goldfish. Designers and composers appear from nowhere and create exciting things for free, and programmers with the humility of Cinderella write ingenious code at night ...
')
One would like to look into their eyes and ask heartfully:
- Guys, what are you from which fairy tale?
And then in my harsh reality, developing a high-quality, if not a big app for the Appstore is long, difficult and expensive.
The main items of expenditure when creating a project:
| Article | Consumption |
| Application design | $ 13,000 |
| Creating uniqueness | $ 10,000 |
| Graphics production | $ 35,000 |
| Programming | $ 45,000 |
| Text content | $ 5,000 |
| Localization | $ 3,000 |
| Music and sound | $ 1 000 |
| Polishing | $ 17,000 |
| Marketing | $ 30,000 |
| Control | $ 30,000 |
| Total: | $ 189,000 |
The entire layout will be made on the example of our application " MyEmotions ". The application is free, all functionality can be viewed.
When designing an application, we set the task to create a “tool”, which, when properly applied, allows a person to consult with his subconscious and receive an adequate and accurate response from him.
But back to our budgets.
For all items of expenditure are "adequate" market prices. That is, those prices for which you can hire a competent specialist or outsourcing company. Obviously, you can find a person for pizza and beer, but this is not a professional approach. So you can make one application, but not build a studio.
Application Design - $ 13,000
- Designer (for games - game designer) - $ 20 per hour
- Art Director - $ 30 per hour
- Project Manager - $ 15 per hour (half-time)
Before you start working on a project - you need to think of it. We will need: a general concept of the project, art bible, defining the style of the project, sketches, examples of content, a diagram of the screens and a description of the main technologies. The more invented at the beginning, the faster and easier to do later.
The saddest thing is trying to save money at this stage. We spent too little time on this work and then paid too much alterations.
For ourselves, we have developed a principle - at the design stage, we must make the documents so that the project can be given to outsource and be sure that everything will be done as it should.
5 weeks, 40 hours, $ 65 per hour (cumulatively) and the first $ 13,000 leaked from the project budget.
Production graphics - $ 35,000
- 2D artist - $ 20 per hour
- 3D modeler, animator - $ 25 per hour
From the point of view of an ordinary person, artists work not just leisurely, they work delightfully slowly. Moreover, most of this work takes place either in their head, or in small changes in color, shape and angle completely imperceptible to an unprepared person. This leads to the fact that a full-sized, full-color picture with a decent level of detail requires two full working days.
No, a separate drawing can be made in a day. But if you need to make them 62 as in our project - do not even hope. 2 days is a minimum. At the same time, some of the pictures will not work and they will have to be redone. Sad arithmetic - 20 hours per image, 20 dollars per hour, 62 images in the application - and, voilĂ , we just spent 25 thousand dollars.
We didn’t have a lot of 3D and animations - doors open, elevators drive, mirrors turn. Only 5 independent scenes. On modeling, skinning and other 3D-shny fancy took 210 hours.
Another 250 hours of time ate the rendering of all the screens of the application. If they ask me what they drew there for so long, I won’t be able to answer. But I know for sure - especially it could not be faster - no one was freebie and everyone worked in full force.
Programming - 45 000 dollars
- Senior programmer - $ 35 per hour
I noticed a strange pattern: if you ask a programmer how long it will take to create a “visible” product in terms of size, the answer is always the same - 2-3 months. It seems that the projects are different and the platforms and languages ​​Ђ “but still 2-3 months.
Even more strange that is true. In two months, you will have an almost working prototype of your application. They will be impossible to use, but most of the functionality will be present.
And time after time, in different projects, it turns out that modifying the functional to the mind requires 3-4 times more time than prototyping, which the programmer ego cleverly passes for the finished product.
In our project, we had to throw out a prototype created on the Cocos2D engine, since the cheap pseudo-3D we wanted to use looked shabby and writhed like a half-dead cockroach under the user's fingers, instead of fluttering with a butterfly and flowing with silk.
In fact - programming until almost release took 8 months and cost $ 45,000
Creating uniqueness - 10 000 dollars
In today's AppStore, there are more applications than residents in Irkutsk. This means that just a regular application will not interest anyone - neither buyers, nor journalists, nor Apple itself. There must be something in the app that really distinguishes it from the rest. This may be unusual physics, unique gameplay, special speech recognition technology or psychedelic art style. But whatever it is, it will take time and that means money.
In our application, scientific psychology has become so unique (as opposed to popular, which is in women's magazines). To obtain primary data, we conducted a large-scale study in which more than 500 people from several dozens of countries took part. We had to pay for the creation of the methodology, and for attracting people to research, for statistical processing and for scientific expertise by the psychology department of St. Petersburg State University, for reviewing the literature on the topic (yes, having scientific degrees in psychology, we still ordered literature reviews on a given topic , to be completely self-confident) ...
As a result, we obtained a projective technique that works on a mobile device and ensures accuracy in diagnosing a person’s emotional state more than 75%. Luscher with his dough nervously smoking on the sidelines.
The total budget for the development of "psychomechanics", as we called the scientific side of our application, was 10,000 dollars.
Creating text content - $ 5,000
The application requires depth. Otherwise, the user will have “nothing” to use in it. In the navigator, these are maps, in evil birds there are levels, in our application there are 5 different use cases and 62 possible outcomes. When multiplied, they give 310 different interpretations of the result. 310 moderately short, meaningful, meaningful, beautiful and literate texts.
This is a hell of a lot - it's a whole novel, consisting only of short chapters. Our texts were written jointly by a team of psychologists and science fiction writer Svyatoslav Loginov.
Localization - $ 3,000
- 15-25 cents per word
The Russian market is small. For a product with a price of a few dollars, it’s not easy to make money in the Russian market, for this you need to initially create something that everyone will like, but it’s sharpened specifically for Russians.
| Russian | Google translator | Literary translation |
| This state pushes for deep and subtle perception, sharpening the senses and protecting against abrupt actions and decisions. | Harsh actions and decisions. | This is a state of the art fosters sharpening your mind |
The global market is 50 times bigger. But to do something for him, you need to speak in the language of the client. Each text must be translated by a professional translator and read by a native speaker with the right education and experience. We localized our product (70,000 characters) in English and French. It ate a lot of time, nerves, and $ 3,000 (and yes, it was very inexpensive).
Sound and music - 1000 dollars
The entrance to the building where our office is located is locked with a security lock. This lock has a unique feature - when you press the buttons and open the door, there is no sound. And although the code works - in half of the cases I have to meet guests who, having pressed the buttons, did not understand that the door is open.
In the application almost any user action should be announced. 43 different actions - and for every sound. And there must be music. And it should reflect the atmosphere of the application, and in a good way should grow out of the pants of the early 90s MIDI files and sound orchestral polyphony. Some time ago I bought the game Bastion only because of the amazing music - especially since the game is not much more expensive than the album.
We were lucky - the music and sounds were written to us “out of friendship” by Alexander Dmitriev, who voiced projects for Rovio and Mountain Sheep. In our humble application there are 20 minutes of music written especially for us. For all we paid a meager 1000 dollars.
Musical theme of anger
Polishing - $ 17,000
Polishing is such an ugly process when almost nothing changes in the application and everyone is busy. Move there, correct it, reformat here a little, here the behavior is not obvious, but here the application suddenly hung altogether.
It took a month and a half to polish - the work of the artist, the programmer and the project manager. And even now the project is full of rough edges that catch the eye of professionals of all stripes. 6 weeks, $ 20 for an artist, $ 35 for a programmer, $ 15 for a manager (he, thank God, is not on one project) - and now we say goodbye to $ 17,000.
Marketing - $ 30,000
The previous two parts of the article are written about marketing:
How to become a millionaire in the AppStore or a few formulas about promotion and sales. Part 1
and
How to become a millionaire in the AppStore or a few formulas about promotion and sales. Part 2
We spent about $ 10,000 on research and experimentation. They made a successful exit in the Russian AppStore, having received the 3rd place in the category and 40 in the overall rating. But they flew away so fast that they had to study how the market works and what is wrong with us.
We changed the name and icon. The number of downloads increased 10 times. In order to go to the United States and the world it would be necessary 50 000. But we will lay 30 000.
Management - $ 30,000
- Project Manager - $ 15 per hour
And finally - the whole process has to be managed. Even in a small project, more than 10 people are employed, their work must be coordinated, we must keep in one head what is happening, and what result we want to get in the end. It is necessary to watch the resulting and resolve conflicts. In general, you have to spend money on a person who, during the entire project, does not create a single byte of the application. With a total development time per year - simple arithmetic begins to resemble a horror film series - $ 15, for 40 hours a week, for 50 weeks a year - for that kind of money you can buy a new decent car ...
The final
Yes, it could have been made cheaper.
It could even be made much cheaper.
It was possible to save on many things, but not to do a part.
But was it worth starting to make a tasteless hack? I do not know any secret of success, but I know exactly what to do what you will be proud of yourself.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/162121/
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