[Journey] Building an iOS & Android App Empire

Best of luck

Just received an email from Facebook. They disabled Interstital ads for one of my older apps, because it is violating their 2.1 policy (accidental clicks to cause wrong clicks on ads), but thats bullshit.

When people are navigating through my app and open a new page the interstitial ad will show. I even built in a threshold, which prevents every push to show an ad. How is this violating the policy? Are people navigating/open pages accidentally? What a load of crap.

And of course, they didn't even tell me the exact reason. I sent an appeal now.

Can you point me to the resources you used to learn app development?

Oh god, don't change avatar too frequently, I can't even recognize you guys!

Geeze, now I am eager to change my avatar too...

Markus Aurelius said:

Can you point me to the resources you used to learn app development?

Click to expand...

Basically just on YouTube. There is all you need to know. Otherwise you can also check out Udemy.

Lesson 2: Apple Store or Google Play Store?

People message me and ask me which one is better: Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

Here are the cons and pros of both and also my experience:

Google Play

Pros:
+ Easy to get in (only $25 fee)
+ They don't have a high standard (you can also publish really low quality apps)
+ No one is trying to have an influence on your app / content / design
+ Most people are using an Android device
+ Lots of users, especially from Tier 3 countries (basically those countries, where it is a privilege to have an iPhone)

Cons:
- Lots of competition because its so easy to get in
- The algorithm became quite weird. They have shadow banning and other stuff, which sometimes makes no sense.
- Google will easily ban/suspend your app once you are on their radar
- Lots of blackhat stuff going on, where people are buying fake reviews and installs and also try to report your app once you get ranked
- No access to the chinese market (Google is banned there)
- Not really sustainable (if you are not a big company) because of all the stuff above...you never know if your app/account survives tomorrow
- Google is not really helpful, they don't care about the developers, for example, they are not even replying to messages or appeals


My opinion on the Google Play Store:
You can get lots of traffic once you get ranked for the right terms, but once you reach this kinda level there will be many guys trying to take your app down. They are going to write fake reviews They are going to mass report your apps, etc. In my opinion, this happens because there is too much competition. Google makes it way to easy for people to create an account. Some guys I know have like 10 developer accounts. Once one of them get banned they just move on to another one or they are using them all at the same time.


Apple App Store:

Pros:
+ It is way more democratic than Google. You always have someone to talk to.
+ They are way more tolerant once your app got approved
+ You have access to the chinese market (50% of chinese smartphone users have an iOS device - thats maybe 500+ million people!)
+ Not too much competition, because its harder to get in
+ Not much Blackhatstuff going on, people are not willing to lose their account over a blackhat technique
+ Apple gives you lots of insights and data on your app, all kinda statistics
+ The algorithm of their App Store is much better
+ The user-interface of their developer dashboard is way easier to use
+ Ad earnings are higher
+ It is more sustainable because Apple won't easily suspend your account

Cons:
- It is difficult to get an Apple developer account (check out the link below)
- The developer account costs $99 per year (Google's dev account is $25 one time fee)
- Apple employees trying to influence your app content and design by rejecting the app and telling you what to change
- Apps need to have a high standard and some minimum functions to get approved
- App approval really depends on the specific employee. Some will directly approve and others will reject you over and over again
- Less total users than Android
- You need a Macbook/MacOS to compile and upload the apps through Xcode
- Depending on the functions/permissions of the app you need to explain to Apple why you need, for example, access to to the camera, microphone and other files

Here is a thread on the Apple forum (remove it if you think its violating BHW policy), where people can't create an developer account. This shit has been going on for months/years. No one is addressing it. I had the same problem. I paid for the account...and a few days later the payment gets cancelled and nothing happens:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/126314

My opinon on the Apple Store:
It is way more easy going. You dont need ot be afraid your account gets banned suddenly. However, its quite annoying Apple employees are going to reject apps and say stuff like "you need to add more native Apple functions" and stuff like this. Also, if you don't know how to code, better skip Apple. Don't even try to upload a low quality app, they are going to reject it over and over again. They only want apps, which are helping their App Store to improve and to provide Apple users with the best possible quality/content.

nakamura said:

Google Play:

You can get lots of traffic once you get ranked for the right terms, but once you reach this kinda level there will be many guys trying to take your app down. They are going to write fake reviews They are going to mass report your apps, etc. In my opinion, this happens because there is too much competition. Google makes it way to easy for people to create an account. Some guys I know have like 10 developer accounts. Once one of them get banned they just move on to another one or they are using them all at the same time.

Apple App Store:

Here is a thread on the Apple forum (remove it if you think its violating BHW policy), where people can't create an developer account. This shit has been going on for months/years. No one is addressing it. I had the same problem. I paid for the account...and a few days later the payment gets cancelled and nothing happens:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/126314

Click to expand...

Based on your experience
• accounts do get suspended on both stores but Google Play higher chance of suspension with no support from them.
• the solution is to buy multiple accounts at the same time or at different times in both stores.

MetDark said:

Based on your experience
• accounts do get suspended on both stores but Google Play higher chance of suspension with no support from them.
• the solution is to buy multiple accounts at the same time or at different times in both stores.

Click to expand...

Yup, exactly.

Also, it is way harder to make an Apple Developer account. Basically you need an aged Apple ID and the name of the account needs to fit the name of the credit card otherwise you will run into several problems.

nakamura said:

Yup, exactly.

Also, it is way harder to make an Apple Developer account. Basically you need an aged Apple ID and the name of the account needs to fit the name of the credit card otherwise you will run into several problems.

Click to expand...

Harder usually means more expensive
It sucks that even if you do the right thing and you still get ban even if it's not your fault (like many things in life)

Not sure whether you can answer this but do you have any recommendations about where to buy accounts?
What are your thoughts about Huawei Harmony OS apps?
(https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/deveco_studio/)

MetDark said:

Harder usually means more expensive
It sucks that even if you do the right thing and you still get ban even if it's not your fault (like many things in life)

Not sure whether you can answer this but do you have any recommendations about where to buy accounts?
What are your thoughts about Huawei Harmony OS apps?
(https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/deveco_studio/)

Click to expand...

I am not a big fan of buying such accounts, because you never know whether the creator left any footprints or not. It could be possible they created the accounts, sell it to you and one months later they get disabled. Especially with Google Developer accounts the chance is very high.

Before I saw some guys selling dev accounts on here. Well, to make an Google Developer account is not really difficult, the difficult part is not to leave footprint. Not sure if those sellers are careful.

I recently saw this about Huawei and also saw they launched their own App Store (App Gallery or something like this) but I am not really sure if its worth it to get into this. Android and iOS got the traffic.

Games - for Google Play
Apps - for App Store

nakamura said:

I am not a big fan of buying such accounts, because you never know whether the creator left any footprints or not. It could be possible they created the accounts, sell it to you and one months later they get disabled. Especially with Google Developer accounts the chance is very high.

Before I saw some guys selling dev accounts on here. Well, to make an Google Developer account is not really difficult, the difficult part is not to leave footprint. Not sure if those sellers are careful.

I recently saw this about Huawei and also saw they launched their own App Store (App Gallery or something like this) but I am not really sure if its worth it to get into this. Android and iOS got the traffic.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I understand more now!

2nd Flutter app is ready! Still waiting for Google Adsense/Admob to send the verification PIN to my address. Once it arrived and I verified the account I will make a developer account on the same gmail and start uploading the apps.

For me the most annoying part is always to write a description. Always need to find the balance between using different keywords and making the text attractive. Its like writing a product description. What is even more annoying is translating the description into all the other languages and copy paste them.

Another time consuming part are the screenshots. Have to make them look great, compelling and interesting. I really try to make them as high quality as possible, so I don't really take random screenshots and insert them. Sames goes for the App Icon. I try to make it as best as I can.

Okay guys, this is exciting:

I made a new app with Flutter, which is quite simple but actually really useful for users. Right now I am not quite sure if there is any demand, because its something I came up with randomly when I was playing around with my iPhone. Therefore this App is only for iOS first.

Also, since I don't know if there is an actual demand I don't think is any existing keyword with monthly searches or such. Therefore I will buy ads on TikTok, Google Adwords, Facebook and Instagram (I know they are the same, but I will use different ad groups for each to check how is the conversation rate and CPI).

I won't monetize this app with ads, but with in-app purchases. This is exciting for me, because it's the first time I am "selling" something through apps. I hope I can learn a lot of things by doing this.

Right now I just finished the english version, but I am planning to translate the whole app into several other languages. It will be the first time I am translating an app, so no idea how long this is going to take.

This app is a very serious project to me and I will focus more on branding (coming up with a brand name, will create an IG page, etc.)

The App Store accept Flutter apps easily?

mnrfas said:

The App Store accept Flutter apps easily?

Click to expand...

It really depends. From my opinion it totally gets down to the person/employee who is going to check the app...there is absolutely no "standard".

The good thing about Apple is they are checking the app just within hours! On Google it always take a few days. One time it took more than a week on Google. On Apple I usually wait just for a few hours.

All the wishes for the journey

I will bookmark this. Thank you for sharing.

nakamura said:

Okay guys, this is exciting:

I made a new app with Flutter, which is quite simple but actually really useful for users. Right now I am not quite sure if there is any demand, because its something I came up with randomly when I was playing around with my iPhone. Therefore this App is only for iOS first.

Also, since I don't know if there is an actual demand I don't think is any existing keyword with monthly searches or such. Therefore I will buy ads on TikTok, Google Adwords, Facebook and Instagram (I know they are the same, but I will use different ad groups for each to check how is the conversation rate and CPI).

I won't monetize this app with ads, but with in-app purchases. This is exciting for me, because it's the first time I am "selling" something through apps. I hope I can learn a lot of things by doing this.

Right now I just finished the english version, but I am planning to translate the whole app into several other languages. It will be the first time I am translating an app, so no idea how long this is going to take.

This app is a very serious project to me and I will focus more on branding (coming up with a brand name, will create an IG page, etc.)

Click to expand...

I am currently occupied with exactly the same challenge. My app has a very great and interesting idea, but the keyword does not exist or has at least few search queries. I have to market my brand myself. What ideas do you have for this?

Currently I use for advertising:

1. google ads
2. youtube -> created my own videos but I hardly ever call them up :/
3. facebook different groups

Exciting journey for sure!

What tool do you use for keyword research?

Good luck!