Top-Tens.

Back in 2008, shortly after Apple’s App store went live, I decided it would be a good idea to write an iPhone app. I kept hearing stories about how some developer had written an app, posted it to the App store and, within the space of a couple of months, had become rich beyond his wildest dreams.

It sounded straightforward enough – so I thought I’d give it a go; I had nothing to lose, after all. After a bit of thinking, I came up with a unique app idea that I called Top-Tens. The app would show the user the top 10s of any category that they wanted to track – be it books, video games, apps, etc. The app would employ a client-server model where the top 10 lists would be updated on a regular basis on the ‘back end’ meaning that every time the user opened the app, the latest top 10s would be displayed when an internet connection was detected. I ran the idea by a few people and it was met with universal endorsement.

So – all systems go! I bought a Mac mini, (I needed a development machine, obviously). I bought some iPhone programming books; I bought some sandals, grew a beard and went to work. (I didn’t actually do the last two on that list, but I thought it sounded funny).

Luckily, as I had done some programming in the past, it didn’t take me long to get my head around Objective C. This programming language was used by Apple’s Software Development Kit (SDK) which allows you to create the apps.

Five months later, I had my first app in the store. Unfortunatley, Top-Tens just didn’t sell well at all. I made around £2000 in total. Just a tiny bit shy of my £998,000 target!

Part of the problem was:

  • I didn’t know how to market the app, or where to market it.

  • My market research (just a handful of friends) was poor. Friends will always say “that’s great!” even if the idea is pants. They think they’re encouraging you, but in reality, they’re leading you down the wrong path!

  • The app had a fair amount of bugs, which I couldn’t fix. My QA (Quality Assurance) testing before I shipped the app was poor.

There are many other mistakes that I made, most of which I cover in my book.

So… Top-Tens didn’t make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. However, in terms of what I learned during the process, it absolutely did.