Selling an App from Your Blog? Here are Technical Things You Need to Know
Have a great app idea you want to monetize?
Developing and selling an app is a way to take your brand to the next level.
This is popular for blogs and websites in the digital marketing space.
With a web app, your work will be directly attributed to your brand.
It will also leverage the visibility of your blog, given that it is already generating traffic.
Such a task requires a tremendous amount of work and planning.
To get started with your first step, here are the things you should consider:
A High-Performance Environment
A great app can truly uplift your brand’s authority, but a frustrating app can be devastating to your reputation.
As a company, you should always strive to provide consistent quality in everything – from your content to your app.
Even if you manage to get your app working, you still need to measure its performance over time so you can continue to optimize it for the best experience.
It is safe to assume that there will be bugs and several areas of your app that warrants redevelopment. It is near impossible to get everything perfectly on the first try.
Although it is understandable for newly launched apps, making sure everything works as intended should be your top priority post-launch.
Using PaaSProvider
Fortunately, you can make the development, testing, and update process seamless using a Platform as a Service or PaaS cloud environment like PaaSProvider.
PaaSProvider is your one-stop shop for your app development needs.
This means you can take advantage of a web-based dashboard to handle everything from creating backups to deployment.
It supports all major languages such as PHP, .NET, Java, and Python.
This should offer you flexibility regarding imagining and building your app, as well as finding professional developers who can help.
A key advantage for blogs is that PaaSProvider can easily be integrated with major Content Management Systems like WordPress and Joomla.
It is also worth noting that it uses Solid State Disks (SSDs) to handle your data; significantly boosting your app's performance and usability.
At launch, PaaSProvider enables you to watch how your app performs in real-time.
This includes technical information such as memory usage and traffic.
You can also refer to the available historical data to help you identify aspects of your app that requires further optimization.
App Marketing Strategy with your Blog
After developing and launching a great app, the next step is to make sure people will find it.
Establishing the core promotion channels such as social media, paid search ads, and search engine optimization is a step in the right direction.
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Additionally, you need to incorporate some of the essential steps to successfully market your app:
1 - Identify Unique Selling Points – Answer this by taking a look at how your app fares against competitors. Does it provide better results? Is it made specifically for a particular demographic?
2 - Optimize Keywords – When making your app available for mobile app stores, be sure its name and description contain keywords and common search terms from the audience you are targeting.
3 - Use Landing Pages – To generate more leads and direct them to your web app, make sure you use landing pages – precisely click-through pages and product pages. A tool like Instapage and Lander can help you with this.
4 - Encourage Feedback – You can leverage sites like Yelp to generate buzz around your app and encourage valuable feedback. This can also be done by promoting your app through social media.
5 - Market for Mobile – If you want to accommodate the growing number of mobile users, be sure your app is fully responsive. This will ensure that the user experience remains consistent.
Prepare to Fortify Your Foundations
Lastly, you need to make sure you can keep up with the growth of your app.
You also have to make sure that everything in your back end is in top condition.
Eventually, your app would've grown to a point where a shared hosting plan just won't cut it.
This is why you should prioritize upgrading to at least a VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting plan to minimize or eliminate downtimes and server crashes.
A VPS server should be enough for the tremendous demands of a web app.
Remember that speed and reliability are critical if you want to provide the best experience for your users.
When possible, you should opt for a host that offer SSD VPS servers.
You may also use a Content Delivery Network to mitigate further the load of running your app.
This is extremely useful if your audience is coming from different parts of the world.
Apart from the accessibility of your app, you should also protect your site from hackers and other security threats.
Bear in mind that the possibility of this occurring increases as your app gains popularity.
At the very least, you should protect yourself from potential malware attacks using a tool like Sucuri.
Conclusion
Offering a web app is a noble cause that requires you to leverage all the help you can get.
You must also have the technical awareness of developing, deploying, and optimizing an app.
The good news is that the online market is now filled with tools and platforms that can help any endeavor possible.
At this point, it is only a matter of having a very good idea and the dedication to keep pushing your app forward.