🚀 Add to Chrome – It’s Free - YouTube Summarizer
Category: App Development
Tags: appsdevelopmentideasmarketvalidation
Entities: Adam LidleAstroFruit NinjaJack FrickSwipe the CatTik Tok
00:00
My apps have generated over $1.7 million downloads and have made over 1.19 million in app store sales. And for the first time ever, I'm going to show you my exact process.
I'll be building Swipe the Cat, a fun game where you swipe the
00:18
Cat, and I'll guide you through every step of the process so you can follow along the journey and see just how I build apps. In this video, I'll show you not only how I come up with an app idea, but how I validate the idea to work out whether it's even a good idea in the
00:34
first place. Then in the next video, I'll guide you through every step of the process to turn that idea into reality into a real product and how to actually execute and build.
Then in the final video of this series, I'll share with you my secrets of launching the app and
00:51
the distribution methods I will use. I could probably make this a paid course, but nah, I'll release it for free on YouTube instead.
By the end of this video, you'll know exactly how I come up with app ideas and validate whether they're even worth building. If you're new here, my name is Adam Lidle.
Hi.
01:08
I've been building apps now for 5 years. But in the past year and a half, things have really taken off.
In the process, I've learned a lot about building apps, what works, what doesn't work. I made a bunch of mistakes, and I've had some home runs.
I started building with over
01:24
$200,000 of debt to my name. My last company collapsed and I was silly enough to go personally guarantor all of the loans and subsequently I lost everything.
My home, my cars, relationships, everything just fell apart. I set out to build apps as a
01:40
personal challenge and to actually start contributing to the world and putting something positive out there again. Originally, I didn't charge for these apps, but later on I did.
And that's when I realized this is actually a career. This is actually a viable way to
01:56
make a living. Now I'm debtree.
I went from living in my car to a roof over my head and being able to provide for my family again. All thanks to building apps.
And I wholeheartedly believe that you can do it, too. If you're starting
02:11
with nothing, just remember you're actually $200,000 better off than what I was when I started. So let's go.
It's one of the most common questions I get. How do I actually come up with app ideas?
And the simple answer is simple. Stop looking in all the same spots as
02:27
everyone else. Get away from your MacBook, get away from the computer, live life, and listen to people in the real world.
But that's kind of a skill in its own. Being able to see an opportunity and then come up with a solution.
Turns out it's not as simple
02:44
as you think. And if you find yourself just not able to come up with ideas, maybe you just need to exercise that muscle a little bit more.
And the easiest way to do that is just start small. Sometimes the hardest step is that first step.
It's kind of like going
02:59
for a jog. Instead of thinking about the whole distance you go on a jog, it's much easier just to focus on taking that first step when you step outside your house.
Once it's done, just focus on the next step and so on. going for a jog, running a marathon, building a product.
03:14
It's just a series of small steps. So, just start building something.
Get started somewhere. Your first idea doesn't need to be a big grand idea.
Doesn't need to change the world. It's just important to get that first step underway.
And then as you're building
03:31
your app, something really interesting happens. You start to think of new ideas and new ways of thinking.
The thing about this journey is that it kind of reshapes your way of thinking without you even realizing. There are five steps to coming up with an idea that will
03:46
actually work. Finding inspiration and setting goals, early conceptualization, technical validation, like can you actually build the thing?
Market validation and idea refinement. Finding inspiration and setting goals.
My app idea was born after seeing how
04:03
successful launches on X have become. I did a video recently about Jack Frick's success, how he created a simple app with mass appeal and was able to break out of the X builder bubble and he proved that X may be a viable distribution channel for app launches.
04:20
And this got me inspired, wanted to create something super simple with massive appeal, something that could potentially go viral. The inspiration is simple and the goal kind of writes itself.
The app needs to be simple. I want it to go viral.
I don't want to
04:35
spend months building this thing. And it has to be fun.
Setting goals is super important because then you start to look out for ideas that tick all the boxes. I find it really important to be super intentional about what you aim to achieve.
Like making an app that
04:50
generates $10,000 a month might sound good, but don't make your entire idea based around that simple metric. Get involved with the process and start thinking a lot more about it.
like what do you actually want to achieve? Is it to learn a new skill, try something new,
05:07
or perhaps you're looking to get better at a specific part of the app development cycle? Start thinking about it like a challenge and challenge yourself to a simple metric.
Release the app within 2 weeks, reach 100,000 downloads, go viral on Tik Tok, that
05:23
sort of thing. Be intentional, be specific.
One thing that's been captivating me lately has been that thumbwip trend on Tik Tok. and you may have seen it.
You swipe your thumb in time to the music and the video plays behind it and it makes it look like you're actually interacting with the
05:39
video. It's entertaining, it's fun, and it's viral trend happening right now.
Now, think about how the app will look, what it will do, and how it will actually work. But it's important not to get too stuck at the bigger picture vision here.
Just a rough idea will be
05:55
fine, and limit your thinking to just a single feature or two. really focus on those single features.
I don't like to look at competitors during this stage because it can impact the thought process behind my app. Just seeing how others are tackling the problem changes
06:11
my thinking and I end up just making the same thing that they've made. Instead, I like to think about the core feature, work out how someone might actually use it.
For my viral swipe game, that thought process was really easy. I want it to be fun, an app that replicates the
06:28
viral Tik Tok video format, but it needs to be interactive because the key here is I want it to be fun and enjoyable. Maybe even turning it into a little game.
Next step, let's see if this is actually technically possible. Conceptualization works well in your
06:44
head, but sometimes you build the thing and just doesn't turn out the way that you wanted it to. Can you actually pull this off?
Can you turn your basic idea into a basic proof of concept? Creating a proof of concept lets you see how the app would actually work.
And immediately
06:59
you may notice some issues that you wouldn't have found out at the ideation stage and it doesn't necessarily translate into the app that you envisioned. I spent the afternoon building a simple prototype with watermelons and apples and you just swipe to chop it.
I used AI to generate
07:16
the videos and then created the code for the video to play on the swipe action. Here I've been able to pull on my existing projects, specifically my auto captions app.
There was some code I built that allowed fast video scrubbing. So now when you swipe down, it scrubs
07:31
the video, giving the appearance of motion. It's kind of clunky, but it works for the prototype.
And immediately I found some issues. Using fruit is dynamic and fun, but it kind of looks like a cheap ripoff of Fruit Ninja, and it's just a little bit boring.
I mean,
07:48
how many times can you chop through till we get bored, right? And this is why the proof of concept is so important.
The idea you have in your head sometimes just doesn't translate well into an app. Sometimes it's clunky or difficult to achieve.
Other times it's just boring, just won't work. I think we can get
08:04
caught up in the technical elements here. In this case, I was focusing too much on making the video interactive and not thinking about the elements that would actually be shown on screen.
When I play tested it, it was boring. It lacks something and it kind of looked like a teu version of Fruit Ninja, but
08:21
it worked. Technically, it worked.
There's something here. So, now I've reached this roadblock.
There is a glimmer of something interesting here. It's kind of novel.
It could be fun, but how do I make it into an actual app that people would actually want to use?
08:38
First, let's see what type of games people actually want to play. I want to move far far away from the fruit swiping action because it's just been done.
It's at this stage that I actually do some market research. I want to find out what sort of game themes people actually seek
08:54
out on the app store. And a great resource for finding keywords is by using the most searched keywords tool released recently by Astro.
You can filter by country, genre, and popularity. I filtered by games within the United States with a popularity over 40.
And these results are shown ranked
09:10
by popularity with the most popular at top. But I want to filter down a little bit further.
I want to find what genre people are actually searching for. What theme can I use within the game to appeal to a bigger audience?
Market research can inform the direction your
09:25
app goes. Sometimes it's cosmetic like a theme.
Other times you need to pivot even further. Using a tool like Astro gives you a good indication of how big the market is and how competitive it is.
Quickly. This shows me some fun trends.
Offline games has a huge market. A lot
09:42
of people are actually looking for ways to play games without the internet. Noted.
Car games. Maybe you can swipe the car to drive it.
Staple games. A game where you swipe to staple paper perhaps.
Imposter games? Probably not.
That's a bit more suited to a game like
09:59
Among Us. Two-player games, free games, puzzle games, New York Times, cooking games.
That's kind of a promising game idea, but I want to stay away from fruits and vegetables, so it's not for me. Epic Games, Squid Game, shooting games, cat games.
That sounds promising.
10:17
Next, I move to the Astro app and do some searches for cat game and cat games. Cat games has a popularity of 66 and a difficulty of 81, with only one app actually targeting the exact match keyword in the top 10 listings.
Cat game has a popularity of 45 and a difficulty
10:34
of 84 with only two apps actually targeting the exact match keyword in the top 100 listings. So that covers the app store portion.
But my goal is to have mass appeal, not just app store searches. So I turn to Google Trends and check whether people are actually
10:50
searching for this on the search engine. Yes, they are.
And surprisingly, more people search cat game on Google, but more people search cat games on the App Store. That's it.
That's the theme. I can see it now.
We pat the cat. We bop the cat on the nose.
We scare the cat.
11:06
With each swipe, we can do more fun and interesting things than just cutting fruit. The app can hook into the existing app store trend.
And if I get it to rank in the top spots for cat game or cat games, I'll get an endless supply of downloads forever. I validated that the app has appeal outside the app store
11:23
itself. And this is important for launching the app and promoting it.
So to recap, set clear goals and inspiration before you even start. Know why you're actually building.
Keep your first idea simple and focused. One or
11:38
two ideas max. Don't get stuck comparing yourself to others.
Focus on your concept first and your competitors later. Always start with simple technical validation first.
Build a quick prototype or proof of concept. See if it actually works.
If it's clunky, boring, or just doesn't seem to work,
11:55
pivot early or abandon the project. altogether.
The prototype will tell you what's working and what's not. Then validate with real data.
Use keyword tools like Astro and check Google Trends to refine your concept and idea. Stay true to your original goals and your
12:10
original vision. But don't be afraid to change the idea along the way.
In the next video, I'll show you the core principles and processes I use to turn this idea into an actual app. the way I visualize what the app will look like and how I will bring it to life going
12:27
from this to this. And then in the third video of this series, I'll show you the exact launch strategy I'll be using, how I'll be marketing the app, and how I'll get it ranking for my targeted keywords.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss
12:43
out.