Recently, one young developer, Artturi Jalli, created an app in just six hours that now generates $1,500 per month. Sounds like an incredible side hustle, doesn’t it?
Artturi Jalli
However, there’s a catch: it took over 1,000 hours of marketing to attract users to the app.
In this article, Jalli shares insights on how to build an app that actually gains users.
The biggest mistake
When Artturi first started building apps, he followed the typical newbie playbook:
- Come up with a cool idea;
- Code it up;
- Launch it;
- Hope for the best.
Artturi Jalli expected users to rush to his new app. But... they didn't. It was a bit of an eye-opener. He eventually realized that his entire approach was completely off base. Every step he took, it turned out, was a mistake.
Artturi Jalli's prescription for app success
Instead of just throwing an app out there hoping for the best, a well-thought-out plan is essential. Here's how Artturi Jalli suggests you build a winning app:
- Identify a problem: Start by finding a genuine need or issue that your app can address;
- Build an audience: Before you even think about coding, invest time in gathering a community of interested users;
- Develop the app: That's right; building the app comes last.
Believe it or not, the groundwork – connecting with your future users – takes hundreds of hours before you even start typing the first line of code. Let's explore this approach in more detail.
- Identifying a problem
Forget the "I've got a brilliant idea!" approach. Instead, focus on finding a real problem that people are actively struggling with and desperately seeking solutions for. This requires a bit of detective work.
You don't want to tackle a problem that's already flooded with solutions. Too much competition makes it nearly impossible to stand out. But at the same time, you also don't want to chase a problem that nobody seems to care about.
Let's illustrate with an example:
Imagine you're thinking about building an app that adds color to black-and-white photos. Sounds pretty cool, right?
But before you jump into coding, you need to make sure there's actually a demand for such an app. Essentially, does it solve a genuine problem for a significant number of people?
To test the waters, let's turn to the internet.
For instance, if you type "Black and white image..." into Google, it suggests "Black and white image to color."
This tells us that a lot of people are searching for this type of solution since it appears so readily in Google's suggestions. That's a promising sign!
Next, you can use Google Trends to check if this is a growing trend. For example, searching for "Photo Colorizer" shows a clear upward trend in popularity.
Beyond Google, explore videos, news articles, forums — any place where people might be looking for solutions — to further validate your idea.
And don't forget about the money side of things. If all the existing apps are free, you'll likely struggle to make money with yours. In the photo colorization world, I found many apps charging $5-$10 per month, which is a good sign!
Now, let's assess the competition. A quick Google search reveals roughly 1,000 image colorization tools (based on the allintitle: operator). This tells us two important things:
- There's a market: If there weren't people wanting this solution, there wouldn't be 1,000+ apps trying to provide it;
- The playing field is manageable: It's not completely saturated with hundreds of thousands of competitors. There's still room to create something unique and stand out.
Just for comparison, let's look at the number of photo editor apps out there: over a million! Definitely not ideal.
Based on our research, the photo colorizer app seems like a solid idea. It's a relatively new concept, gaining traction, and doesn't face overwhelming competition.
Once you've validated your idea, it's time to start building a community around it.
- Building an audience
Artturi Jalli knows that getting users to download your creation isn't always easy. He emphasizes that the most challenging part of this process is often marketing – and surprisingly, it's something you should tackle before you even start coding.
Why? Because, as Artturi explains, it's all about building a strong foundation before you build the house.
While traditional marketing like ads, social media posts, and influencer partnerships can be helpful, Artturi champions a free and highly effective strategy: using search engines to your advantage. He believes the key to success is creating valuable content that ranks high on Google.
Imagine, for example, you're thinking about building a cool app that can colorize black and white photos. Artturi suggests you start by writing blog posts like:
- "How to Colorize an Image Using AI"
- "Helpful AI Tools for Image Editing"
- "Best AI Tools for Colorizing Photos"
- "Top AI Image Enhancement Tools"
These types of posts attract people who are actively looking for ways to colorize photos – your ideal audience! It's a fantastic way to subtly introduce your app to them without being overly pushy.
Artturi puts his money where his mouth is. He wrote a blog post about the best AI image colorization tools and, wouldn't you know it, it's currently ranked at the top of Google search results! That means he's essentially considered an expert on the topic by Google.
This one blog post has attracted over 15,000 readers in just a few months. That's a lot of people who are genuinely interested in colorizing photos – a highly targeted audience for a colorization app!
But here's where Artturi's approach gets truly clever.Instead of immediately promoting his own (hypothetical) app, he decided to run an experiment. He wanted to see how many people he could attract to existing photo colorization apps before even building his own.
He featured an app called Palette.fm as his top recommendation in his blog post.
To track the results, he partnered with Palette.fm, earning a small commission whenever someone buys the app through his blog. This simple strategy generates about $1,000 per month!
This experiment showed Artturi two important things:
- There's a real market for this type of app. The money he's making shows that people are willing to pay for a good photo colorization tool.
- He's built a ready-made audience. He now has a group of people who are interested in this kind of solution, and if he were to build his own app, he could easily promote it to them.
Artturi believes strongly in this data-driven approach. Instead of just building an app and hoping for the best, he focuses on gathering information and making smart decisions.
Basically, his process looks like this:
- Find a real problem: Identify something people are struggling with.
- Build a community: Find and connect with people who have that problem.
- Test the waters: See if there's a market for a solution before spending tons of time building it.
Artturi considers this a powerful foundation for app success. While he acknowledges that things can change (trends shift, traffic fluctuates), this approach dramatically improves your chances of building a successful app.
He illustrates this perfectly with his cottage rental app. They published over 400 blog posts to promote it, and without those posts, they would've had zero users.
So, the next time you're thinking about building an app, remember Artturi's advice: build your audience first, and let the data guide your decisions. It could be the key to your app's success!
- Developing the app
Once Artturi Jalli has established a strong online presence and cultivated a loyal audience for his app's concept, the time comes to bring it to life. He recommends embracing the MVP approach (Minimum Viable Product) to streamline the development process and avoid unnecessary work.
Instead of striving for perfection from the outset, Artturi suggests building a simple, functional version that delivers the core value proposition. Think of it like baking a cake: you wouldn't spend hours decorating it before ensuring the batter is cooked properly, right?
He also encourages developers to leverage existing resources whenever possible. For instance, if a free Python library can handle the core functionality of photo colorization, why spend months reinventing the wheel? Artturi believes it's far more efficient to utilize readily available tools and iterate from there.
From there, it's all about growth and refinement.
Depending on the developer's ambition, the journey can evolve into something truly remarkable.
- Gather feedback and nurture your user base. Listen to what your users have to say and tailor your app to their needs;
- Make data-driven decisions. Utilize data and analytics to understand how users interact with your app and make informed improvements;
- Scale up gradually. As your user base grows, consider expanding your app's features and functionalities;
- Introduce new features and promote them effectively. Continuously enhance your app with exciting updates and ensure your users know about them;
- Seek investment and partnerships. If you envision your app growing into something truly significant, consider pitching your vision and strategy to investors.
What might begin as a modest project, like a $1,000-a-month photo colorization app, could potentially evolve into a million-dollar AI image editing powerhouse. Artturi's approach demonstrates that with a smart, data-driven strategy, even a seemingly simple idea can blossom into something extraordinary.
Conclusion
Artturi Jalli knows that the only way to attract users to an app is through serious marketing. It takes hundreds of hours — even before the app is built. The goal is to get the app in front of the right audience.
Building an app randomly and hoping for users is like trying to win the lottery. It's not a reliable strategy. Instead, Jalli advises building an audience with a specific problem and then solving it.
