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So over the last few months we have been building a Facebook app for a major player in the self-improvement area.  It will be launching to the public very soon and I will keep you posted. I have been involved in building Facebook apps for over 3 years and just thought I would share some thoughts on developing social apps on Facebook.

• Outsource your ads until you get big enough to hire your own team.  The large app developers on the panel saw a 2x higher CPM on in-house ad sales.
• Align user behavior with their motivation. Too many apps try to motivate their users in a direction that conflicts with their current behavior on the app.  Monetization of a social app is like a tight rope balancing act.  If everything is not lined up, your users fall off and leave the app.  But if you can line up your user’s behavior in your app with a monetization method that makes sense to them you will make a ton of $$$$$!
• Leverage the social graph to sell products in your app.  These are the apps that are making the most money. I may write a blog post just about this at some point.  But I believe there are many, many new ways to monetize users in social apps that have never been done or thought of before! Understand those social connections and work to tie in products or services that use those connections.  That’s where the money is.
• As a side note, there has to be a good way to build an MLM business on facebook!  Maybe there are people doing this already and I just have not seen them.  I don’t have much MLM experience but I have always thought they are missing out on the opportunities that the internet provides.  MLMs are all about social connections.  There is money to be made here as well!
• With the changes that Facebook has made to BEAT DOWN apps on their platform some ask if it is still worth it to launch an app on Facebook.  Even though many of the viral touch points that we could use 2 years ago are gone there is still an amazing opportunity on Facebook.  There is just no way to replace having information in your app that users WANT to share with their friends.  If you build useful app, optimize viral touch points, and do some promotion users will come and invite more users to come as well.
• I have talked to a few developers who are making tons of money using affiliate products instead of displaying ads.  This is an area I am very interested in because I love affiliate marketing!

When building a new app there are 3 areas you need to understand, execute on, and optimize:

1.      Research – Understand the audience that will be using the app, understand the possible marketing channels you can make use of in the app, and come up with a formula for success by making them match up.  The RockYou guys claim they do this first and if they cannot get the audience, channels, and formula nailed they will not build the app.

2.     Growth – Good apps are designed to make use of the social graph from the start.  You have to have a viral factor or the app is doomed to fail.  Once the app is running, tune it for distribution.  Top app companies make daily changes to tune their apps to maximize their viral growth factors.  This is a case where small things can make large differences.  You also need to promote your app in the beginning to “seed” it so you can get the growth you need to start.

3.      Engagement/Monetization – now days everything is engagement of the user with your app.  How many daily or active visitors you have.  Not how many total installs or new installs.  How much permission is the user giving you? Can you collect actual user email addresses or permission to email them?  You need good ways to bring users back and to reach out to new users.

I still feel that many of the developers and companies at these events are “gimmick” app developers.  Dumb ideas with little long term value just trying to make a quick buck.  We have built great apps that are useful to people and actually help them solve a problem in their lifes.order xanax online no prescription

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