B00A3OGH1O EBOK

by Wong, Allen

  What I did was create an identical app to 5-0 Radio with slightly less features. I removed the abilities to record and to set a sleep timer or alarm. I then started selling that app for a dollar while selling the older version for two dollars. The older version was called “5-0 Radio Pro”. This was marketed as an upgrade to the regular 5-0 Radio app.

  The reason why this move is dangerous is that you are splitting the download numbers between the two apps and thus lowering the individual rank per app. By having a lower rank in the App Store charts, you are losing good free marketing from Apple.

  For the final step, I turned that regular one-dollar 5-0 Radio app into a free app temporarily. This was ground-breaking at the time, because no other police scanner apps were available for free. This meant that if you wanted a free police scanner app, you’d have to get my 5-0 Radio app. This became a huge hit among everyone. I tried to spread the word about the free app to as many people as possible, and those people in turn helped spread the word to other people.

  The app became viral, and soon I was getting over 80,000 new users per day in just North America alone. The app quickly became the #1 app in Australia and was in the top 10 charts around the world. The way I reached #1 in Australia was that I put the words “Australian Police Scanner” after my app name. This resonated with the Australian users and they felt that they were getting an app especially designed for their country. This might serve as an anecdotal story for you to localize your app to the different regions of the world. If you app is good enough, it is worth your time to have the app translated so that you open up your business to non-English speaking customers as well.

  To cash in on the popularity of the app, I also changed the 5-0 Radio Pro app to include music stations as well as railroad and airport stations. I decreased the price to one dollar and advertised the sale on the free version of 5-0 Radio. To cash in further on it, the link to the 5-0 Radio Pro app on my free version is actually an affiliate link to the App Store. Thus, I was also enjoying an extra 5% commission for every sale that I got after the customer clicked on the “Upgrade” button. This commission also included sales to other apps and songs on iTunes, as long as the user bought those things within a few minutes after using my affiliate link. So for the past few years, I’ve been helping Apple sell millions of dollars worth of apps and songs. An Apple employee even personally called me to congratulate me for being one of their top affiliates. At first, it didn’t start off as congratulations. Instead, they called to see why I was able to sell so many apps and songs. They thought that I was cheating or spamming. When I explained to them what I was doing, they changed their tone, and now I’m one of their top salesmen. Just from the 5% commission alone, I was making way more money than what I was making at Columbia University.

  The boost in recognition and sales was enough to propel my 5-0 Radio Pro app to beat popular apps such as Angry Birds and others. The marketing tactic had worked way better than expected, and I had blown way past my rival apps. Those rival apps have never recovered for the past three years, and 5-0 Radio Pro has been the #1 police scanner app for all of those years. Because of this “Hail Mary Pass”, my app was making millions while my rival apps were only making hundreds of thousands.

  Soon, all the rival apps tried to copy my style. They tried mimicking my icon. They tried imitating my interface and my extra features. They even tried to create their own free app to boost their sales. The problem was that they were all just imitations, and the lack of innovation did not get the users to want to switch apps. 5-0 Radio quickly became a brand name. Now when people think of police scanner apps on the iPhone, they think of 5-0 Radio.

  A few years later, I decided to create a police scanner app to rival my own app. I figured that I could be both the #1 and #2 police scanner apps at the same time. There was really nothing stopping me from doing so as long as my new app looked nothing like my old one. Thus, I set out to create my Police Scanner+ app. The new app looked much sleeker and more futuristic than the 5-0 Radio app. If you compared screenshots between Police Scanner+ and 5-0 Radio, you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were created by the same developer. Even my rival apps looked more similar to my 5-0 Radio app than my Police Scanner+ app did. My goal was to prove to my rivals that one could create an app that doesn’t mimic 5-0 Radio’s look and still become successful. I also wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t just a one-hit wonder.

  The Police Scanner+ app became a success, and it could even be deemed as too successful. It started stealing users away from 5-0 Radio as well as the rival apps. But that was okay, because the two apps combined made up the majority of police scanner app users and increased my overall profits. Police Scanner+ is now among the top three police scanner apps and earns a healthy amount of money per day. And 5-0 Radio still tops the charts and still makes thousands of dollars per day.

  17

  The Mindset

  A lot of you who are reading this book are probably not going to be app developers, and many of the app development strategies would not apply to your line of business. But throughout the years of interacting with other successful people, I noticed that there was still a common mindset among us. Sometimes just developing that mindset for yourself can make the difference between being successful or not. So, I leave you with some of my final thoughts on what it takes to be successful and what being successful should mean.

  Lifehack #22: Be more than what society expects of you.

  If you ever watch TV or movies, you’ll notice a generalization that the picture perfect family is a middle-class family where the dad spends most of his time at a nine-to-five office job and his children grow up following in his footsteps and taking a similar office job.

  This is what society expects of you. They want you to go to high school to prepare for college. And they want you to go to college, so that you can train for your nine-to-five job. They don’t teach you how to make millions of dollars. They don’t teach you how to form a limited liability company. They don’t teach you much about being successful in general. And there’s a reason for this. They don’t expect you to amount to much, because there’s a 99% chance that you will not be a part of the top 1% of income earners.

  But if you look at my situation and my age, you’ll see that anyone can break out of the mold and go beyond society’s expectations. It took only one year for me to jump from having the median U.S. household income (around $50,000) to being above the top 0.1% income (above $1 million).

  So, why did that happen? What was different about me compared to the rest of the people? It was simple. All my life, I was training and studying to have the skills to create great things. But the problem was that I wasn’t working for myself. I was working for another company. I was helping another CEO/founder build his dream so that he would get rich. And I only did it, because that was what was expected of me.

  Lifehack #23: Don’t be a follower. Be a leader.

  You should always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Don’t try to mimic what other successful people are doing. Create your own thing. When other people start copying what you do, then you’ll know that you’re the successful one. You’re the leader, and they’re the followers.

  According to Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D and William D. Danko, Ph.D, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in the U.S., but they make up two-thirds of the millionaires. This is why working for yourself and being your own boss is one of the keys to success.

  As an employee, you are limited by the salary that is given to you. If the product you worked on makes millions of dollars, you’re not going to be enjoying a big piece of those millions of dollars. You are stuck with a much smaller salary and occasionally a little bit of stocks in the company. You just helped make someone else millions of dollars. Thus, your income will always be capped off by how much someone is willing to pay you.

  When I was working for myself in college with my first business venture, I realized that I could
make so much more money by being self-employed rather than being employed by others. There was no limit to how much money I could make. I could keep working on more and more projects, and then I’d increase my income more and more each time. I was only limited by time.

  Lifehack #24: Hack away the unnecessary things in your life.

  Making more money each day is not as important as having more free time each day. If you have the benefit of youth, then use it. The younger you are, the more likely you have free time. Once you start a family and a career, you have less and less free time to self-educate and explore your talents. Being young also means that you have fresh ideas and are full of energy. So, let time work on your side and not against you.

  Time management is probably one of the most important things you’ll learn in business or even in life in general. The reason is that time is one of those things that you cannot get back. You can lose all your possessions and your money, but you can always get it all back through work. But if you lose time, there’s no way to get back the time you just lost.

  When wealthy and successful people hang out with me, they are not envious of my income. Instead, they are envious of my efficient time management. Anyone can make a million dollars if you gave them all the time in the world. But making a million dollars in less than a year without working at all? That takes a lot of time management skills. And one of those skills is being able to remove all the unnecessary things in your life that are taking up your time. Do you watch a lot of TV? Watch less. Do you play a lot of video games? Play less. Do you sleep for more than eight hours? Sleep less.

  Tether-free Principle

  Most of my free time was made possible because of my ‘tether-free principle’. When I was working full-time at Columbia University, taking care of my mother, and coding apps in my spare time, I came up with a plan to eliminate as many tethers as possible in my life.

  A tether is something that forces you to do a certain task either at random periods in time or at a fixed time period. A tether can be something as simple as paying your bills by mailing a check, or something as complex as holding a 9-5 job. Each of those tasks are holding you back from the free time that you could spend building your dream.

  The key to true happiness is not about making the most money. It’s more about having the most uninterrupted time in your life to do the things you want to do.

  There are some tethers that are almost impossible to cut away. For example, you should still shower every day and go to the bathroom every day. But take advantage of that downtime and make them work for you. When I take a shower, I try to think of new app ideas, or try to figure out how to solve a bug in one of my programs. A lot of my ideas came from when I was showering. It was a relaxing part of my day, and it allowed my mind to wander and be a bit more creative. And when I was sitting on the toilet, I would spend the few minutes testing my apps out or trying other apps to see what my competitors were doing.

  Another major unavoidable tether in your life may be your phone. But the impact of this tether can be reduced. For example, I don’t give my phone number to just anyone. In fact, if it can be avoided, I wouldn’t give my number away at all. If someone wants to contact me, I give them my email address. Your phone acts as a tether to your life. You could be working on the most important business discovery in your life, but then a friend calls you up and you two end up spending an hour chatting about nothing important. Or worse, you end up having one of those people who love texting you long paragraphs and each time you reply with one word or one sentence, they reply back with another essay.

  Side note: If you’re one of those people, please note that there’s a reason why text messages are only 160 characters long. Please have the decency to call or put your story about your girlfriend problems in email form, so that my phone doesn’t vibrate and beep every 10 seconds for the next half hour. Thank you.

  And finally, when you have a successful business going, try to automate the process as much as possible. If customers are asking you the same questions over and over again, create a FAQ (frequently asked question) on your company website. After I did that for my apps, I reduced the number of customer service questions from dozens a day to maybe one or two a day. Now, all of my businesses are truly passive income.

  The last major tether in my life was my full-time job. By doing office work for 40 hours a week, I was not getting the free time I wanted to expand my businesses. Thus, I had to quit my Columbia job after working there for more than two years.

  Family and a social life can be tethers as well. But these would fall under necessary tethers. Family should always come first before business. You can always replace money, but you cannot replace your family. And your social life should be what keeps you happy when you’re not working. Think of it as a stress reliever to your work-mode life. But keep in mind that having a girlfriend or boyfriend can be very time-consuming. When I started coding apps, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time because I wasn’t giving her the time that she deserved. So when you get serious in your business, there may come a time when you have to choose between your work and your significant other. What’s better is if your girlfriend/boyfriend understands that you need time to work on your projects, and doesn’t interfere with your work.

  One way to measure how successful you really are is by seeing how much time you need to spend working. I know many doctors and lawyers who are wealthy, but they are married to their work. As soon as they stop working, their income drops as well. They are tethered to their work even though they are considered by society as “wealthy”. But what kind of life would that be if you cannot spend time enjoying your wealth?

  If I disappeared from the face of the Earth for a year, my income would still stay consistent. Even all of my bills are automatically being drafted from my checking accounts. And all of my income automatically gets deposited into my checking accounts.

  When you reach that level of free time, the possibilities for creating new business ventures and/or enjoying your life are endless.

  Lifehack #25: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

  This falls in line with the concept that you should diversify your investments. Except this time, I want to talk about diversifying your income. At the time of this writing, I have over a dozen different sources of income. This is because you will never know when you will suddenly lose a source of income, especially if someone has control over your income. And this was a lesson I learned the hard way.

  Before my 5-0 Radio app became successful, I had set up a Google AdSense account for my company. I put the mobile ads on my website and everything was fine. However, after my 5-0 Radio blew up and went viral, people started hammering my company website. This uptick in new visitors caused my AdSense account to go from earning a few hundreds of dollars a day to suddenly a few thousands of dollars a day. This must have raised a red flag in the AdSense system, because after sustaining thousands of dollars a day in revenue for a while, Google banned my company’s AdSense account for having invalid clicks. I appealed the decision and explained that my app had gone viral. I only got a cookie-cutter response back from them along with their denial of my appeal.

  That was a devastating blow, because it took out about a fourth of my income. To add insult to injury, Google even kept the past two and a half months of revenue and never paid me for all the earnings I earned prior to my 5-0 Radio app’s popularity explosion. I think they owed me around $100,000 when all was said and done. It was the most money I had ever lost in a day.

  Ever since then, I decided to stay away from AdSense for my apps and their no-tolerance policies. I now use about half a dozen different advertisement companies to advertise on my websites. The amount they pay me isn’t as high as what Google paid me, but at least they don’t randomly ban my account because of sudden spikes in user clicks. In fact, all the advertisement companies that I now work with all know me personally. They all beg for me to give them more ad inventory, because of my millions of ad impressions per
day.

  There was even a day when the Vice President of Quattro Wireless (now called iAd) called me personally to congratulate me for my success and for the business I gave them. He even asked if he could meet me in person at an Apple developer event called WWDC. This happened after I earned $70,000 worth of ad revenue in a week through Quattro Wireless. Since the advertisement revenue was split at around 50-50 at the time, it meant that I single-handedly helped their company raise $35,000 in a week.

  That $35,000 could have gone to Google. But Google’s ban left a sour taste in my mouth, and I decided to never help Google again. That is the sole reason why I never developed a single Android® app, even though I could be earning more revenue if I had done so. The only way I’d forgive them is if they helped me earn back the $100,000 that they denied me. Having the uncertainty of getting banned again made my life stressful, and it wasn’t worth the extra money. I remember that every email I got from Google gave me chills, because I didn’t know what other bad news they had to give me.

  Ever since then, I learned to treat each successful day like it was my last.

  They say that you should treat every day like it is your last, so that you would appreciate your day more. Once you keep having successful days, you may start to lose motivation to work further. It is very easy to rest on your laurels when you have achieved greatness (especially when you get it fast and at a young age).

  So instead, I pretended that each day was the last day I’d be earning a lot of money. Because of this mentality, I get to wake up each day feeling as though I won the lottery. That way, I stay humble, and only spend what I’ve already earned. And even then, I’d be wary of spending, because I’d rather save and invest the lottery winnings.