Thanks to Apple’s generosity anyone and everyone can now develop their very own iPhone applications. And there are no limits to the amount of apps you are allowed to develop or what sort of apps, e.g. games, useful everyday tools, etc., basically, whatever takes you fancy. And, if you just love coming up with new ideas for your latest app and develop it, you can download your very own application onto Apple’s iTunes store and sell it to other people – no problem.

Given the millions of people who are searching the store every day for the latest must have widget, there is no limit to the amount of money one simple app could make you, even if you only sell it for pennies.

However, before starting to develop your first iPhone application, make sure you follow these useful steps:

Step 1:
You’ll need an Apple Mac to write your iPhone application. Choose it carefully and make sure you can actually run the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) on that machine. Tip: The SDK only runs on an Intel based Apple Mac.

Step 2:
I suggest that, before you even write the very first word of code for your first application, you study one that is already running and make yourself familiar with the code. Go through it, slowly, and understand the code before you start on your own application. It’s worth taking the time and truly understand all the different elements. Don’t worry though, it’s not rocket science!

Step 3:
Most importantly and a step where lots of people fall short: Design first, develop second. Make sure you know exactly how each screen is going to look like, where the buttons go, etc. Do not miss this crucial step!

Step 4:
Once you’ve written your application, do test it thoroughly. Make sure everything works as it should do. After all the hard work you don’t want your application rejected by Apple. Tip: Follow the guidelines on Apple’s website. They are very good and doing this will save you a lot of effort and time.

Step 5:
Lastly, make sure you tell everyone about your new app. Don’t forget any social networking sites you are a member of, like Facebook and let the world know what you have achieved.

If you follow these steps, there is no reason why your application couldn’t be another great success. The market is definitely there and chances are high that someone somewhere is currently waiting for your app.

Good luck!

The market for iPhone apps is huge at this moment in time! There are more than 50 million iPhones in circulation, yet only 85,000 apps in the iStore. Demand is currently out-weighing supply by a large factor which creates a huge opportunity for the business-savvy entrepreneur to make a killing.

Whether you’re a programmer or whether you’re simply a businessman who has access to outsourced developers, creating the application is only half the battle. Once it’s ready for release, we have to consider doing more than simply uploading it to Apples iStore in order to see a good return on our investment (whether time or money).

These are three tips that I hope you’ll find useful for promoting your iPhone apps.

Tip 1 – Build a Branded Website
The challenge when using iTunes is that we have very little control over the placement of our app. In order for our marketing efforts to be truly effective, we need a piece of Internet real estate over which we have complete control. By creating a website for our app (no matter how simple that site is) we suddenly regain control of our brand and have fixed location to which we can drive traffic. From here, it’s a simple matter to link back to the iStore in order for your customers to buy your iPhone app.

Tip 2 – Go Viral
If you’ve been around the Internet for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve heard the term “viral marketing”. This technique is all about encouraging people to tell others how great your app is and can be one of the most effective marketing methods in our arsenal. From a psychological perspective, we’re not just getting people to tell others that our app exists, we’re actually getting an implicit recommendation which carries huge weight.

You can implement this in a couple of ways:

• By using a “Tell-a-Friend” script on your website
• By using a similar technique from within the application itself

Either way, this shouldn’t be a difficult or costly addition from a development perspective, and the payback in terms of increased traffic will more than justify it.

Tip 3 – Make Use of Social Media
This follow on naturally from our previous tip to some extent, as we’re asking people to make a recommendation via such sites as Twitter and Facebook. However, we can take this to another level by utilising Social Media ourselves as an integrated part of our marketing.

For instance, you can talk about cool features of your app on Twitter, or you can create demo videos of your app in action and post them to YouTube. Whatever approach you prefer, it would be a mistake to ignore the power of social media in your marketing today.

Clearly, these 3 tips for promoting your iPhone apps are meant simply as an introduction. However, if you follow them, you’ll have a solid foundation on which to build the rest of your marketing. The most important thing right now is to get started and to take positive action to increasing your income by tapping the lucrative iPhone app market.

Apple has produced some weird and wonderful devices over the years. Some have died quietly (remember the Newton???) whilst some have taken the world by storm – such as the iPod and the latest Macs. The iPhone has surpassed everything else to date in terms of mass take-up and is now considered the “must-have” cool gadget that everyone wants.

What can it do that makes it so great?

Let’s start with the basics. The iPhone is a quad-band GSM mobile phone with EDGE support, multimedia and Internet capabilities. You can call your Mom on it and text your best friend. So?

Well, the Internet capabilities include full web browsing, comprehensive email and Visual Voicemail. It can also connect via Wi-Fi, so it’s not continually using your precious 3G bandwidth.

It’s also a complete iPod, in that it can store music, video, TV programs, podcasts etc, and display them via an awesome screen.

Did I mention that the screen is touch sensitive? Not only that, but the latest version is also both gesture and breath sensitive, and has in-built accelerometers so that it can detect movement!

You also get built-in GPS and even a compass, so you’ll never got lost as long as you have your trusty iPhone with you!

iPhone Camera

The camera in the iPhone not only takes great still photos, it also shoots pretty good video. OK, so it won’t be worrying anyone in Hollywood, but it’s certainly good enough to shoot a holiday video or to produce something for YouTube. As with any camera, the results are good if you apply good camera technique.

I particularly love the user interface for manipulating your images which makes great use of the cool gesture interface for resizing, rotating etc.

All in all, I would thoroughly recommend that every gadget lover in the world gets hold of an iPhone as soon as humanly possible!