The Gospel of independent developers

At the beginning of the year, a developer Huang Jun "The death of the personal mobile phone game developer" in the industry caused a stir, the article said, the plight of independent developers has endangered the survival, not to mention the capital of the dream.

Xiao Ming's friend is also a member of the developer's army. 11, the capital market entered the field of mobile advertising, a variety of mobile advertising companies like springing up, the market to the developers of many concessions, attracting many people resign to engage in personal development. He also resigned his nine-to-five job, I did a Shuwang class application, once the download is also tens, each application of the monthly advertising revenue as high as ten thousand or twenty thousand, in his product confidence, ready to look for investment to increase the scale, but encountered bottlenecks, the number of users do not go, insufficient funds, and finally had to choose to sell, It's a pity.

His experience is not the case, as the mobile advertising industry has become healthier, and distribution channels to the impact of the application market, the competition between developers more and more fierce, the problem is increasingly serious.

In the mobile Internet ecosystem, developers are a vital group. Therefore, Baidu, Tencent these platforms have launched a developer-oriented open program, on the one hand, to provide assistance to developers, on the other hand, to their own platform to attract some "golden Phoenix." Do these open and support programs help developers, and how do developers change their predicament? Xiaoming wants to say something about what he knows.

1. Insufficient distribution and bottlenecks in user growth.

Over the past few years, the market more and more applications, developers "hit the application" also more and more, the quantity, homogeneity of serious, the difficulty of distribution is self-evident. Independent developers do not have the money to promote, rely on the application market has not been able to meet the needs of the user's growth (and now the application market, is not as early as possible to allow developers to upload applications, now a variety of audit conditions, hinder the development of developers. What's more, developers use a high volume of downloads to squeeze into the rankings, the application of the market to zero data, blocking the application of developers list.

The channel does not give the power, is indeed a problem. The distribution is not good, the application can not reach the user, after everything is free to talk. There are many distribution platforms available on the market, such as the old App Store Pea pod, the rise of this year, the rapid occupation of the market Baidu, from the PC over the 360 mobile phone assistants, as well as Tencent, Android Market and so on. Of course, the choice of the life and death of the app, developers a bit of "choice syndrome", do not know which platform to choose is very normal things, choose an unsuitable platform is often. One of my little friends complained privately that 360 of phone assistants were really good at distributing, but and I have no money in the pocket of personal developers do not matter, others so strong, no money will not look at me, not to mention to my users, not easy to raise money on the 360, but found that the ban and several other large platform cooperation, It's a real annoyance.

In fact, after several major changes in the distribution market, the pros and cons of each platform have been relatively clear. Although the pea pod is small but has been to the top, 360 distribution ability is good but bad reputation oh, Tencent strength is improving, Baidu nearly one year action biggest, grow fast. Recently, the report said that the Baidu distribution platform in the last quarter market share has surpassed other platforms, reached 40.6%.

According to the informed small partner, Baidu is the distribution channel using the "Application Market + Mobile search" dual-core distribution. Mobile Search This channel is noteworthy, the flow has been rising, now Baidu mobile search daily live users have 130 million, is a mouth-watering cake. In addition, mobile search to distribute the advantage is that you can accurately understand the needs of users, but also to the developers are strong demand for high-quality users. Therefore, the small partners if the choice of distribution applications in Baidu, in addition to the application of the market product shelves and maintenance, but also recommended in mobile search optimization, as much as possible to make mobile search for distribution with the amount.

Baidu This piece also has a future can become the killer platform-light application, although is still growing, but it is recommended that developers take the opportunity to occupy a single, the future light application development, is definitely a good opportunity.

2. User active degree is low, difficult shape scale.

Xiao Ming often listen to small partners said another problem is: access to the user activity is low, resulting in tepid products, it is difficult to form a certain scale. I think, on the one hand, and the source of these users, on the other hand, and developers themselves for the maintenance of users. Most developers get users, from the application of the market, the use of automatic search, each user is an independent individual, the application of developers is difficult to obtain communication, users can not produce communication, also makes the activity of the lower. On the other hand is the developer to complete the application, upload the market, the user downloaded, did not analyze the user, did not guide the user active and realize self propagation.

To solve this problem, what I have learned is that the introduction of social relations to achieve user-self communication, is currently used in more ways. There are already successful cases in this area. Before the crazy series in the micro-letter circle of friends spread the effect of many people envy. Tencent's QQ relationship chain and micro-trust chain, can help access to the application of the user's interaction and communication. Similar channels Baidu also has, Baidu provided the bar and other interfaces, you can let developers put their own applications posted on the bar, bar is the largest Chinese community, if good use, the effect will not be bad.

3. Independent development or small team lack of competitiveness

The article at the beginning of the friend, the product is very good, but, when he wants to expand the size of the financing, found that investors are not what you want to find, is not particularly harsh conditions, is unwilling to invest. A few times toss, time is wasted on this, finally missed the development opportunity, was overtaken by later. The partner said that the product of independent developers, if not recognized by capital, can not get support, lack of competitiveness, success is not easy.

Is it true that the "personal developer is dead"? It is not true that no one supports the developer, but does not find the right person. Developers need more than just money and resources to bring success, such as technology, operations, users, and so on. Without these resources, even if investors throw a daughter to let you burn (this generally only appears in yy), it may not be able to burn successfully. In fact, Baidu, Tencent, these internet bosses have to provide for developers of open platforms and services to help developers solve problems in development and distribution. For example, Tencent has already opened the interface of QQ, micro-letter has been constantly developing more interfaces to developers, as well as help developers improve products, design billing points, design profit model and so on. For example, Baidu recently set up a developer center in Xiamen, to support more small and medium-sized developers. Open speech recognition, in-depth learning of these innovative technologies, the developer access to the revenue system, which is not to say that Baidu will also carry out entrepreneurial guidance, which for their own small business partners to help is very big. These big guys build platform, is the developer's opportunity, depends on how to choose, how to use.

Say so much, and finally summed up. Xiaoming think, want in mobile internet nuggets, singles alone is not good, see the situation, choose good wood and habitat is kingly. While independent developers are at a difficult stage at the moment, there is hope as long as they are willing to spend their time looking for change.