I work in the business world with small business clients, although I’m trying to retire from that world. Most of them do not have any clue what an app is. Most of them have little time to find out or try various solutions. There are many companies besides the one mentioned here who do online app templates for a monthly fee or a publishing fee. The prices are outrageous in some case - running into hundreds of dollars or even thousands for some “platforms” and of course they are usually submitted under someone else’s developer license.
Some are even doing “app marketing” (poorly for the most part) and charging a hefty additional fee for that. Not sure if I can mention a Corona competitor here but they had followed the Corona path for quite some time, then recently switched to open source code and a “marketing for you” and “done for you” plan for thousands of dollars. Apparently that didn’t work too well, as they are now back to a free version of their programming software and a “developer” version and have dropped the “done for you” sorts of plans.
Most small biz owners hire someone to do an app for them. They might dip their toes in the app world with a template site, but quickly find that the consumer exposure and traffic they were hoping for is pretty non existent. Larger companies usually leave the app world up to their marketing company.
Several sites are cashing in on the “News Stand” rush, again charging thousands of dollars for publications. They generally charge per device, per NewsStand issue, with an average price of $500 ish (times each store per issue). They do nothing more than a $50/month Adobe CC membership that includes the DPS App Builder license. And quite frankly, even though I don’t like Adobe, churning out NewsStand periodicals with InDesigns and other tools is a piece of cake.
If you’re after the money, I would actually recommend templating a NewsStand model. Business owners understand that. They don’t understand what the heck an app is or how it can work for them. They don’t have a clear idea of what they would even want to do and customer support becomes a nightmare, and their goals of increased customer engagement are rarely met. Couple that with strong, well established competitors and your chances of success doing app templates drops considerably.
J.A. Whyte has a sound idea and if you add periodical publishing to it, go after the marketing and advertising companies that handle small and mid sized business groups, you could do very well. But beating the bushes for individual owners would be time consuming and probably not cost effective. Even the big publishers in the book world are using the App Stores as a loss leader and are there merely to maintain a presence. When that presence is combined as part of an overall digital marketing plan, low download numbers in an App store are offset with good results in other areas and the customer has such low App expectations that everyone goes home happy.
Just my 2 cents and probably worth half of that.
