Have your App Development funded by the Crowd – or invest in an App yourself

There may be a thousand great ideas in your mind that you would like to convert into an app – you’ll find it difficult to keep your spirit up after realizing that the development will cost a lot more money than you are able to bring in.

So what to do?

Reaching out for investors and trying to persuade them of your app idea? You could do that, but I assume you actually would rather prefer to concentrate on the product instead of running after the money. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to show your idea to the crowd and let literally anyone who likes your app concept put little and medium amounts of money in it? That’s what appbackr, the wholesale marketplace for app developers, has been made for.

The crowd wants to be part of it

The idea of crowdfunding in general hasn’t been invented by appbackr, of course – rather does every share market function on the concept of many people acquiring portions of something by their investments. However crowdfunding hasn’t been very common so far when it comes to more every day things which haven’t to do with the business world in a narrower sense. That’s what Kickstarter’s mission was when it was founded in 2009: offering people a place where they could raise funds from the crowd for any of their products in the fields of art, design, games, music and writing.

Apps need backrs

While Kickstarter covers a wide range of topics, appbackr is completely focusing on the mobile app market. Here’s how it works for you…

… being a developer:

1. Submit your app concept to appbackr, providing them with some basic information like screenshots / mock-ups and what the app will be about.
2. Above that you’ll have to define how much money has to be raised at least to fund the app development. It’s done within minutes.
3. As soon the submittal has been approved by appbackr, it goes live in appbackr’s marketplace section.
4. From now on any person who likes the idea of your app can buy a convenient number of copies at a wholesale price (persons who do this are called “backrs” what explains appbackr’s company name).
5. Depending on the amount of wholesale copies they’ve purchased backrs get the revenue of the corresponding amount of sales when the app is published and sells.
6. As soon as all backrs have got their return according to their number of wholesale copies purchased, all sales taking place afterwards are completely yours – until the end of time.

… being anyone who likes apps and wants to participate in their success:

1. Visit the appbackr marketplace to look for apps that are worth being funded.
2. On the app detail pages you’ll find all relevant questions answered: How much funding does this app need? What’s the minimum amount of money I have to spend? Who else is backing that app? And, probably most important: What will be my return on investment?
3. If you find the app worth being funded, you just buy your wholesale copies by PayPal. As long as the app’s reserve goal hasn’t been achieved, you won’t be charged.
4. You’ll receive your return when the app goes live and sells. Backrs are either in a queue one after another (based on which one purchased copies first, second, etc.), or they get paid simultaneously based on the percentage of their copies.

Well, that’s pretty much it! Got curious? We appreciate your thoughts on appbackr – just leave your comment here, visit us on appbackr.com, follow us on @appbackr oder like us on Facebook!

Torsten Weindl markets appbackr, a wholesale marketplace for app developers as well as for anyone who likes to fund an app and participate in its success. Before appbackr Torsten’s been running his own affiliate business in Germany since 2003 and worked as an Online Sales & Content Manager for Amazon.de.