LAUNCHED MY APP! CAME ACROSS TOO MUCH COMPETITION – WHAT NEXT?

 I have launched my startup idea after putting effort of around 2 months and now I realize that the market is already full of competition and many are from long time occupying the market share. I did not put any effort in analyzing the market competition before starting with my startup idea neither I did any market survey of my app requirement with the customers.

I am a web developer and mobile developer as well, investment in building the app is almost nil until I count my effort of time and other expenses like hosting, domain etc. expenses. I am not worried about the investment, but I need to know where to proceed next as the market is already saturated with the similar apps.

I have invested few hundred bucks in online advertisement on Facebook and Google Adwords to get some users to validate the startup idea has good potential. But the problem still lies where my product would reach in this market full of competition.

Though I have a full time job as of now and this would be just like an experiment to test out the viability of the app. The idea has good potential but too much of competition is making me to think “whether I should continue with this app or should proceed with next idea”! As my end goal is to be involved in a full time startup/entrepreneurship, but only if the product gets me sufficient revenue.

 Pros

• Happy feeling /feeling of proudness
• Tons of learning experience

Cons

• Marketing is way tougher than thought
• Budget on marketing

After discussing with few people various points came out that were very encouraging & very insightful and few were blunt:

Few of them are listed below which might help out my other fellow entrepreneur /startups who are in same situation as mine.

• Spend more time in evaluating the app and think deep as to what features more could be added so that it can stand out in the market
• I should come up with certain target revenue to be achieved in a specified period and then figure out how much customers would you need to reach that target in a month or so. This exercise would a better insight as how much effort would be required to achieve the minimum target and whether I would be able to proceed with that much effort
• This was very interesting – one person said: While you were developing your app, you were so much obsessed with your idea that you never took a time to find more about the market and kept talking to yourself about the impact and usefulness of the app. Now when the time arrived to do marketing, sales and other stuff, you are coming up with market saturation excuse, because you don’t like doing marketing and sales.
  
  • Yes this was right, I love to make product rather than marketing and selling
• There was another advice to partner with marketing agencies who can sell my product
• Map out the market competition and list out few things to make things very clear like
  • How big is the market?
  • Rate of growth of this idea in market
  • Weakness and strong points of competitors
  • What makes your app inferior from your competitors
  • Is there any levels on which you can compete or give a competition to your competitors
  • What would be the customer acquisition cost

Now compare all the points in terms of cost for time, money and risk involved and your full time job. And then decide if it can replace your job

• Saturation does not always mean that it is bad, since it provides a concrete proof that there is a real demand. If other apps are targeting widely focused market and I can shorten my scope of target. In short I should focus of niche segment of the widely focused targeted market. Niche market would specialize in providing better experience to smaller segmented users. And it would provide specific solution to specific problem
• One suggestion was very different – It all depends on what is your vision for the app is. If your plan is to make this idea as a main stream income then you need to carve out your niche or way to sell your app. If you have taken this app as hobby and add a project to your CV then it does not matter if the market is full of competition or not you can compete with others in terms of pricing and making your app better than your competitors.

Author: Admin