As a struggling mobile internet entrepreneur, the most asked question by friends from the outside world is "How much does it cost to make a website?" or "How much does it cost to make an app?"

3 years ago, I naively thought that I could do an app for $5,000 tops and a website for $2,000 or less. More than this price is to bluff children. Then I did spend $1000 on a template webpage and $5000 on a template app and did these silly things. The end result is like the difference between the buyer's show and the seller's show on Taobao, the money hit the water.

Based on the principle of believing in heaven and earth, we started to form our own technical team, from UI, to back-end, front-end, Android, Apple all kinds of programmers and product managers, forming a most basic APP development team. By now, we have done five APPs, three of which have been financed, and the other two are government-supported projects. After paying the team for nearly a year, I couldn't be clearer about how much it costs to develop an APP from scratch.

Today, let's calculate how much it costs from an entrepreneur's perspective

First of all, if you are also an entrepreneur and full of enthusiasm, then the product must be developed by yourself. Because entrepreneurship is a very bullish thing, all the links have to be the best. It's hard to leave the product technology development to outsourcing, and that's what we thought at the time. It's okay to know technology yourself and come from a related profession. But as far as I understand, it is inevitable that the average entrepreneur does not understand it. So, if you want to make an app as an entry point, you first need to know at least what staffing is needed.

Recruiting

Contains some common work in the process of developing a new product, architect and backend development 1 + Android 1 + iOS development 1 + product manager 1 + front-end development 1 + designer 1, and you can not guarantee that every position you recruit will have the right person to come, or sudden changes, resulting in development stalled, there must be someone who can grab the insurance. Startups staff tenure is unstable but a very normal phenomenon. It is estimated that the average entrepreneur wants to get product development online as quickly as possible, assuming you want a product launch period of 3 to 6 months.

Step 1: Recruiting

North, Guangdong and a deep city is okay, as long as there is plenty of money talent is not worried about the abundance of resumes screened one by one. But in a second- or third-tier city like Changzhou, a WEB front-end has been recruited for 7 months before someone throws a resume for a door-to-door interview. What's even more terrible is that we pay at the same time in the "pull hook", "MileagePlus", "Zhi Lian recruitment" and even "catch up "These non-professional platforms as well as the circle of friends, a variety of infinite search situation. We spent a total of 5 months recruiting time from the first person on board to the team barely being able to start work.

Here is a better experience, first all the force to find a like-minded technical director, a high salary is a must. But the salary is high he can help you save back on the development with less detours.

So the first step cost is about - membership fee of recruitment platform website: average 1000 RMB/house *3=3000 RMB. Then is the assumption that you recruit all the jobs in 3 months.

These three months on average to pay 4 people, the probationary period salary 80% count, and also do not use five insurance and a gold. Such talents in Changzhou generally need to recruit at least one year of development experience, otherwise the development quality is difficult to guarantee.

The average salary of such talent is about 8K. So these three months you have to send (8000 yuan * 80% trial period * 4 people * 3 months = 76,800).

Step 2: Venue

A team of 8 people can choose a low- to mid-range office space, which is about 70 yuan/㎡ in Changzhou and requires about 100 square meters, which is not very easy to find.

Business incubators are great options. In the current context, incubators are now a lot easier to find. Incubator rent will be relatively cheap or even free, before the admission of the entrepreneurial team will generally sign an agreement, the need for the site as a condition of equity replacement, or priority investment rights. As for whether the incubator is cost-effective, the entrepreneurial team has to weigh themselves. Including utilities and property, about 10,000 a month is considered relatively economical.

Step 3: Equipment

Ordinary ergonomic chairs cost about 150 yuan, if you do not buy engineering chairs with ordinary chairs instead, plus the table flat cost, the table and chairs need about 200. These one-time payment, 6,000 yuan can be fixed, right, patting the head also have to pay.

Plus designers and program apes computer, configuration in 4000 a, a total of seven including an IOS machine. Development of mobile APP need to provide prototype machines, used on the line, Android system 4, 2000 yuan a, Apple system also 4, 3500 a.

Well, do the math 6000 yuan + 4000 yuan * 7 + 2000 yuan * 4 + 3500 * 4 = 56000 yuan

Step 4: The tools are all in place, officially start

Before APP development, you know what kind of APP software you want to make, but you generally don't know what exactly you want to do, what the requirements are, and what the product positioning is. This is when the product manager needs to step in, communicate with the boss in various ways, sort out the needs, and find the product positioning.

This phase takes about two weeks of good and careful analysis to think through the positioning of the product and the requirements of Phase 1. During this time the architect can start to conceptualize the technical architecture of the product, which has not yet been officially started. After the product positioning and early needs are determined, the product name needs to be conceived, demand research, competitor research and analysis, domain name registration, acquisition of servers and peripheral infrastructure capabilities (such as CDN storage, SMS services, message push, etc.), trademarks (unregistered trademarks, many teams are eating this loss), domain name registration, logo design. this stage if not change plans midway, do not change the product This phase will take at least a week if we don't change our plan and don't change the product requirements and positioning. At this time, the prototype of the product, the prototype of the technical architecture is also presented, basically you can enter the real work.

This step assumes that the domain name does not need to spend a lot of money to buy, all the costs count up to shoot head 15000 yuan / year.

Among them, SMS 2000, server 1000 a month. Domain name and other trademark registration 2000 a, trademark, soft, LOGO one-time investment of about 10000

Step 5: Product version planning, architecture design

After everything seems to be ready, the product starts to organize requirements and plan the release according to the priority of requirements. The architects start working on the development environment, production environment deployment, and base code development phases according to the product's development direction concept.

It is necessary to mention that the two more common ways to implement APP features are native and webview, and the advantages and disadvantages of these two ways are not in the scope of this article. To do development in native way, version is especially important.

One, after the APP development is completed, it needs to be put on the APP store (assuming we are only on iOS and Android), the iOS APP Store has a long application review cycle, you must plan the next few small and medium versions of the function in advance so as not to disrupt yourself in this link.

Secondly, when your app is installed on the user's phone you definitely want him to run the latest version most of the time, and if your version is updated too often, the user will be too annoyed.

The process seemed to be going very smoothly. After the product manager got the product idea straightened out, he started to prepare the planning of the product V1.0.

New products from scratch commonly work.

(1) Product website, product website is the face of the product, company, team, so that users can enter the fastest way to understand your positioning and product features, that is, what kind of people are solving what kind of problems and doing what kind of things.

(2) User agreements. Yes, if a user wants to register and use your product, you have to draft your user agreement and keep communicating with your lawyer or legal affairs to adjust it.

(3) Seed users. You have to think about where your first seed users come from, how to organize them and how to manage them. They are the first group of people to test your product and are crucial to validate your product positioning, identify product problems and improve the product experience.

(4) Basic data upload planning. You need to know what data you need to collect to optimize and adjust your product design and think about your product direction once the product is released, without knowing anything about user behavior.

(5) UI design and interaction standard setting. We can't guarantee that the UI and interaction of the product will have a stunning effect on the user once it is online, but we must ensure that there is no problem in the consistency of UI/interaction.

(6) Backend management system. As whether it is to view data or content management, the background management system is an effective aid to your work, and can not be missing.

(7) App. this is the top priority of your product, watch closely to track.

If everything goes well, then after 3-6 months, you should have the first prototype of the first version of your app.

Internal testing and polishing phase

During this phase, you have to maintain close communication with design, R&D, and seed users, constantly collecting problems, finding them, optimizing, and solving them, during which you may need to release 1-3 beta sub-releases. At the same time, you have to find ways to keep the seed users active and cooperate with passion, which is a tough job for whoever does it.

Release Phase

When released, not counting the channel promotion cost and no advertising, going online on iOS APP Store requires registering a developer account and purchasing a certificate, which also costs a certain amount, not much, just $99/year.

If you do more, get a security team to help you do a security assessment, which will also cost you some money here, and it doesn't count here. As for load balancing, acceleration techniques and whatnot, your app has just gone live and you shouldn't be able to use it.

In 6 months, an app has gone from nothing to something very quickly. Then this whole step inside. The average salary for 8 people is 8K. generally there are other benefits for people who are in a hurry to recruit at that time.

Five insurances and one pension, the company has to subsidize about 1100 RMB for each person at least. Thirteen salaries, converted into each month, equivalent to an additional 1,000 yuan per month. The team just recruited no break-in time, so need to produce products as soon as possible, definitely need to work overtime, overtime is to have overtime pay, weekend overtime day count 200 a day.

So the average overtime salary per person is 500. nearly 7 months, there must be holidays, but also need to have holiday benefits it, usually there must be team building costs it. The average monthly amortization per person is 100 yuan more.

Okay, so the average cost of one person for one month is (8000+1100+1000+200+500+100=10900)

I'm assuming here that the development only took 4 months to go live after recruitment was complete (which is still fast). That is (10,900 * 4 months * 8 people = 348,800 yuan). This is nothing, you have to think, which is now doing the Internet to make money at the beginning, this group of merit, the monthly fixed staff overhead is 87,200 yuan.

Then finally, if you want to start your own technical team, from the recruitment of people to the completion of product production. A total of 3 months to recruit all the people and 4 months to produce. The total cost calculated for a total of 7 months is

Personnel costs: $76,800 (during recruitment) + 348800 (official phase) = 425600

Rent and utilities: 10000/month * 7 months = 70000

Office equipment: 56,000 yuan

Trademark and other registered servers: 20,000 yuan

Total is: 425600+70,000+56,000+10,000=571,600 yuan

This is not counting your marketing staff, finance staff, marketing and promotion. And counting only the 4 months of official development period, your fixed monthly technical staff overhead is 87,200.

So when someone asks himself how much it costs to set up a team to make an app, you can answer that a less complex app, in a 2.5 tier city like Changzhou, would cost at least 600,000 for the first version to come out from nothing for six months. If it's in a tier 1 city, it's at least 1 million.

If you get another established team or company to do it, it will cost them about 87,200*4=348,800 if it hits the shelves in 4 months. But generally companies that can take on outsourcing, many types have been done, and it doesn't cost too much to do some dead-end development.

So you struggling entrepreneurs. If you have confidence, at least a million or so in your pocket, you can consider forming your own technical team.

But remember up to 9 months, after 9 months either financing or profitability. If you only have small hundreds of thousands of dollars, the profitability of the product is at a later stage, then it is best to strictly choose an outsourcing company, little by little from the details to improve the contract.