Building Facebook Applications on a Limited Budget

Building Facebook Applications Cheaply, Not Building Cheap Facebook Applications

Creating a killer Facebook application does not have to cost you thousands of dollars. Often times the best applications are built by those with little or no money - ingenuity is often the by-product of scarcity. The problem with limited resources, though, is that you have to compete for the attention of users with those with unlimited budgets and resources and the user could care less. They demand the same interactivity, the same bells and whistles; the same experience whether the application is built by Joe Smith or Microsoft. How then does one go about building a Facebook application on a limited budget? Take a look at these tips below.

Building a Facebook Application on a Limited Budget

1. The Idea - Ideas are free, but great ideas are often hard to come by. If you do not already know what Facebook application you want to build, start by taking a look at what Facebook applications are available if you need some inspiration. This can be done for FREE by browsing the Facebook application directory. Try to find a niche that has a relative low volume of applications (there are a ton of Facebook applications for business users that need to be made) as the less competition you have to face, the less you will have to invest in order to gain users.

Sudha Jamte has great advice when recommending that every Facebook application contains:

1. Build invitation to friends as part of the product (like Booze-mail “send a drink” or Zoo “send an animal”).
2. Display a pleasant image and clear messaging with call for action in the profile box. This is where new users get to hear about your application, users care *a lot* about what goes on their profile and will decide to keep or remove the app based on profile box.
3. Build in notification at every user engagement of your App. This will goto their friends and be displayed in your feed for all users to see. Keep the messaging of this feed item to communicate what your App is about, with a call for action for the new user to try. eg. Zombie does an awesome job on the profile box.
4. Use your Canvas page with clean messaging about why one should try out the App, show as much stats as possible on the friend’s network to build on the social influence to try out the app. eg Top Friends is a great example.
5. Use the left bar below profile to show Apps Stats that builds intuitively into the social graph. eg. All Slide Apps do this well, Tyler has mastered this one well. The games apps that shows scores does this well and builds social pressure to try out the game to change your score or your position in your facebook network.

2. The User - Before you even start working on your great idea for a Facebook application, you need to identify your target user. Important information to gather is age, location, occupation and interests. You do not need to go to analyst to get this information. For FREE you can participate in your target user(s) community. There is much to be said for those who participate in the community from which the hope to gleam a user-ship.

Take a look at these brands getting it right on Facebook.

3. The Plan - Proper planning is a must when you are working with a limited budget, as you have little margin for error. In planning out your Facebook application, you need to pay special attention to creating a complete features and functionality scope as you do not want “scope creep” to happen which will delay development and increase your cost. You will also want to plan for how you will be monetizing your application and what your exit strategy is, should you no longer want to maintain your application. If your application is complex, or has an number of features and functions, you might want to create a phased approach to creating the application. All of this, once again, is FREE.

Check out this video if you are unsure of how to make money from your Facebook application.

4. The Development - This is where things can get costly, but if you have a good idea and a well thought out plan, you should be able to have your Facebook application developed for a reasonable price. What is a reasonable price? Well, if you have the skills, developing yor Facebook application will be whatever the cost of your time is. If you do not have the programming skills to bring your Facebook application alive, but you are somewhat technical (and your application is not too advanced) you can use a sevice such as Dapper’s AppMaker. If you not technical at all, unfortunately, you will need to find a Facebook developer.

The cost of a Facebook developer will vary, but I have seen prices range from $20 to $150 per hour, depending on the age, experience and of course the complexity of your Facebook application. While prices range greatly, do not be fooled into thinking that a $150 and hour developer is better than a $20 an hour or that one $20 an hour developer is as good as another $20 an hour developer. There are a lot of awesome high school/college students who deliver quality work, while there are some outstanding companies that offer Facebook development services. You will need to get competitive quotes, work references and also samples of past applications prior to making a commitment. Expect your application to take anywhere from one to three months to deliver. Expect to pay $800 to $30,000 for your development.

Learn more about the Facebook application development process here.

5. The Hosting - Your Facebook application will have to be hosted somewhere. If your were fortunate enough to use a service like Dapper, they will host the application for you. If not, you will need web hosting. Facebook recently announced that they are offering hosting for application developers. Some suggest using Amazon’s just in time services, while others will suggested a dedicated server. No matter which you choose, you will need to make sure that you have enough bandwidth to handle a popular Facebook application. Your hosting costs could run you as much as $20,000 a month (if you have millions of users) or as little as $4.99 if you application has little functionality or user base.

Because hosting varies and can be expensive it is important that you understand your costs could spiral out of control. If you think you have a real hit on your hands, see if you can work with your hosting provider to exchange some exposure for them in exchange for free ro low cost hosting.

6. The Launch - The initial launch of your application can make or break your success. To start, make sure you have fully tested and debugged your application. You should find problems with your application, not your users. It is probably a wise idea to formulate a application launch plan. Within the plan you should detail what friends you are going to invite, the creation of a group for your application, which group/networks you are going to announce the application to, creation of a press release, a list of blogs/news sites to contact about your application. If you still have money left over, you might even want to figure out if you can make an ad buy, to drive more traffic. Much of the promotion of your application can be done for FREE.

When you take a look at building a Facebook application on a limited budget one can easily see that development and hosting costs are one’s main worry. Development costs can be curtailed by doing it yourself, or by thoroughly exploring all of your third party options. There are developers who are diamonds in the rough out there that can produce outstanding applications very inexpensively. Spend your time finding them. In terms of web-hosting, hope that your costs are ever increasing - this means your are succeeding. Look to offset these costs, though, by using the monetization model from your application plan.

Remember, when working with a limited budget you may have to sacrifice some features, some functions and even a bit of quality in order to get the application out. No application is without flaws - thats what they made the next version for.

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