How Much Should You Spend to Build Your Bubble.io App?

how much should you spend to build your bubble app by the end of this video you're going to have the answer to that question now the reason why I can't just give you a direct number is because the cost really should depend on a number of personal factors now we at coaching no code apps have run the full spectrum of service offerings over the years way back in the day years ago we offered hourly coaching for example we offer self-led courses we've offered outsourced development services and today we offer a full-blown structured coaching program helping Founders go from idea to Pilot app and so what I'm going to do is take all of that experience and insight about the different factors you need to consider but also about pricing that comes along with all of that convey that to you so you can come up with the right number for you personally now the very first thing you need to do is decide whether you're going to Outsource the development of your bubble up or whether you're going to build it yourself now you might already feel like you've made a decision but be really careful with this because the decision you make now can have a lot of Ripple effects later that you might not be aware of so what we're going to do is compare the two Loosely from a high level but just to give you a general idea of the important factors that you really need to be considering when making this decision so we're going to kind of plot the differences between Outsourcing and self-building based on the factors that you see here on the screen so we're going to use red for outsourcing and green for self building now keep in mind that when you're looking at Outsourcing there are going to be price variations from Team to team developer to developer based on different factors and with self-building there's also going to be a lot of variation self-building could be taking free tutorials that you find on YouTube and building your app with those or it could mean going through for example a program like I mentioned that we offer a fully structured coaching program where technically you're still building the app yourself but obviously vastly different from doing it on your own so keep that in mind this is high level but we'll start with cost so with Outsourcing we're going to put the cost obviously quite a bit higher than self building now with speed we're going to put for outsourcing the speed right here at the very top now this is because if you're choosing the right development team who has gone through a number of different projects they know what they're doing they have a lot of experience they're probably going to be pretty systematized on the back end they're going to have systems for pulling the exact information they need from you to get everything right so there's not a ton of back and forth they can just kind of bang out the development and then not have to do a ton of revisions on the back end obviously that's helpfully but that's why we're putting the speed up there now with self-build we're going to put it lower but not all the way down at the bottom now it can be all the way down at the bottom depending on how you're going you know if you're going the completely free just finding tutorials online route then you're going to be lower but we'll put it a little bit higher up just so that there's a realistic kind of comparison of the different options now in terms of quality we're gonna bring the outsourced quality a little bit lower and the self-built quality a little bit higher and this one might actually surprise you because if you're thinking about Outsourcing you're generally going to assume the quality is going to be high but there's a lot of variation and honestly there's even variation when it comes down to your own personal goals I mean what are you looking to build are you building a an app that is Enterprise level it is going straight into a business that is already operating at scale and users data is going to be migrated directly over or are you building a basic prototype you know so you need to also keep that in mind but there is a ton of variation when it comes to Quality when you're looking for outsourcing so you do need to be careful about that and then with self-building now the reason why this one's a little bit higher is because we're making the assumption that you're really taking the time and putting in the effort to build your app correctly from the start there's always 10 different ways to do things in development and nine of them are going to be wrong for you one of them is going to be right so this assumes you're you're making the effort to find that one right path for everything that you're building okay now we're going to look over here at control and what I'm talking about here is the control that you personally have over your app now this is when we see a really really big switch so when you're Outsourcing your control goes way down one of the things you need to just be comfortable with is the fact that you're going to be reliant on someone else for every single thing within your app forever if you're Outsourcing now a lot of people think that because we're talking about no code that if someone else else builds your app then you could just take over it later but this is not something I've ever seen be successful and the reason because is because in order to take over an app you need a certain level of skill set and understanding of the app and that skill set and understanding is developed through building the app so taking over an app is not an easy thing to do not something I've ever seen work and so if you're Outsourcing now plan to Outsource forever okay that means being dependent on someone else to have both the knowledge about your app and the control over your app okay now when you self-build the control goes way up now are you going to be able to build your app in just a few months and develop your skill set to where you're just never going to need help ever again no matter how much you expand and scale your app no your skill set is going to evolve over time but because you have that that underlying understanding of your app and that foundational skill set from building the app you can compound that over time and so you have a lot more control and this doesn't mean that you have to be the one building your app forever but it does mean that you can make the decision vision of when and who you pay to help you handle development at a later stage maybe when you're shifting Focus to business growth but you're not reliant on it and the options the flexibility in the just the power to make a decision on your own that's really really big and very valuable okay now let's look at long-term control and this is I kind of jumped forward and started talking about that but this is over the the really long run I'm talking about you launch your app and years later when it has evolved to a point where it's no longer even recognizable compared to the first version how much control do you have well long-term control with an agency I I wanted to get at least higher over time over years and years of time now the reason why is because you should be able to learn at least the lingo around your app and and just relevant to the development World which should give you a better ability to hire smarter to manage a team to communicate with the team to spend the right amount of money on a team when you're just starting out you're really gonna have no idea you're only going to be able to look at other people's experiences if they're sharing it and if those are comparable to yours but you want to be able to learn some of that over time so you can just really make better decisions right and of course with self-building we're going to have this up here and that's just because you're always going to understand your app if you've built your app and you've evolved the app and evolved your skill set then it doesn't matter who's on your team or who is replaced on your team over the years you're always going to be able to make that decision yourself if you want to obviously you can delegate that responsibility to someone but this is the comparison that we're looking at and what you need to keep in mind comparing Outsourcing to self-building okay so for visual satisfaction let's go ahead and connect the dots here so you can kind of see how this plays out so that's kind of the line there for outsourcing and here it is for self building okay so in the beginning you can see the comparison and then those two kind of switch as you go over the long term which that goes back to those Ripple effects that I was talking about that are not always evident up front Okay so we're gonna go through a quick overview of costs and what you should consider when Outsourcing but we're going to focus the majority of this on self-building mostly because that's what we help people do but if you're watching this video you're probably very interested in that so with Outsourcing you really need to consider three things the time or the speed of development the overall cost and the quality of the app so the rule of thumb is you can only have two of those three so if you want an app really quickly very quick turnaround time and you want a really high quality app your cost is going to go way way up so you're compromising on that if you want a really cheap app and you want a you want turned around really quickly well the quality is going to go down so that's the compromise you're making there so the the thing you need to do is just figure out your own priorities and set those expectations going in so when you go and have conversations with developers or teams who you want to get quotes from and one of them offers you the you know a turnaround of your app with the same exact scope compared to an agency but one developer is offering it for two thousand dollars and the agency is offering it for twenty thousand dollars and you think well what in the worst like this makes no sense it's the same thing well it's not the same thing okay you have to think about the time the speed of development how the overall cost is going to come into play and the quality of the app and that's the really really big one okay the the quality is where you're gonna see the most variation so when you see high quotes and you see low quotes then that's what you need to have in your mind now is that the case all the time no there are certainly exceptions but go into it with that knowledge so you can make a smart decision okay so let's jump over to talking about self building your app now there are five very personal factors that are going to influence number one how long it takes to build your up which in turn influences how much it costs to build your app now I want you to keep in mind that these five factors you can't just look at these things individually really you have to look at them all together so we're gonna go through them you're going to think through your own answers or your own kind of feedback to this and consider them all together that's really important first things first what is the scope of the app You're Building this is pretty simple but the bigger the app you're building the longer it's going to take you and therefore likely the more money it's going to cost you okay so look at your scope now if you've narrowed down to an MVP first version app pilot product great that's gonna help you because you really want to build a skill set that coincides with a first version app and then let those two things grow together so you expand your skill set and your app at the same time once you've created the foundation for both okay but the bigger the app the longer it's going to take the more it's going to cost number two how come Flex is the app now this is different from scope okay you can have a really big scope with really simple features complexity is looking at things like um your data structure you know how involved is working with data in your app or maybe different types of calculation and API Integrations things like that so looking at the custom functionality you know if you are building an app and you have to have five really complex and heavy API Integrations in the first version product for some reason that's going to take you a long time to build and it is going to cost a lot more because it's going to be tough to build a skill set that enables you to do something like that on your own you're gonna have to find help along the way number three is kind of a curveball but how consistently and frequently are you going to commit time to building your skill set and building your app you know a lot of people ask us and I just see this question asked in a lot of different places but how long does it take to build an app on bubble and there is absolutely no one answer to that but even if you did say like hey really you should take no more than around three months to build your first version app so we're adding some constraints in there but with that you have to consider how frequently and consistently you are personally committing time during that time frame so are you spending hours maybe a couple hours in your app every single day during that period or are you spending a couple hours once a week during that period that's gonna have a major influence on the overall time that it takes you to build your app and thus again the cost because we're assuming that you're spending money to get help along the way right so the longer it takes the more it costs but if you are consistently focusing time on building your skill set and building your app you're going to build it a lot quicker and it's going to cost less money because building your app and your skill set is kind of like going to the gym if you take three weeks off from going to the gym when previously you were going consistently right you had developed a base level of Fitness then you don't go to the gym for three weeks and then you go back and then you go and do those same exercises that you had been doing previously all of them are going to feel harder and it's going to take you time to build back up it's the same with building your app and your skill set if you spend time developing this skill set and then you take three weeks off for example you're gonna have to backtrack and rebuild what you've lost because when you're just starting out development is not going to feel intuitive to you it's a new thing and so you can't just come in learn something and then say okay it's in there forever it's not going to be so if you're not in your app consistently and frequently it's gonna take you longer it's going to cost you more money now the next one is one of the biggest ones of all but what type of help are you getting now we've kind of alluded to this throughout the video but you can be building your app completely on your own completely for free other than your own time which obviously is costing you something but you could take that route or you could take the route that I've mentioned a couple times going through a program like the one that we offer where it's really Hands-On you're guided every step of the way both are self building but both are vastly different right so when you're thinking about this what type of help are you getting you want to be looking at things like process is there a process you're following is there a structure you're following is there a strategy that's being taken into account for how you're building what you're building the order in which You're Building what you're building is there development methodology coming into play are you following the right steps chronologically are you building for to optimize for scale and performance because that's going to prevent a lot of backtracking as you go which obviously expands the time frame so all of these things are going to come into play and really affect the length of time that it takes you and number five is one that I really I like to talk about which might sound a little bit weird but it's because nobody really thinks about this but do you actually want to be building your app now again this might sound a little bit strange but I see some people who feel like they are forced to build the app themselves just because they they just can't afford to Outsource so they have to build the app themselves and they don't want to be doing it right and so because they don't want to be doing it every single step feels like a really big chore now the thing about development is that it's full of puzzles and and uh you have to figure a lot of things out along the way it's a lot of tinkering okay and if you are coming up against those puzzles and those instances where you need to Tinker and you do not want to be doing this those are going to feel like mind-numbing challenges and frustrations to you but if you actually do want to be building your app you want to be building it so that yeah you can save a lot of money but also so that you can have control over your app long term and so that you can develop a skill set that's going to enable you to do a lot of things for your business right if you actually want to be doing that those uh those kind of Mind Games those puzzles those tinkering moments those aren't going to feel so much like frustrating challenges they're going to feel like puzzles that usually are pretty engaging if you're just building your app because you feel like you have no other option and you do not want to be doing it it's going to take you a long time to build your app and I I would be willing to bet that at some point you're just going to choose to spend the money that you could have spent early on and get help doing it okay but if you actually want to be doing this for other reasons besides just that you have to then you're gonna probably build your app a lot more quickly and that's going to affect the cost okay so the scope of your app the complexity the frequency and consistency see at which you're actually in the app the type of help you're getting and whether or not you actually want to be doing this all of those things need to be considered you need to figure out what the answer is to each of those for you and for your app and and remember that they all affect each other too and so what you really need to be figuring out when thinking about those is how long or not is it going to take you to build your app and I'm going to give you a frame of reference I want to see you building your first version app in about three months that's like a sweet spot okay any shorter is not really realistic all right but that that's really a sweet spot so put that on one end of your spectrum now for reference for people who uh just try to build themselves the entire way with no direct help from anyone just by you know maybe asking questions in forums over time or looking up free tutorials I see a lot of people spending one to two years building their apps doing that now that's not a bad thing necessarily but it might be a bad thing for you so that's why I give that as an example so we have a few months on one end and we have one to two years on the other end you need to figure out these different factors that we've just talked through what you know to what end or what side that's going to push you towards so figure out are you on the shorter end because you're consistently in your app building it building your skill set your scope is correct for a first version it's not too complex or more complex than it really should be and keep in mind there's lots of ways to simplify simplify things and you always should be so you know all those things what is it for you put yourself somewhere on that Spectrum that's going to influence cost okay so now we need to consider one other factor and this is the most important one of all usually and that is the quality of your app what level of quality do you want do you want to be able to build a first version the first time through that will be able to evolve into your next version next next and so on as your business as a whole evolves or do you want to potentially build your first version several times through and then not be able to build on top of that afterwards but have to potentially rebuild because each time you try to scale you run into performance issues okay those are the things that you need to consider now if you want a higher quality app and you're building it yourself you're going to have to invest a lot more money okay I have seen people spend one to two years building their apps completely on their own right that that far end of the spectrum that we've talked about and on the other side they still couldn't launch a product that was truly scalable so they had to go back and start over with paid help now again that's not necessarily A Bad Thing the reason why I I wanna talk about that end of the spectrum is because some people like that some people like to Tinker they're not on some specific deadline and that's fine okay um so that's that's often a choice I don't see a lot of people struggle for that long without knowing that they're they're doing it intentionally okay so before we start talking some numbers let's do a quick recap we have compared Outsourcing versus self-building and a lot of the factors that come along with that including cost and then the development time frame that you're going to be looking at which influences cost of course so that's the scope the complexity the frequency at which you're in your app the type of help you're getting and your own desire to be doing this and then we've talked about the quality which is obviously a major major factor that you need to be considering so now we're going to look at some things that you're probably not thinking of but I I want to coach you on how to approach being confident about pricing and choosing the right option so when you start talking to teams or developers or coaches or whoever it may be about getting help building your app how much it's going to cost you you're gonna get a very wide variety of answers and prices now as we've gone through in this video there's lots of different factors that are really personal that should decide which one is right for you and so there isn't necessarily a right price or a wrong price right it just depends and so what we're going to talk through now is a way for you to figure out what it's worth to you to spend on your app and therefore be able to navigate all of those quotes in a way that's logical and that isn't going to leave you spending money kind of blindly so there's two factors you need to think through before you go and talk to anyone number one is what is the anticipated Roi the return on investment that you are going to be getting from building your app now if you can look financially first then that would be helpful but it's not required which which we'll get to but have you validated your app idea that's really what we're getting at here it's okay if you don't have a specific number if you can't can't come up with you know the number of users you're gonna have and the exact price point and therefore the annual revenue that you think you're gonna have in your number three like that is okay I don't expect you to have that but I do expect you to have done some validating of your app idea generally that's going to be in the form of you having personal experience with the problem that your app solves the process that it involves um and just bringing your own knowledge and your own connections to that okay so if you can kind of come up with a general idea or maybe even just a goal that you think is realistic and you validated your idea you know people have the problem that you're solving and you have experience in solving it in another way and you're just packaging that differently if you have that okay great but the second thing you need to add on to that is what's the personal Roi and to me this is one of the most important things when it comes to building your app yourself when you're Outsourcing the development of your app you have to go by that Financial Roi to tell you whether or not it's worth it and that's really hard right when you're building the app yourself you can start to look at the personal Roi which is sometimes even more valuable than the financial Roi when you're building the app yourself you have control over the app and you now have development skills now what happens when you decide you want to Pivot your app or maybe you want to pursue something new maybe you want to build your app build it up to a certain annual revenue bring on a team and then go and build another one and do the same thing some of our own Founders have done that right the personal Roi can be infinite right because it just depends on how far you want to take it it's completely up to you so ask yourself what is the best that could happen personally maybe that for you is being able to quit your job and run your own business forever and that is your personal Roi and you know you don't have a specific number but you just know that for you just just being able to support yourself with your own thing like that's it you've done it or maybe the personal Roi for you is just being able to add some money to your retirement accounts great or maybe for you the personal Roi is you know at the very least if you come out of this on the other end and your app idea is unfortunately not successful it wasn't what it didn't end up being what you envisioned it being you at least now have a development skill set and you can pursue another app idea if you want maybe you can contribute that skill set to your company and get a pay increase you know if you're an employee um you know maybe you're a business owner and your one app idea didn't pan out but now you can systematize your business in a way that allows you to cut costs by 30 annually I mean you know at the very least walking away with an in-demand skill set maybe you end up building apps for other people I've seen Founders do that too just because they love development that much right at the end of the day you're one app idea if you're Outsourcing you're betting on that but if you're building it yourself that personal Roi can truly be whatever you want it to be because again it's how however far you take it now the reason why I emphasize this so much is because if you understand what this means right investing your time and investing your money into your app if you understand what it means for you personally and potentially also financially then you can go into conversations with teams developers Consultants with a lot of information and knowledge to help you make smart decisions so if you talk to a developer and they say I'm going to help you build your app over the next eight weeks and you're going to come out on the other side with a full scope app and it's going to cost you two thousand dollars right well you can look at that and compare that to maybe another quote you get where a developer says I'm going to help you build your app and on the other side you're gonna have the same scope but it's gonna cost you ten thousand dollars well now you can start to ask questions okay about all the factors that we've talked about and you can get information on the type of help that comes along with those things you know what is what's involved what's the complexity what's the quality that's such a big one and then you can understand which price is going to be worth it just for you personally if you have thought through that personal Roi and you know that for you it's not going to be worth more than maybe a few thousand dollars for you to build your app yourself right because maybe earlier on when we talked about how much you want to be building this your desire is kind of low right if you go into conversations knowing that then you're going to be able to make a smarter decision for you that is probably a very wrong decision for someone else so I'll I'll wrap it up with this for outsourcing I've seen quotes from 2000 to 50 000 for the same sort of product there's going to be a lot of variation within that so you have to think back to all of the factors that we talked through what type of quality are you looking for what is the complexity and the scope and think of quality in relation to those things too um think about your level of involvement that you want to be having right do you have any desire at all to have any sort of role right on the lower end you're gonna need to be there a lot more on the higher end you can assume that you're not going to be needed for anything because everything's going to be systematized and um you know it's it's pretty much all taken care of so what matters to you you just got to prioritize it for yourself and nobody can answer that for you but after that think about the ROI and then just make make a decision based on that right because that that high end is not wrong and the low end is also not wrong but it is wrong for some people it's and it's right for some people and the same is true on this self-build side I've seen quotes for consultants for example anywhere from a thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars and upwards just depending on the length of time and and what the scope ends up being so again think about the complexity the quality relative to the scope your desire to be doing this how much hand-holding you want or not you know how much do you want to be figuring out your own process and your own strategy and your own methodology you can find on the lower end someone who's just gonna answer the questions or answer your questions as they come up but you're the one who's figuring out which questions to ask on that higher end you don't need to worry about coming up with the right questions because they're already going to be pre-answered before you even have them and then of course that that Roi and with the self build it goes beyond the monetary Roi and we're looking at personal Roi now based on that cost you know you have to think about the fact that on the higher end where there's going to be a lot closer of a connection to the person who you're working with a lot more structure a lot more structured teaching even you're gonna walk away with a skill set that's going to enable you to do a lot more and go a lot further and on the lower end obviously the opposite is true you're still going to be very very Reliant neither is right or wrong it's just right or wrong for different people so take all of these factors into account figure them out for yourself before you go into these conversations and then you can make the smart decision and the right decision for how much you should be spending to build your bubble app now if you want to build your app yourself but you want a high quality app you want the structure you want the process you want to do it right the first time around then the next thing to do from here is head to coachingknocodeapps.com forward slash Workshop which is an in-depth training that's going to guide you through all the steps you need to take next to become a successful app entrepreneur so head to coaching no codeapps.com forward slash Workshop to sign up for that we'll see you on the inside and hey I hope this was helpful see you in the next one [Music] thank you

Channel: Coaching No Code Apps

Views: 2,138

Keywords: building an app on bubble, bubble.io, bubble apps, bubble, how much do bubble apps cost, how much to build a bubble app, cost of building on bubble, bubble app pricing, development agencies, bubble consultants, bubble coaches, app cost, app pricing, how long does it take to build an app on bubble, app quote, bubble app quote, should i build an app on bubble, what to know about building an app on bubble, bubble mvp cost

Id: 6sPXxKpwHNY

Length: 35min 57sec (2157 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023