What’s The Best Category In The App Store?

Bluecloud Podcast: Build an App Business | App Marketing | Make Money With Apps | Passive Income | App Development

In this video, I want to talk to you about what category is the best for the App Store. I want to walk you through what categories you should be going after, why you should be going after them, and what to do about it.

Here, we’re going to focus on iTunes, the Apple App Store.

The App Store’s Categories

If you’re new to the app business, the first thing you have to understand is that the App Store is organized into categories. These categories allow the developers and the people browsing to organize their thoughts. Like when you only want to see sports apps, or only music apps.

You can go into those categories and each has its own lists. There’s top paid apps in the sports category or the reference category. Then, on the top level, there is the overall top list. It’s a little bit of a hierarchy. There’s the global App Store, and then there are individual categories that have their own ecosystems inside it.

Are You A Developer or A Marketer?

When people ask what category they should go into in the App Store, I think there are a few qualifications that you need to know.

The first one is: Are you planning on building a really, really great product? Are you a developer, are you looking to make something with really high quality? Or, are you more of a marketer, and you obviously want to make good profit, but you’re really more excited about the market opportunity, getting in front of people, growing your business that way? Both of these can be very lucrative, both have been proven time and time again. Just understanding which one you want to get into.

If you’re a developer and you want to make a great product, any category will work. These categories all have the ability to make money. While some may be bigger, it also means they’re more competitive. So, if you are a developer, if you’re thinking about building a really great product, if that’s what you want to do, it doesn’t really matter what category you go into. What matters is you should just be gunning to be one of the top people in that category.

Now for those who are more of a marketer type just like myself, you obviously need to build a great product. In the app business these days, if don’t build something that people want, or like, you’re not going to last very long. But as a marketer, there are categories that are better than others, in terms of getting to the top, or making money, or finding opportunities.

Looking at Categories and Groups of Buyers

The first thing you want to do is, not to look at the categories, but look at the groups of people, and specifically, which of these categories have people that are buying stuff already elsewhere.

I would look at something like Shopping, and Health and Fitness. But I’m not sure about Education.

So if you are a marketer looking for opportunities, the key is to go to the categories and identify those that have the biggest group of buyers. A lot of this comes down to just your own market research.

My Favorite Categories

From my own experience, my favorite ones are Finance, Health and Fitness, Shopping, and Entertainment. I think those four categories have been proven time and time again, that people will buy products, not only in the category but when they’re outside the category as well.

Categories that are Heavy on Content

The final piece that I would tell you when you’re picking your category is to focus on categories that rely heavily on content.

You want to focus on categories that have a lot of content that people consume on a regular basis. Which of these categories have lots of videos, lots of photos, lots of blog posts you can write, that have a podcast, or anything around that category?

Health and fitness, and finance are great examples of this. You can send daily content to people.

When you’re picking your category, you want to focus on one that has a lot of content that you can eventually give to your users, both inside the app and then outside the app, on your Facebook page or your email marketing. Because it’ll make a huge difference over the long term as you build up your app business.

Eventually, when you grow your business, the biggest and best way to make more money with apps over the next few years is going to be to create content and give people more of a brand experience. But you got to have content going into the app and going into your brand, and certain categories are just better for content than the others.

My Category Picks

Again, my picks: Finance, Health and Fitness, Entertainment, and Shopping. I love those categories for the next year or two, but those are only my picks. Just looking at the App Store categories right now, I think that any of these could do really well.

So, I hope this is helpful, and I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below what categories you are looking at, what categories are you thinking about going after, and let me know what you think.

See ya!

Carter

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