[Simply Business] Pass the Gold, Shovel Your Way To Riches

The first millionaire in California became one during the legendary 1850 Gold Rush, his name was Sam Brannan. Despite the gold rush, he did not become rich by discovering and selling gold, he was actually selling shovels. The second person that got rich in the same gold rush is a Jewish guy. He experimented with a material called denim and made comfortable but strong and durable pants to wear when digging for gold. His name was Levi Strauss, the inventor of Jeans.

Gold rush is always happening, even right now in our own digital era. Ten years ago everybody was rushing to have a website and now everybody was rushing to make mobile apps. Many people are finding opportunities in making mobile apps, but how many people actually make money from mobile apps?

According to the recent study by App Promo, the iOS market is filled with 600,000 apps, but only 12 percent of apps earned $50,000 or more. About 59 percent of apps don't generate enough money to break even on development costs. It's worse on the Android Market, or should I say the newly renamed Google Play. According to a recent Flurry Analytics survey, it shows that developers make 77 percent less revenue selling on Google Play than on the App Store.

Aside from the blockbuster Draw Something or Angry Birds, it's all too easy to be hidden among hundreds of thousands of mobile apps that is already available in the market. Everybody is clearly in on this gold rush so why bother joining the crowd. Instead of rushing with them, why not make them your market?

Some development studios started focusing on building custom mobile apps for corporate clients. Some even make the tools to built mobile apps more easily and efficiently. Phonegap and Titanium Appcelerator come to mind when thinking about the tools to built mobile apps. There's also a number of companies focusing on backends like Stackmob and Cocoafish which make it easy for developers to develop backend services. Stackmob just closed $7.5 million in funding and Cocoafish got acquired by Appcelerator and renamed to Appcelerator Cloud.

By not rushing into the gold rush, and instead making the gold diggers your market, you can differentiate yourself and stand out easily among the crowd. The more people following the gold rush trend the more you can generate profit for yourself. So the question that you need to ask yourself, why compete with millions of people searching for a mythical gold when you can actually capitalize on them?

Aria Rajasa is the CEO of gantibaju.com, a clothing startup backed by a very strong designer community. His passion in entrepreneurship has gotten him to establish a number of companies in technology and design industries since leaving university.

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