The question in the forums was:
How much is the budget for the first app is reasonable for newbie (like me)?
Please don’t answer like “it depends”. I need numbers!
Here is my answer:
I’ll try to explain why it “depends”.
You really need to state your goal and work from there. If you just want to get your feet wet and go through the entire process in order to learn, buy a course from Carter Thomas go through it and learn to work with the templates. If you have in mind your very original app, first shop around to see what templates / pieces of code can be bought for cheap, find a developer and work from there to integrate it all into a publishable app.
Speaking of developers (and being one) — it also takes time and money to find and engage the proper developer. If you buy a Unity template, be sure to find a developer that has experience with Unity, for example.
The best way to approach a developer is with your own app project finished and detailed (“wireframed”), up to each and every screen. The worst way to approach a developer is to tell them “here’s what I want and I am paying you to make it happen”.
You will also have to spend money on the contents of the app: emojis if it is an emoji app, images and icons for navigational menus and so on.
There are also hidden costs for things that you do yourself: curating videos from YouTube, applying for the ad networks and putting ads into the app, integrating various SDKs for analytics and so on.
There is also the cost of time that you spend on communicating with the developer, testing the app, suggesting and implementing improvements, then publishing the app to the store, dealing with the eventual rejections (and yes, they happen to all of us, from time to time).
So open up a new spreadsheet page, put down all these costs and see where you are.