This summer, I undertook a personal project that had been a desire of mine for a long time while of creating my first iOS / iPhone app - Lasttrax for Last.fm

After picking up an ebook to help me actually create an app (designcode.io) and come up with my unique idea, I had everything I needed to get started … or so I thought!

A big chunk is evidently around the actual creation of the app itself, but it became clear early on, to make this work, I’d need to do a lot more than just design & code an app. I’d have to research and market it - and there was bound to be things I didn't know how to do, or would want help doing, so I could focus on the most important bits. This was only a side project after all, and I still had to manage my day-to-day at work. So I came up with a list of all the other things I’d need to get this project out-the-door in a decent amount of time. You’d probably be surprised at how many little things came up along the way!

I asked Fancy Hands to research my idea to make sure there would be an audience for it. More specifically, I asked them to help identify any recent stats of how many Last.fm users there were.

Karishma let me know that as of July 28th, 2014 there were 57.3 Million users. (Good, there is an audience for an app that uses Last.fm! - Maybe not here in North America though!)

I then asked Fancy Hands to help make a grid of some of the more popular iPhone apps that leverage Last.fm - They listed the Name, URL, Company Name, Price, Features, and Reviews/ Stars - This was helpful in determining what my app would do that was different from theirs - and get a gauge of what I could charge for mine.

Lastfm app research for Lasttrax iPhone App

One important part that was really helpful was getting Fancy Hands to find the legal documents I would need so I could have a Non Disclosure Agreement between myself and the freelancer I would be using for some coding help - I was giving my entire project & design (and the entire idea) to him to add some of the trickiest bits of code - so it was important to have him agree to not doing anything with it.

Fancy Hands found me a few different resources and template documents I could fill right in - and they were free!

I then leveraged Fancy Hands on a few different tasks to help research modern, new articles to help setup my marketing plan. I had them get me a list of possible iOS app reviewers. A list of blog posts / articles on cost-effective (almost free, or free) ways to market my new app - there are after all lots of apps out there for mine to cut through.

Lastly - Fancy Hands proof read everything. They reviewed the app website (www.lasttraxapp.com) , they reviewed the App Store description, and even this blog post.

By handing off some of these research / admin tasks, I was able to focus on designing the best info graphics app for Last.fm users in a pretty fast time frame (2 months!) If you’re about to undertake a similar project - maybe Fancy Hands can help.

Give Lasttrax a shot if you're a Last.fm user - Download it here.