First off excuse my ignorance on this subject. I have no experience building a iphone app or coding/programming in general. I have brain stormed and planning on designing 100 niche emoji images. I have a unique marketing angle and plan to get downloads. Mainly working niche blogs and facebook ads Ryan Holiday style. I figure the $1 price point is best. 1. Can this type of app be built: I want the app to put my emoji images straight into the users keyboard so they can use them in all text conversations. I have downloaded emoji apps before and most only let you message the images out of there app instead of your own keyboard. I believe they do this in order to sell ad space and up sell in app emoji add ons. OR what I am wanting to do can not be done. Sponsored Ad 2. Which IOS version should I build this app for: 7.1? If I build for 7.1 IOS can 8.0 users still download? 3. A good deal for freelance work. I ran ads on odesk and elance for iphone dev. I received bids around $300-500 plus. Just to play around I placed a new ad on both with a set price of $100. Surprisingly I found 20 or so freelancers willing to build my app for $100.00 and to my surprise 7 of them had good feedback. I placed another ad for a emoji designs and I found a guy willing to design all 100 for $40. I have not contacted any of the freelancers yet. I am researching what key questions I need to ask them to ensure this design goes smooth. So far from reading a little on the subject, I have compiled a small list of questions for the freelancers: 1. Are you able to beta test through ios simulator? (I plan on having about 20 of my friends beta the app in the first few weeks to find bugs.) 2. Will you be willing to fix bugs for the next 3 months after app is built 3. Do you use X-dev? Which platform are you developing on? I hear that I can set up a team account through apple and invite the developer in to work on the app and load everything up. Any questions you all think I need to ask my developer to properly vet him, please let me know. Any resources or reading material on the subject of managing a project like this, please let me know. If this takes off I plan on building a android app as well. Thanks in advance to all who reply.
Why not just go to buzztouch and DIY for native apps or use some of the others that use html5 It doesn't sound like what you want to do is that tricky.
As far as I know, it's not possible to implement separate emoji-apps into the Apple keyboard? However, in iOS 8, you can install replacement keyboard-apps (which, evidenced by, among others, SwiftKey, is quite popular) - so the question becomes, could you perhaps implement the app as an add-on for popular replacement keyboards?
I think doing a whole new keyboard is a whole different path for my idea and perhaps too much in time and money to develop. The idea of a add on is great. I will research the best replacement keyboards. Do you know of another forum to post my question regarding the implementation of a separate emoji-apps into the Apple keyboard?
I did a stack of research on app building tools and my shortlist came down to appgyver and buzztouch. I loved the professional slickness of the appgyver website - how it walked you through all the steps but I couldn't get it working on my mac or win7. Buzztouch is like a framework. It has a control panel where you set up as much of your app as possible and then it builds you a native android or ios app that you edit in eclipse or xcode as if you'd written it from scratch. You can create your own screens, use the base screens or buy a plugin from one of the other developers. They have an active forum, podcasts and most weeks have a webinar. Once you are done you submit to the relevant store and off you go. If you need to make changes you will probably be able to do it via the control panel without having to submit a new version of your app which is pretty cool.
Go through some of the wireframe tools that help designers setup the app they want built. Work through the steps you want in the app and then hand that over to the developer. https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=app+design+tools