When it comes to entertainment many people prefer mobile applications. After all, a smartphone and a tablet are always at your hand. So whenever you are bored, you can retrieve them from your pocket or bag and launch the most favorite app.
If previously having a social media app on your device was enough, now users seek for more creative and fun solutions to make something interesting and then share it with friends. And celebrity look alike applications are exactly what many people from all over the world prefer. Fun pictures and collages always get more likes.
Such applications like Celebs, Gradient, or My Replica get more than 100K new downloads every month. Which proves that they are highly demanded and popular (and profitable, of course). But there is still a place for something no less interesting on the market.
So if you are considering the development of your own celebrity look alike app, then our article is for you. We will share how to build such a solution, what monetization strategy and features to choose, and where to draw your inspiration from.
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What are the key development steps?
To have a great app idea in mind is not enough, because without the right development team you will not make it a real solution. So the first thing you should do is to go and look for the best development company on the internet. This is a hard task, since there are such platforms as Clutch or GoodFirms that have various ratings of the companies.
When choosing a team of mobile developers for your project, we’d recommend you to pay attention to their experience, average hourly rate, minimum project size and portfolio. Take your time and explore the works of the company, write them an email with your questions or schedule a call.
To successfully enter the mobile market with your app you need to hire an experienced team and also complete the most crucial pre-development stage called discovery phase. On this stage you and your Business Analyst will discuss your project, explore competitors applications and their key features, identify necessary tech stack and monetization strategy, and complete all technical documentation alongside with project vision.
Once the pre-development stage is over, you can proceed with the development of your celebrity look alike application. You will need a bunch of specialists to build it and among them will be:
- Business Analyst,
- Mobile coders (iOS and Android one),
- UI/UX designer,
- HTML/CSS developer,
- QA engineer,
- Scrum Master.
All those specialists will be involved in the different phases of development and once your solution will be ready, they will even help you to successfully submit it to the mobile stores – App Store and Google Play. And now let’s take a look at the key app building stages and what’s happening on each of them.
You may be wondering how long it takes to build a celebrity look alike app. Well, the overall time depends on the feature set, operating system (iOS or Android) and app complexity. For example, it is harder to build a solution for Android devices since there is a huge variety of them with different screens and versions of the operating system. And all these factors should be taken into account.
So in general celebrity look alike apps can be developed and released within 3-6 months. And the approximate development cost for solution per one platform would be $30,000+.
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What features to add?
The broad feature set is what attracts numerous users, so you need to be creative and innovative when it comes to your celebrity look alike app. Apart from basic options that came to your mind first, you need to add something unique that no other app offers or modify an existing feature to make it incredible.
So to help you with defining the feature set, we have collected some top options that you might consider for your app. But before you take a look at them, check out the video we’ve found. The YouTuber shows how Gradient app works and what features are the most exciting and worth paying attention to.
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What monetization strategy to choose?
To have a solution that will be liked and widely used is not enough, because what really makes it great and valuable is its ability to bring you income. So it is crucial to take care of your monetization strategy. First of all you need to decide whether your app is going to be free or paid one, because the approaches to monetization will differ depending on this.
Based on our experience we can say that the entertainment apps like Gradient or Celebs can make money using one of the three possible methods – paid features, advertising opportunities, or subscription plan. Let’s speak about each of them in detail.
In-app purchases
Your celebrity look alike app may be freemium based, which means that its core functionality can be used for free, while some advanced interesting features will be paid ones.
Such monetization approach helps to grab the attention of more users, since not so many people are ready to buy a solution before they try it out and see the real value of the paid content. In-app purchases is a reliable strategy to get your revenue. But to make the most of it you need to give a good thought to the app features and make sure you offer something really unique and interesting.
Advertising
Advertising is a great and yet tricky monetization strategy. You need to think thoroughly what ads will be the most suitable and relevant to your app users. And then cooperate with the people offering your payment for the advertising space in your app.
There are different types of advertising available so you can:
- place banners in your app;
- place short advertising videos;
- offer full-screen advertising;
- provide ads with gamification elements.
Since your solution is related to the entertainment industry, advertising can be the most relevant monetization strategy for your business. The ads revenue can reach thousands of dollars, so you will not miscalculate if you select it.
Subscription
Subscription is like in-app purchases method will let your app users get access to the best and most interesting features on a paid basis. The only difference between these two methods is that in-app purchases will not let your users try out premium features before buying them, while subscription will offer this.
People are likely to purchase something if they tried it out and saw the real advantage of that thing. So if you select a subscription method, you need to make sure that the content you are going to sell is informative, valuable and of use to your subscriptions customers.
Top 3 celebrity look alike apps
It is always better to draw inspiration from the best examples, so we have prepared a couple of well-known celebrity look alike apps for you. They are Celebs, Gradient and My Replica. They all are available for iOS and Android users and have a bunch of interesting options.
We have tried them out, explored their key features and prepared to describe what’s so great about them. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at all these apps and see what you can consider adding to your own solution.
Celebs
Image source: Celebs app
This solution is built with the usage of machine learning technology, so you can image the accuracy of its comparison algorithm. The Celebs users can upload their pictures into the app, press one button and wait for a couple of seconds until the app provides the results.
The picture that you get can be easily shared on Instagram and Snapchat. The app searches for similar faces using facial recognition and comparison compatibility options. And on top of that, it offers a unique feature – Animal look alike, which is both astonishing and engaging.
This solution is a freemium one. In the latest month the app got 200K downloads worldwide. Isn’t it impressive?
Gradient
Image source: Gradient app
Gradient is one of the most popular solutions all over the world, and that is because it offers seamless user experience combined with incredible set of features. It is not just a simple face matching app, it is a holistic mobile solution that offers photo editing options and use beautification techniques.
Among the feature set of Gradient you can see beauty score estimation option (powered by AI), option to create unique and fun collages (that by the way look very stylish), and bunch of handcrafter filters that would be appreciated by all aestheticians.
Gradient is a subscription-based solution and it can boast of the $40K revenue received during the previous month, and also it got 100K+ new downloads.
My Replica
Image source: My Replica app
My Replica uses face recognition technology that allows to find your celebrity twin easy and fast. On top of that, My Replica is powered by advanced machine learning to let its users perform smart picture editing and make it look realistic and stylish. The app offers a number of filters, face beautifiers and many more.
The collection of stars is enormous. So you can match your face with celebrities from the music, politics, history, sports, education spheres and many more others. And that is exactly why many users prefer My Replica to other celebrity look alike mobile solutions.
For the latest month My Replica got more than 60K new downloads and active users. Which proves that despite the wide variety of similar solutions on the market yours can easily get popular as well if you give a good though to the feature set and design.
To wrap it up
The sphere of mobile entertainment offers endless possibilities to people who want to build an app and enter the market with it. And while it is hard to compete with other social networks and build a next Facebook, it is possible to make a solution able stand out among others in the entertainment category.
Celebrity look alike apps are a great sphere to invest in. After all, the most popular face matching solutions earn $40-100K per month and gain the attention of thousands of active users. And if you shape your app idea correctly and hire a team that is experienced and knowledgeable enough, you may end up with a highly demanded mobile app bringing you stable additional income.
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