A step-by-step guide to building a video streaming app

A step-by-step guide to building a video streaming app

If you want to build a video streaming app, you should start with finding a niche for it and deciding on the content availability. From this article, you’ll get to know what to do next.

The competition in the sector of video streaming apps is fierce. To maximize your odds of success, you should thoroughly think over every aspect of your future product. In this article, you’ll find a step-by-step guide on building a top-notch video streaming service app that you should be able to effectively monetize.

Select a Niche

These are the niches that mobile app development businesses work on most frequently in 2021.

  • Education. This niche isn’t limited only to online courses. It also includes video instructions and tutorials. Plus, it might feature dozens of sub-niches, from doing origami to taking care of home plants.
  • Fitness. It might include video lessons for different fitness types, be it yoga, weight lifting or dance training. Also, the app might offer video lectures on how to sleep well, lose weight, compile nutrition plans and other aspects of a healthy lifestyle.
  • Entertainment. At first sight, it might seem that there is no space for new service providers in this niche. But that’s just an illusion. The entertainment market is huge, insatiable and by no means saturated.

One of the primary factors that should influence your choice of the niche is your location. You might want to take as a role model an app that is popular on a global scale and adapt it to the demands and opportunities of people from your region.

Decide on the Content Availability

You might want to either create video content yourself, or use videos from other distributors, or combine these two approaches. To be officially allowed to cooperate with video distributors, you need to get a license for public performance. This means that you should either get in touch with copyright holders or rent content from authorized distributors with licenses.

Identify Your Monetization Model

There are three ways to make money on your video streaming service app.

  • The pay-per-view model. Users pay for each video they watch. This approach is optimal for apps that broadcast sports events, concerts, trade shows, and conferences.
  • Subscription. To get access to your content library, subscribers need to pay a monthly fee. To make the most of this model, you should regularly upload new content to your app.
  • Advertising. You can charge other companies for running video advertisements on your platform. This strategy works well only for platforms with large audiences.

It would be wise to offer short-term free trial periods to all of these models.

Investigate Technical Requirements

To stream standard-definition movies, it’s enough to have a speed of slightly over 2 Mb/s. But for HD, 3D, or 4K broadcasts, the speed needs to be much higher.