App Reskinning : A Beginner’s Guide

While some of the most successful appreneurs have been reskinning their apps for a long time, the business model really caught fire last year. If you haven’t heard about app reskinning yet or want to learn more, let’s dive in.

What is Reskinning?

Reskinning is simply the process of taking an existing app’s source code and replacing the graphic assets (images) with new ones.  Like the name suggests, it’s taking the ‘bones’ of the app and giving it a new ‘skin.’

The most obvious example of this was all the Flappy Bird clones that flooded the market last year. The gameplay was always the same, but developers switched up the theme with different characters & backgrounds.

At its simplest, an app can be reskinned by changing only the title, images, and store listing. More experienced reskinners will make small changes to the code or add additional features, building off of an existing game rather than starting from scratch.

Even the big time publishers reskin their games. Just look at Rovio’s multiple version of Angry Birds, all with different twists on the same tried-and-true gameplay.

Why is it popular?

Reskinning apps may not sound as exciting as creating the brand new game from scratch, but it’s become a proven model in the app business.

The main benefit of reskinning is that it lowers costs dramatically. For example, creating your own endless runner game from scratch could cost $5,000 or more. Instead, you could purchase an existing source code for a few hundred bucks, swap out the graphics and even add some new features for a total of $1,000-$2,000.

Taking it a step further, you could then reskin that same code as many times as you wish, driving the costs down and increasing your potential for a good ROI. The best reskinners in the business aren’t shy about skinning a code 10, 20, or even 30 times.

How to reskin an app

Here’s the basic formula for developing & publishing an app reskin. I’ll dive in to each of these steps in detail in future posts:

Purchase a source code.
Choose a new theme.
Create the new graphics.
Edit the source code to add the new images and create your new app.
Publish to the App Store!
I hope this article has given you a general understanding of reskinning and its benefits. Start looking at the App Store charts through this lens and you’re bound to get a few ideas for app reskins. Stay tuned & subscribe for more in-depth tips & to find out how the app millionaires create their reskin machines.

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