This is question I received over the weekend via my Ask Me page at timberry.com:

I have 3 great app ideas that I think many people will benefit from. I am only 18 and I am absolutely clueless on how I am going to turn my ideas in to a reality…. Any sort of advice will be truly appreciated.

I should start by saying that this is definitely not my expertise.  On the other hand, like you, I see what’s happening in mobile apps, it’s clearly a huge opportunity. So I did some investigating. I do know people in the apps business, I’ve talked to several, done some research, so here is my quick-and-dirty summary.

Good news or bad: If you’re going to pay somebody else to do an app, it’s going to cost at least about $75,000. I say at least because it’s often much more. To keep costs down you must be good at managing developers, probably from remote locations; and you have to have good design.

Good news possibly: some of the best apps are do-it-yourself apps by smart people who learned programming and just did it. Do a good web search. There are lots of learn-programming facilities available on the web, for amazingly low prices. Do you have the persistence to stick with it, learn it, and get good at it? Few do. I’d venture to say the ratio of people who start this path to people who finish it is about the same as the ratio of people who start a novel to people who finish one. But it’s there. Start with udemy.com.

And here’s a tip: Go take a look at 99designs.com. Take a look at what they do to bring international developers into a project one by one. Look at some of their examples for design projects, then some for development/coding/web projects. (disclosure: I’m a happy customer, I have no business relationship except I’ve paid them money).