6 Lessons in How to Build a Successful App Development firm inMarket shares the secrets to building a successful app.

The winners: Angry Birds, fart generators, doodles. The losers: almost everyone else.

Thanks to fairy-tale success stories, "app-preneurs" abound. But the truth is that most apps lose 76 percent of their consumers after the first three months of use--which means that even in the unlikely event your product is chosen from among the daily App Store deluge, any ad or freemium revenue streams would dry up quickly.

So how do you build an app that will attract loyal users, one that's strong enough to support a profitable company? To find out, we went behind the scenes at Los Angeles-based inMarket, the development firm responsible for CheckPoints, a free shopping app that allows users to check in at more than 1 million retailers to earn discounts toward goods -- essentially digitizing paper coupons, bridging online and offline commerce.