[HN Gopher] Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $50...
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
Edit: Wow #1 on HN. Y'all are making my day. Hey HN, I'm mostly a
lurker on HN who's always super inspired by other people's small
project that end-up making money. (Huge fan of Ben Stoke's Tiny
Project [0]) After being burnt-out in big tech, I decided to write
my own weightlifting app and set myself a humble goal of reaching
$1000 in total proceeds. See [1] for my initial launch post. I've
now surpassed that goal and am now making about 500$/mo by selling
premium features in the app. Android version is coming soon too.
Doing the whole thing end-to-end (code, launch, marketing, support)
was super gratifying and taught me a whole lot. I have to admit
that I got almost teary eyed the first time someone bought one of
my IAPs. I'm not making a killing out of the app, and that was
never the goal. But the personal satisfaction I got out of it was
worth everything. I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson
that applies to everybody from this, but this whole mini-journey
was worth it for me, and I hope it will be for you too, should you
embark in a similar one. [0] https://tinyprojects.dev/ [1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27507452
Author : strongpigeon
Score : 403 points
Date : 2022-05-25 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
| ta3411 wrote:
| Can I ask about your experience implementing Stripe Connect
| Express, especially how did you choose that over Stripe Connect
| Standard? My understanding is you have to do more heavy lifting
| integration work, pay monthly fee per account, KYC, and are
| responsible for refunds for Express. Whereas a lot of that are
| taken care of in Standard.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Congrats! I hope to follow your lead one of these days
| bambax wrote:
| Excellent, congrats!
|
| Can you elaborate on IAPs (or other insights)? The app is free,
| yes? Then what can users buy while using the app?
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Found this on the iOS App store page:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/five-three-one/id1560266240
|
| Features include:
|
| - Planning and scheduling your whole 5/3/1 cycle
|
| - Charting your progress
|
| - Rest timer with notifications
|
| - Automatic plating calculation
|
| - Calculating your next cycle based on your performance
|
| - Notes associated with each sets
|
| - Home screen widget showing your your current and upcoming
| workouts
|
| - Lbs/kg support
|
| Optional paid features:
|
| - Customize which plates you're using and change your barbell's
| weight
|
| - Customize templates assistance work and define your own
| exercises
|
| - Beyond 5/3/1 templates and options, from Joker Sets to FSL,
| Pyramid and much more!
| strongpigeon wrote:
| My thinking was that unless you have a killer video / app store
| page, people won't pay for a brand new app. I'm not really good
| at this part, so I figured I'd just make the base app for free
| (you can do most workout templates from the first book), and
| charge for features. If people like the app, they'll feel
| invested and will want to invest more by buying features.
|
| Right now there are 3 Premium Features : - Custom Plating [0]:
| Which allows users to define which weight plates they have for
| the calculator - Custom Assistance [1]: Which allows users to
| customize the assistance sets they have - Beyond 5/3/1 Pack
| [2]: Which contains stuff from the Beyond 5/3/1 book.
|
| The thinking was that most of the stuff from the base app, you
| can easily do with the tools already out there (e.g. the black
| iron beast calculator), but that people would pay for new
| capabilities.
|
| [0] https://fivethreeone.app/custom-plating [1]
| https://fivethreeone.app/custom-assistance [2]
| https://fivethreeone.app/beyond-pack
| danuker wrote:
| https://fivethreeone.app/
|
| Custom Plating
|
| Custom Assistance
|
| Beyond 5/3/1 Pack: Joker Sets, First Set Last, Boring But Big
| Challenges...
| aschismatic wrote:
| I checked out your app because I've been wanting something like
| it but hadn't bothered looking at what was out there yet. Looks
| great!
|
| One thing I noticed though is that both barbell weight
| customization and plate customization is coupled together in one
| purchase. I feel like you may want to separate barbell weight
| into a free customization option because barbells made
| specifically for women tend to be lighter (~33lbs). By charging
| for barbell weight customization, you're inadvertently creating a
| difference in experience between men and women (for the base app,
| no purchases).
| egypturnash wrote:
| Congratulations, if you were me then your app would be covering
| your rent!
| deathanatos wrote:
| ... where I am it's $2,700/mo.
|
| ... my brother just moved to Podunksville, TN, and the rent on
| a 1 bd is $900/mo...
| egypturnash wrote:
| man, I left Seattle when my shitty 2br in the U got up to
| like $1200/mo after climbing $100/mo like clockwork every
| year. You are a couple orders of magnitude richer than I am
| if you can afford that. Which is not surprising given that
| I'm a lazy freelance artist who mostly draws furry porn and
| your last few comments indicate you're a Senior Software
| Engineer at a FAANG.
|
| Now my husband and I are splitting $950 for a 3br in New
| Orleans. It's pretty nice once you get inured to the fact
| that everything you own and love in this world, including
| you, could be washed away in a hurricane. And the "holy shit
| I am a trans living in the one queer-friendly hotspot in what
| is otherwise a very red state" thing. The place is _full_ of
| artists who could stop worrying about where most of their
| rent is coming from if they got $500 /month coming in from
| somewhere.
| lwhi wrote:
| Great work! This is inspiring .. great to hear.
|
| What are you thinking next?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I'm almost done with the Android version and will start working
| on an Apple Watch companion app right after that (which I think
| I could charge $15-20 for). I was semi-hoping they'd announce
| Flutter for wearables at Google I/O alongside the Pixel watch,
| but looks like I'll have to learn a bit more iOS stuff.
| m12k wrote:
| >I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson that applies to
| everybody from this
|
| Part of what attracted me to software engineering in the first
| place was an interest in "how things work", and being able to
| move between levels of abstraction (e.g. I know how IP, DNS, TCP,
| HTTP and JSON works, but most of the time I can just treat it as
| "sending objects"). So it was a bit of a eureka moment for me to
| realize that running a company is really just expanding the
| levels of abstraction that you operate with. It doesn't matter
| how well you code if people can't understand the user interface,
| so I got an interest in UX and usability. But it doesn't matter
| how user friendly it is, if it doesn't solve the right problem
| for people, so I got an interest in product development and
| customer research. It doesn't matter how good a product is if
| people never hear about it, so I got an interest in marketing and
| sales. And it doesn't matter how well I do all of that if I can't
| pay the bills, so I got an interest in pricing and monetization
| strategies.
|
| Juggling all those needs, and trying to shape the company and all
| its aspects into a cohesive whole is just as demanding and
| interesting as doing the same for a software project - it's just
| expanding the scope of which requirements and concerns you bring
| into the equation. For me at least, it's also been very rewarding
| to do the whole thing end-to-end, and it's felt like more of a
| natural extension of my ever-broadening interests than I would
| have expected. Bookkeeping can be as annoying as debugging, but
| in the end I'm really grateful that I understand how each detail
| works.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Good analogy, and cool story. IME real-world events rarely
| follow such a linear narrative but I found your company from
| your profile, and like that its blog --
| https://www.hrvey.com/blog -- shares insights from an
| "entrepreneurial journey" perspective. Congrats!
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks, this was a nice read.
|
| And closing with...
|
| > Bookkeeping can be as annoying as debugging, but in the end
| I'm really grateful that I understand how each detail works.
|
| ... hits home for me, haha. Never thought I was going to
| understand - let alone like - bookkeeping. What maybe helped,
| was me making my own bookkeeping app, it also forced me to
| understand the rules.
| yboris wrote:
| Thank you for sharing! I wish more people were transparent about
| money (to know what's possible).
|
| In my example, I created _Video Hub App_ that sells for $5 (and
| $3.50 goes to a _cost-effective_ charity). I 'm averaging about
| $500 for over a year now (with almost $15,000 donated to
| charity).
|
| https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-
| App (MIT open source)
| newbie578 wrote:
| Can anyone share what is their thought process regarding on
| deciding what app to build? Say you have a Word document with 15
| different ideas, how do you decide which one is worth investing?
| ffhhj wrote:
| In my case, the one that has a larger community where it can be
| promoted at low cost.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I built this app because I wanted to use it. Being user 0 is
| really helpful and is quite fun I can say.
| allenu wrote:
| Well done! $500/mo, though not crazy money, is significant.
|
| How did you market your app and how long did it take you to build
| out the app?
|
| I've built an app as well while I was doing my regular day job
| and recently quit the day job, mostly due to being burned out
| working in big tech as well.
|
| During my break from work, I decided to try to get my app sales
| up, but it's challenging. (During my best month, I think I got up
| to $200/mo but it's more like $100/mo right now.) As many others
| before me have found, marketing is the key, and I'm still
| learning that game. So, $500/mo is really good stuff.
|
| That said, building the app and making my users happy is
| something that is incredibly gratifying, and something that was
| missing in my previous 9-5.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you! I feel you 100% when you say that keeping user happy
| is incredibly gratifying.
|
| The app took me about 300-400 hours to build. Regarding
| marketing, I've said it elsewhere in the thread but here it is
| again:
|
| - Created an instagram account for the app and started
| following some tags. I liked post on the tags and started
| following some users to get them to look at my profile. Got
| about 150 downloads from that.
|
| - Made a 5/3/1 Calculator website. The goal was to make
| something useful to boost the SEO of my domain. What really
| ended up happening is the calculator ranks usually number 2 on
| Google and then users see the link to the app in there and
| click on it. Got about 200 downloads from that.
|
| - Apple Search Ads gives you $100 credit. Got a bunch of
| downloads with this
|
| - I used Bing Ads credits but wasn't too impressed with what I
| was getting from there though
| dheera wrote:
| Yep, all money is money and can make a difference to anyone.
|
| I live in the bay area, and though my rent is a lot more than
| $500/mo, if I put $500/mo _more_ toward rent I really _could_
| have a much nicer apartment, for example. Or it could be the
| monthly payment for an EV.
|
| $500/mo can be a nice quality of life boost even in the most
| expensive parts of the world even if it's not enough to live on
| just that.
|
| Back when I was doing my PhD, on a $2300/mo research
| assistantship salary in Boston, I also built a webapp that got
| me ~$200-300/mo for several years and close to $900/mo for one
| of those years. That alone allowed me to do lots of things I
| wanted to do at the time (e.g. ~2 overseas vacations a year and
| several self-supported long distance bike trips). Savings
| wasn't a huge concern at the time because I knew I could get a
| decent-paying job post-graduation.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Congrats! At 4% yield, that's like you've made (and invested)
| $150k, after tax. Before tax that'd be a yearly salary of well
| over $200k. If you can do 2 of those every year, you're on par
| with mid-level FAANG comp, once you include RSUs. There's
| probably a benefits and self-employment tax angle I'm leaving out
| though. And surely it's more volatile. But if you can keep it up
| it seems pretty solid.
| sjskwaiwn wrote:
| 5/3/1 is a powerlifting/strength training/weight training/weight
| lifting program.
|
| Weightlifting refers to Olympic weightlifting. Weightlifters are
| those who snatch and clean & jerk.
| [deleted]
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Awesome. Congrats!
|
| Did you do anything to promote the app? (other than posting it
| here and organic searches on the app store)
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| See my other comment for what I did to promote the app [0].
|
| Short version: Instagram account to follow people and have them
| look at my profile. Useful website with a link to my app as
| "content marketing" and Apple Search Ads.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31508328
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Congrats! That is a significant milestone.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you!
| Zababa wrote:
| > I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson that applies to
| everybody from this
|
| Kudos for being honest about this, it's rare these days.
| Congratulations and I wish you the best.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Doing the whole thing end-to-end (code, launch, marketing,
| support) was super gratifying and taught me a whole lot
|
| Yep. Just putting out one single app by doing everything teaches
| you a LOT about tech and makes you start giving due respect to
| every single specialization that exists in tech - from
| development to support to marketing.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| We'll done! Keep going.
|
| Be aware that you may find premium feature take up/download ratio
| lower on Android.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| That's what I'm expecting. I'm mostly doing the Android version
| for my friends and for the "brand awareness" of the app. I'm
| curious to see how that'll turn out.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm on Android, and would possibly use this. Would your app
| work for tracking the Starting Strength program (3x5 sets
| 3x/week, not 5/3/1) or is it very exclusive to 5/3/1
| tracking?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Right now it's only 5/3/1. But the 5's progression template
| from Beyond 5/3/1 is similar enough. Feel free to look at
| the online calculator to get a sense of the template.
| https://fivethreeone.app/calculator
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I love that there is so much opportunity in the indie space, and
| hope it doesn't go away.
|
| There are a ton of great apps to be made, with better UIs and
| functionality than existing entrants that aren't made by big
| companies because they don't offer enterprise-sized war chests
| and moats. Can't make enough to pay for a bunch of MBAs,
| managers, and SEO, Creative, and Engineering teams, so they don't
| get made. But it's certainly enough for a few driven people.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Congrats! 5-3-1 is a great name and a great program.
| ronyeh wrote:
| Congrats! Downloaded.
|
| Relevant to today's discussion, did you use SwiftUI or the ol
| reliable UIKit?
|
| Here's the url for those who are looking:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/five-three-one/id1560266240
| strongpigeon wrote:
| The app is built using Flutter, but I'm using SwiftUI for the
| home screen widget.
| mylons wrote:
| why did you use Flutter?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I wanted to give it a shot. The instant hot-reload got me
| hooked. I was already super familiar with Dart too (I
| worked on Google Ads before, front-end is in Dart).
| afrnz wrote:
| Very impressive and bravo on your success! I love seeing indie
| hackers launching their projects and get positive feedback in the
| form of revenue. Also appreciate the weightlifting focus, will
| check out the app for sure.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you!
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Congrats! What does your tech stack look like? How long did it
| take you?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| The app is written in Flutter. There is no backend except that
| I use Firebase Crashlytics to catch bugs that make it to
| releases. The web calculator is built using ReactJS and uses
| Firebase hosting (still low enough traffic to be under the free
| tier)
| csunbird wrote:
| If there is no backend, and also if you are not collecting
| any personal data, maybe you can add a "privacy friendly,
| your personal data is not collected" marketing section as
| well. Although I am not sure if your users would care about
| that.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| That's a good point. My app store Privacy Section is pretty
| clean, but I might put it on the front page of my marketing
| site.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Yay Flutter!
|
| Any reason you had to use ReactJS embedded in Flutter, I
| imagine you could of done that with Dart
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Sorry if I wasn't too clear. I haven't embedded ReactJS in
| Flutter. I just made an online calculator [0] in ReactJS
| for people who prefer not using apps. Could I have use
| Flutter for that? Probably, but I wanted to try React so I
| did.
|
| [0] https://fivethreeone.app/calculator
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Ohh neat, I have a project with Flutter Web, so I imagine
| you could of built your existing app for web.
|
| But it tends to not look all that great
| [deleted]
| davidkuennen wrote:
| Very good. Congrats.
|
| I made an app 2 years ago and make around 10,000$/month currently
| with it. Keep going!
| ayewo wrote:
| Go on, tell us more ...
| izolate wrote:
| Great job! This is inspiring to all us indie hackers out there.
| mrlagmer wrote:
| Hey nice work. I have been getting into weight lifting once I hit
| 40 and really enjoy it. I suggest looking at stronglifts app if
| you want to see how to grow this. That app is great and after a
| week I had gone to the premium subscription.
|
| I feel you are missing customers with the site saying that the
| app assumes you know how to do 5/3/1.
|
| You should have a how to page on your site. Anyway great work
| congrats.
| sound1 wrote:
| > I can't pretend to have derived any life lesson that applies to
| everybody from this, but this whole mini-journey was worth it for
| me, and I hope it will be for you too, should you embark in a
| similar one.
|
| You have a new fan. Hearty congratulations and wish you a
| continued success!! You are an inspiration :-)
| bm-rf wrote:
| side note, I love the strong pigeon website! What a team!
| gigatexal wrote:
| Congrats. 500 a month is nothing to laugh at. Relocate this a few
| times and you're living the indie dev's dream!
| nchudleigh wrote:
| This is awesome, I love workout tracking and am currently doing a
| 5/3/1 program- wish that I had a iOS device to try your app out.
| Love the way you have structured the IAPs and the look of the app
| from the screenshots.
|
| Currently using Strong (more than 400 workouts logged).
|
| Curious, how did you go about marketing this?
| Ventito wrote:
| Cool app. Very impressive that it makes that much :)
|
| I thought about an fitness app myself. I'm curious when it will
| be available: With ML you could really analyse what someone is
| doing and counting and basically playing fitness coache for you
| including proper counting of your things.
| aryamansharda wrote:
| Congrats on the success! I just started a newsletter - Indie
| Watch (http://indie.watch/) - that features cool apps built by
| indie iOS developers.
|
| Would you mind if I featured your app in our first release?
|
| Since it's our first release, I can't guarantee any results or
| conversions, but the mailing list has a few hundred people on it,
| so it couldn't hurt...
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you! For sure! My email is in my profile
| bgroat wrote:
| $500/mth is $6,000/yr
|
| At a 4% safe withdrawal rate what you've built is the equivilent
| of saving $150,000.
|
| You should be EXTREMELY proud of yourself, and never
| underestimate the power and value of the asset you've built
| andymcsherry wrote:
| This is a business, it's not passive income. It requires
| maintenance, support, etc. If he were to just let it ride,
| income might increase for a while but ultimately wither out and
| die.
| acover wrote:
| Will this app pay 6000 a year for 25 years?
|
| It's an impressive creation but this is not a good way to value
| it.
| jjice wrote:
| I think the comment more so referred to the returns that
| $150,000 would yield at a 4% SWR, not necessarily that it'll
| generate that much eventually, just the equivalent SWR return
| amount.
| Ventito wrote:
| I think its a great achievement in itself but your post does
| push people in the thinking of 'i can just make a no work
| sustainable something as a service app and become rich'.
|
| I don't think it works.
|
| I think the best bet by far is either to optimize your job
| salary (switching after 2-3 years, being proactive, trying
| leetcode, persuing FAANG) or following FIRE.
|
| $500 would be 5h per month freelancing.
|
| And to be really fair, he would first calculate all hours
| invested and he needs to calculate/estimate further time
| involvment.
|
| For creating your own small company/business, thats probably a
| doable thing but still much more high risk than anything else.
| frontman1988 wrote:
| Yeah leaving you job at Google to do this is not recommended
| in 99% of the cases. Especially in a recession.
| moosedev wrote:
| Without taking anything away from OP's achievement, I'd caution
| against this kind of exuberant comparison without some
| qualification around it. The risks to that app's continuing to
| yield $500/month in perpetuity are quite different (and, I dare
| say, worse) than the risks faced by the kind of balanced
| portfolio that "safe withdrawal rate" implies (to me). I
| acknowledge that you didn't directly compare with such a
| portfolio, but you did say the app is "the equivalent of saving
| $150,000" - again, if this is true it's in a very limited sense
| only: the app and the cash face a very different set of risks.
| xbar wrote:
| This is fair, but as a milestone in long-term self-
| sufficiency, creating a $500/mo app is significant
| achievement.
|
| Saving $150,000 is, too.
|
| Which is more likely to lead to true self-sufficiency?
| Barring other possibilities, the savings. But given human
| response to positive feedback loops, a successful dev often
| becomes a more successful dev overtime. Hence, I favor the
| "first app I wrote that made $500/mo" is more significant.
| xwdv wrote:
| Didn't really want to go down this route but since you guys
| wanted to I would also point out the OP likely hasn't been
| making $500/mo for a full year yet so to make that kind of
| projection is premature. I think at best he will make that
| for a few months then it will taper off within the year as
| the app gets less popular.
|
| You can't just say your app makes $500/mo without giving
| the time period for how long it has been making that.
| Generally if it's not revealed it's because it hasn't been
| very long.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| Mandatory XKCD on the dangers of extrapolating :
| https://xkcd.com/605/
| strongpigeon wrote:
| The app made $300 last month and $500 this month. It
| indeed hasn't been very long, and I agree that $500/mo is
| a bit of a generous take. However I do plan on adding
| extra paid features which I think will push that even
| further.
| meetups323 wrote:
| The market is massive, play your cards right and this
| could be just the beginning. Do you speak to users in
| person much and have an idea of what people want?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I speak to a couple of users directly through email. An
| Apple Watch companion seems to be what people want the
| most so that's what I'll be working on next
| sjburt wrote:
| I think a better comparison is what similar apps would sell
| for. 2-4x annual revenue seems to be common. So $12-$24k
| which is not bad!
| kqr wrote:
| Despite the valid criticisms against the specifics of your
| comment, I found this perspective interesting.
|
| You could model the specifics differently, of course: maybe we
| assume the $500/month is a peak and it tapers off exponentially
| somehow. What sort of capital returns does this correspond to?
|
| I haven't done the maths, so I don't know, but the fact that I
| can even ask the question means I've learned something from
| your comment that I didn't know before!
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Asset valuation is a rich pre-existing field that doesn't
| need to be reinvented. The real cash-equivalent value of this
| app is, of course, the market value you could get trying to
| sell it, but that just offloads the value estimate to the
| potential buyer(s). The computation is extremely
| straightforward for a perpetuity, which is where the estimate
| here is coming from. At a 4% annual discount rate, a
| perpetuity that pays $500 a month forever has a net present
| value of $150,000.
|
| However, as others have hinted at, assuming this app will
| continue to generate $500 a month forever at roughly the same
| risk premium as a perpetuity from any remotely reputable
| seller is dubious at best. Major banks and insurers that have
| existed for several centuries have histories of selling
| instruments like these that actually have paid out their
| promised coupon value for many decades and even centuries in
| some cases. In contrast, the Apple App Store has existed for
| almost 14 years. The 5/3/1 strength program has existed for
| 13 years.
|
| What are the chances this app can generate the same revenue
| for the next 30 years? You can't rely on just keeping the
| existing users due to the way lifters tend to program-hop
| eventually. Anyone doing 5/3/1 today is unlikely to be doing
| it in 30 years. Then you have to factor in the possibility of
| competition. I'm kind of surprised the author of the 5/3/1
| books has never bothered to commission an app and apparently
| only distributes official spreadsheets for generating a
| program template and workout log. If he ever does, any
| unofficial app seems unlikely to survive.
|
| Not to take away from the work. I think this is the right
| idea. The developer wanted something that didn't exist and
| made it. Whether or not you ever acquire a single customer
| other than yourself, I think that is worth doing. But if
| anyone in this comment thread truly thinks it is worth
| $150,000, offer him $150,000 and I'm sure he'll be glad to
| sell.
| POiNTx wrote:
| Can you breakdown this calculation? I'm familiar with FIRE and
| SWR but how do you get to the $150,000 number?
|
| [EDIT] Thanks got it!
| lucretian wrote:
| $6,000 / 0.04 = $150,000. in other words, if OP had saved
| $150,000 and was withdrawing 4% per year, they would have the
| same $6,000 as what the app is generating.
|
| the analogy is imperfect, because presumably the OP is
| spending some time to generate that app income; it's not
| totally passive.
| [deleted]
| Jake232 wrote:
| 4% of $150k is $6k, which is $500 * 12.
| jdasdf wrote:
| 6000/0.04 = 150 000
|
| Essentially, those 6K a year is the equivalent of a 150K
| portfolio
| cinntaile wrote:
| I want to push back against this a little. He gets
| $500/month now, there is no guarantee he will keep
| receiving that number when he stops maintaining and
| improving his app. I would assume the number will go up if
| he keeps improving it, but if he stops it will eventually
| become 0$/month.
| jackblemming wrote:
| There's no guarantee $150k invested will have 4% returns
| either.
| p_j_w wrote:
| No, but if I had to bet on one over the other, I'm going
| with 4% returns.
| beambot wrote:
| To be fair: It will probably be easier for him to go from
| $500/mo to $1000/mo much easier than it will be to go
| from 4% APY to 8% APY.
| jhgb wrote:
| Doesn't time value of money decrease this effect?
| Assuming a fixed revenue over time, future revenue is
| much less relevant, so is its loss.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| That's what the 4% is. A perpetuity that pays out $6000 a
| year is valued at $150,000 assuming a 4% discount rate.
| Without a discount rate, the value of _any_ perpetuity
| would be infinity.
| CPLX wrote:
| No it's not it's the equivalent of a $6,000 a year part
| time job.
|
| $150k in 20 years is still exactly $150k and produces
| returns.
|
| A 20 year old mobile application has no value whatsoever.
|
| Difference is apples and hand grenades.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you!
| tome wrote:
| Normally web apps like this would change hands at around 3x
| annual earnings, so OP has built the equivalent of more like
| $18,000, which is still impressive!
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| It's a good point, but I think they're talking about lifetime
| value rather than current value.
| ushakov wrote:
| now sell that to businesses and turn it into $500/day instead!
| vegesm wrote:
| Congrats! It's about the same I make with Android with my app (a
| graphing calculator) [1]. Everyone says on Android you can earn
| less, I'm curious what's your experience will be.
|
| [1] https://androidcalculator.com/
| strongpigeon wrote:
| That's one SEO friendly domain name. Nice work on the app!
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Congrats! I am always super excited/impressed by people who can
| take something all the way like this, just because I know how
| monumentally hard finishing any project is.
|
| I'm at least decently familiar with the first half of "end-to-
| end" but don't have a lot of experience in the back half.
|
| Was there something cool/unintuitive you learned while having to
| figure out how to market and support your weightlifting app that
| you'd be willing to share?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Everybody says it, but the marketing part of it matters a lot.
| As a shape rotator, I struggle with putting myself out there
| and really have to force myself to "just do it".
|
| The app store is a big, noisy marketplace, so having other
| channels to get people to try your app and give you ratings is
| crucial. That really help me get through the initial wall and
| now my app is showing up pretty high in the search result.
| binkHN wrote:
| > ...get people to ... give you ratings is crucial.
|
| How were you able to promote this? Thanks.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| iOS has this control to prompt users to rate your app. I
| made it so that the prompt appears after the user has
| completed a workout, at which point they are probably happy
| with the app (and aren't getting jarringly interrupted).
| FredPret wrote:
| Great app. I'm using it tonight. Well done on the cash flow, well
| deserved. A good workout app can be life-changing.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you and hope you enjoy it! My email is in my profile if
| you have any feedback!
| kebsup wrote:
| Good job! I know exactly the feeling. I'll once again shamelessly
| plug my project, since it's vaguely relevant.
|
| I'm making about 200 USD/month by selling watermark removals on
| https://gifmemes.io. What I've learnt is that I'm very bad at
| marketing & design and will much rather spend hours programming
| useless features. For example I've spent like 10 hours getting an
| wasm ffmpeg converter of gifs to mp4s and webms, which was not
| used AT ALL, while most of my traffic still comes from cold-
| writing (is it even a term) for 1 hour random people to put links
| on their websites or subreddits.
|
| The scene in the Sillicon Valley series, where Richards enhances
| the algorithm by 1 % is quite accurate.
|
| On the other hand, being the solo developer and product owner is
| quite powerful. My implementation of billing into the app took
| around 2 hours, which is probably less than a meeting about it
| would take in a company.
|
| Finally, I can run silly experiments. There is a button in the
| "Buy watermark removal" page that says "It's too expensive",
| which leads to 50 % discount. Around 70 % people still buy the
| full price.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Finally, I can run silly experiments. There is a button in
| the "Buy watermark removal" page that says "It's too
| expensive", which leads to 50 % discount. Around 70 % people
| still buy the full price.
|
| I don't find that silly at all. At most it's a fun example of
| price discrimination. A fairly big online-only florist in the
| UK (Bloom & Wild) for example does something similar, if you
| enter a valid voucher code but it's only for new customers, it
| pops up telling you that 'but click here to apply 10% off
| instead' (where the voucher might've been for 25 or whatever).
| Clever I think - stops you thinking 'oh sod it' and shopping
| around.
| telchior wrote:
| I love the "too expensive" button. I'm the sort of person who'd
| probably want to test a dozen variations of that, half of them
| being jokes, and try to figure out exactly why it works. Do you
| know how many of the full price buyers ever click the button
| and find out it has a discount?
| kebsup wrote:
| Nope. I have some more ideas to try, but with my sale
| frequency once in 1-2 days, it's quite difficult to make any
| statistical conclusions. However, since it's a meme website,
| I don't think there are any limits on creativity of
| psychological experiments. :D
| volsa_ wrote:
| I love the "But internet stuff should be free!" button, got a
| chuckle out of me :P
| Xeronate wrote:
| Grats. That's awesome! How did you market it? Seems like
| weightlifting apps has to be a pretty saturated market. Also
| assuming its a native iOS app since there isn't an android
| equivalent. Were you an iOS developer in big tech? Building UIs
| feels so much nicer with the native frameworks, but I'm always
| hesitant to do so because writing the same app twice seems so
| grueling.
| h4waii wrote:
| I wrote my first full-blown mobile apps (fairly simple and
| spartan) with React Native, I target both iOS and Android, and
| it was a breeze using Expo. It's seriously good, I have no
| affiliation, just a happy customer (I tested the paid tier out
| but currently use the free one).
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I agree that "weightlifting app" as a whole is pretty saturated
| and some of the apps are pretty good too. I figured I'd have
| more chance to stand out in a niche, namely 5/3/1 specific
| apps.
|
| I was previously a full stack SWE on Google Ads before. The app
| is built using Flutter, so porting it to Android isn't too
| hard. I built it using the iOS looking widget first that's what
| I use. The Android version should be out pretty soon.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Bravo to you!!! Most of us have half started, unfinished projects
| and once more you show to all of us that we should make some time
| from our daily routines and finally just ship it ;-) I know that
| for US and other high paying countries 500$/mo is not much but
| for most countries it's a very respectable amount. I'm a huge fan
| of Ben's tinyprojects and reading his posts, stories like yours
| and other similar HN posts/comments give us courage and some of
| the missing determination.
| ge96 wrote:
| Nice to hear
|
| Side note I think 'Tell HN:' is for problems, vs. 'Show HN:'
| Koffiepoeder wrote:
| I perceive it more as `interesting story` vs `interesting
| project`. OP's project-story is right on the edge between the
| two for me.
|
| At least for Show HN there is an official guideline [0] which
| mentions:
|
| > Show HN is for something you've made that other people can
| play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask
| questions in the thread.
|
| Does anyone know whether there is an official `Tell HN`
| guideline? The HN guidelines and FAQ pages don't specify
| anything as far as I could tell.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
| ge96 wrote:
| From what I've seen on here usually 'Tell HN:' is used for
| things like "this company banned my account for no reason" or
| "this service is down" etc...
|
| Anyway I only mention it because I looked at this post and I
| was like "what happened/what went wrong".
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! Its always inspiring to see small indie
| tech projects solving real life problems for real people, and
| getting paid for it! That's the magic of technology! I too loved
| Ben's tiny projects and appreciate the love that's goes into
| making these!
| silvi9 wrote:
| Congratulations! That's incredibly impressive, and is so
| inspiring, especially for all us fellow indie hackers out there.
| What were your main ways of acquiring new users? Do you have any
| marketing advice that helped you out?
|
| Well done again, and wishing you continued success with your app!
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Initially I would use Instagram and follow some hashtags and
| like people's posts and follow them to get them to look at my
| profile (I got about 150 downloads that way).
|
| One day I decided I wanted to try out ReactJs and so I made a
| web calculator version [0]. The goal was to make something
| better than the current incumbent (Black Iron Beast). This
| turned out to be super helpful. It usually ranks number 2 on
| most Google queries for 5/3/1 calculators and lead to about 200
| downloads for the app.
|
| I also started using Apple App Store Search Ad with their $100
| credit and honestly the result are great. Having your app show
| up first for some keywords is a huge boost.
|
| [0] https://fivethreeone.app/calculator
| whelton wrote:
| Another indie hacker here, to add to OP's reply, I've been
| using Syften[0] to monitor relevant keywords across various
| sites to find people my product can be of value to, or I
| provide answers to their related questions (which can lead them
| to checking out my profile and then product).
|
| I'm building Conjure[1] a habits, behavior and goals platform,
| so I track everything from 'habits'/'productivity'/'quantified-
| self' type keywords, to people looking for alternatives to XYZ
| product name, to specific questions I've answered before (eg
| organization, time tracking, building exercise habit,
| achievement, etc).
|
| [0] https://syften.com
|
| [1] https://conjure.so
| boplicity wrote:
| A question, from someone who used to start lots of projects, but
| now finds himself busy from all of those (some now quite
| successful) projects:
|
| How much daily "mental load" does something like this take? Are
| you able to work on it when you want, and otherwise ignore? Any
| tips for starting a small project that doesn't require ongoing
| mental effort?
| strongpigeon wrote:
| The fact that I'm not running a service does make it a lot
| better. But being somewhat of a perfectionist, I do stress out
| a lot when a user email me with a bug.
|
| Being a user of the app myself reassure me that it's working
| and that even if there might be bugs, it's probably working
| well for the vast majority of folks.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Congrats on the success! Any chance of an Android version of that
| app? I'm glad you made a 5/3/1-specific app; I've always had to
| shoehorn 5/3/1 into some other "Build your own routine" apps and
| it's always been clunky at best.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I'm actively working on the Android version. I'm waiting on
| some Material 3 component for Flutter to be done [0], but it's
| almost ready to test!
|
| [0] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/91605
| RankingMember wrote:
| Great to hear
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Curious why you chose Dart/Flutter over Kotlin/Jetpack (not
| necessarily Compose though). Could you share?
|
| I hope you'll share in the future what your usage/downloads
| look like as well as where you make money, between the two
| phone types.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Mostly because I wanted to give Flutter a shot. The instant
| hot reload really got me hooked. As I also said elsewhere,
| I was already super familiar with Dart given that I worked
| on Google Ads (where the front-end is built using Dart).
|
| I'll try to share some data on the Android version compared
| to iOS. My gut feeling is that the rate of purchase for IAP
| is going to be much lower, but I think it could help with
| getting the app known (thus leading to more iOS downloads
| as well).
| conradfr wrote:
| Personally I use FitNotes to track my workouts (5/3/1 or not)
| and keep (the totally not responsive) http://lift.eha-ab.ca/
| open in my mobile browser.
| Knufen wrote:
| Super cool project man, congrats. I was unable to figure it out
| in the app, but is it possible to build your own routine instead
| of 5/3/1? I have been looking for this kinda of app and am
| willing to pay for it.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Custom Templates is a feature I go back and forth on, mainly
| because it'd complicate the data model a lot, but also some
| parts of the product. I might get around to it, but I'm going
| to work on other things (Android version, Apple Watch
| companion) first.
| Knufen wrote:
| Does the data model have to be changed? Can't it just be a
| simple "fill exercise and how many reps/kg you want" type of
| thing?
|
| And understandable with your limited time!
| s-xyz wrote:
| Well executed app
| newbie578 wrote:
| Congrats! This is really no small achievement, being able to make
| a profit while making mobile apps is no little thing. I saw your
| comment that you made the app in Flutter, how come that you
| didn't release it then for Android?
|
| Also a separate question, I do wonder what was your thought
| process for coming up with the idea for the app? Do you keep
| somewhere a list of app ideas, or was this one you have been
| dreaming about some time?
|
| Keep going and I wish you much more success!
| strongpigeon wrote:
| I'm using the Cupertino widget to have an iOS look and feel. I
| care a lot about the experience and I didn't want to release an
| Android app that feels like an iOS one.
|
| That being said I'm almost done making the app look great on
| Android. I'm just waiting for some Material 3 widgets to be
| done by the Flutter team.
|
| My thought process was simple : I don't like any of the apps on
| the App Store for 5/3/1, so I'm going to make my own!
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| I personally would argue that shipping (and being available)
| > than purely looking like it's 100% platform specific. But
| it's your app, and congrats on the success so far.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-25 23:01 UTC)