[HN Gopher] Lessons from 15 Years of Indie App Development
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Lessons from 15 Years of Indie App Development
Author : Lukas_Petr
Score : 185 points
Date : 2024-11-22 13:51 UTC (8 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lukaspetr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lukaspetr.com)
| gyomu wrote:
| OP, just a heads up that none of the "Download on the App Store"
| links on your main website (http://www.glimsoft.com) resolve.
| Lukas_Petr wrote:
| Thank you so much! I will get that fixed asap. I don't
| understand how the links that were officially shortened for App
| Store can stop working, but somehow they did. It's unfortunate
| that this could've been broken for a very long time now, it's
| just not something I would think of periodically verifying that
| it's still working.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| One idea for catching this sort of break in the future is
| monitoring the source people use to acquire your app. It
| looks like the App Store might support tracking which website
| referred people to download your app:
|
| https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/view-
| app-...
| klabb3 wrote:
| What about marketing? I don't mean necessarily traditional ads
| but more how to get the word out if you have a good product?
|
| I've personally find it easy to reach "tech enthusiasts" but much
| harder to penetrate towards normies who would really benefit from
| the product but don't read HN, tech blogs etc.
| gcheong wrote:
| You can try doing a press release, for example through PrWeb or
| similar, that will send your announcement to multiple outlets
| that might write it up if it fits their audience. It's kind of
| a shotgun approach though.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I've done a few press releases for my products over the last
| 20 years. Unless you are already very famous or are doing
| something very innovative, it is almost certainly a complete
| waste of time and money.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| If you're working in a domain you know, use your contacts in
| that industry. If you've learned a random domain just to sell
| software into it, do it in a way that puts you in touch with
| people.
|
| (If you've a mass market retail app, good luck!)
| veyh wrote:
| I've been trying to sneak into some relevant discussions on
| Twitter lately. Too early to say whether that helps at all but
| at least my posts haven't (yet?) been deleted as self-promotion
| like on Reddit.
| misfitgentleman wrote:
| There's plenty of self-promotion allowed on r/macapps.
| fakedang wrote:
| Consumer app? Instagram Reels and TikTok. Especially TikTok.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Reels are friendlier to shorter form content these days
| ipaddr wrote:
| Go where the normies are and speak to them in the medium they
| understand.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| The most important advertising step for smartphone apps is
| probably to put the app on the App Store / Play Store.
|
| But of course only developer scum do that in this decade.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| I love this, thank you for sharing your story, and
| congratulations on achieving your dream at 31!
| Lukas_Petr wrote:
| Thank you so much!
| smallhands wrote:
| Congratulations,where can I Find machine learning communities
| online
| indieofone wrote:
| I would add this advice: 1) start by working on your apps on the
| side while working another job, 2) while working said job, save
| and invest. Over time this can provide the cushion necessary to
| jump to full time indie.
| tropianhs wrote:
| This is excellent advice. I have done side hustles for a while
| before jumping full indie, when I had enough runway to make me
| comfortable. Some people wait to jump full time once their side
| income replace their salary. For me, it's a recipe to
| procrastinate forever
| indieofone wrote:
| My strategy was interest income + indie business income. I
| went full time indie once my interest and dividend income was
| a few thousand per month.
| Lukas_Petr wrote:
| That's a good advice. For me I was doing freelancing on the
| side for many years, and then naturally as my app was starting
| to make more money, I'd decrease the amount of freelancing I
| was doing, and then eventually I stopped freelancing
| altogether.
| auspex wrote:
| Just be careful of inventions assignments. If you live in the
| US you probably signed paperwork that says anything you invent
| or create is property of the company you work for.
|
| If you signed one of these and hack on the side... successful
| business could be owned by your previous company.
|
| You can always ask that they release the IP which requires the
| lawyers to officially sign it over to you.
|
| Before you quit your job make sure you own it.
| herval wrote:
| that's not exactly how those work (they can claim an
| invention if it's done during work hours, with company
| equipment, in the business area of operation. Might differ
| from state to state, but that's the gist of those contracts
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| It varies by state, what you described is California's
| rules, which are by far the most permissive of
| moonlighting.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Note that it's an " _or_ ", not an " _and_ ":
|
| i.e. your employer can require you to assign the invention
| to them if it's done during work hours _OR_ with company
| equipment _OR_ related to the company 's business.
|
| The full text in the California labor code is here:
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySecti
| o....
| indieofone wrote:
| I think it would only matter for something that is quite
| significant. And in that case, you would probably quit long
| before it mattered.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I saved up enough money to last a year and then lived off that
| while I developed my product full time. By the end of that year
| I was making close to what I made in my old job. 20 years later
| and I'm still working for myself.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| "What if I am not good enough?"
|
| I just heard this quote somewhere: What is success? It's being
| able to do what you want to be doing.
|
| If you're not able to do that then of course you will need to do
| something else. But if you are able to do it, then you are "good
| enough".
| Lukas_Petr wrote:
| Thank you. That's a great quote. Obviously it's such an unclear
| question, and it stems from something deeper than just the
| performance of my work. The whole mental health / psychological
| resilience is a big piece of it, but I didn't want to overshare
| too much in the article (it's already super long without it).
|
| In general, that's something that I've always tried to do in my
| other posts too - trying to be vulnerable and share stuff to an
| extent, but hopefully in a way that helps/inspires people who
| can relate to feeling that way.
| benoau wrote:
| > Some lease company somewhere is getting data on wherever I go.
|
| Quite frustrating to figure out who too, unless you can find some
| debug ports or an SD card holding configuration.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I think you commented in the wrong story
| nayuki wrote:
| Good observation. That would be for
| https://blog.koenvh.nl/what-does-this-button-do-
| cm42u2oi7000... ,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42276620 .
| lukasb wrote:
| He mentions that making a living from an indie app is like
| winning the lottery - that would make it much more unlikely than
| having a reasonably successful startup. Why is a successful indie
| app harder?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Having a successful startup is like winning the lottery too.
| Getting funded if you are not in a circle of reputation is like
| winning the lottery. Getting into ycombinator is like winning a
| lottery then you get to win another.
|
| Any business is like a lottery. But some have better odds like
| setting up a plumbing service in a growing underserved town.
| lukasb wrote:
| Well, no, winning a lottery is one in a million. A successful
| startup - assuming you get funding - is more like one in ten
| (that's not exact but no more than an order of magnitude
| off.)
| pavlov wrote:
| There's also the time and effort that you need to invest.
|
| You can buy a lottery ticket every week and it costs $2
| (just guessing -- I don't buy them). With that minimum
| spending over three years, you get 150 shots. You paid
| $300, but no time or effort.
|
| A typical startup takes three years, and you pay for it in
| both real money and opportunity cost.
|
| Let's say your chance of getting funded is 1:100 (assuming
| you don't have an existing network). And then your chances
| of success are 1:30 (a more realistic figure for first-time
| founders than one in ten, IMO).
|
| That means the odds are 1:3000 with great personal
| investment, versus the lottery where in the same timeframe
| you get to take 150 shots at a 1:1,000,000 chance at no
| personal cost.
|
| Looking at these numbers, it does feel a lot like lottery.
|
| Of course I'm downplaying the career growth value of a
| startup. You learn nothing from the lottery, but going
| through the startup grind offers experience that you can't
| get elsewhere.
| lukasb wrote:
| Let's say I grant (though I don't believe it) that a
| startup is also a lottery ticket. What are the factors
| that make an indie app a lottery ticket? That's my
| question. Is it just that, absent the funding gate
| startups have, that there's a lot of competition?
| pavlov wrote:
| Apps as a platform are at a disadvantage. The bar for
| entry is roughly as low as creating a website, but for
| users it's a higher bar to install an app.
|
| Yet the app doesn't offer any intrinsic advantage in
| discovery or marketing over a website. (You're not going
| to get any organic traffic from app stores, unless maybe
| if you have contacts at Apple who can get your app into
| their promotions -- unlikely for an indie dev publishing
| their first app.)
|
| So if you're making an app, you need to be sure that
| users in your niche will see enough benefit that they'll
| want to install an app when your competitor is probably
| just a website.
| mnahkies wrote:
| This is an interesting take, because whilst I agree,
| generally what I've heard from the market is "we want an
| app not a web app/pwa"
|
| Whilst _I 'd_ rather not have to install <random overly
| specific app> to go to a sporting event or whatnot,
| that's the reality, and also generally what I hear
| businesses want.
|
| Is my perspective just different as a techie or are
| businesses misreading what consumers want?
| fhd2 wrote:
| More risk, more reward - it's usually that simple. That last
| example is closer to the security of a job than the lottery
| I'd say :) The likelihood of getting fired from a job is
| probably not that much lower than a plumbing business not
| working in an underserved area.
|
| I've built a pretty low risk business to get cash flow going
| and am starting to tackle more high risk stuff. There's safe
| strategies to play the lottery in a way where you can afford
| to lose.
| manx wrote:
| Can anyone recommend good learning material for the non-tech
| part? I'm good at building stuff, but not on the other parts.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Andy Brice has some great material at
| https://successfulsoftware.net/articles/
|
| Including a list of books at
| https://successfulsoftware.net/reading-list/
| LVB wrote:
| I'll say, this has been the worst part of my little indie dev
| adventure.
|
| I knew I'd be uncomfortable with a lot of it, but I also didn't
| realize how flat out bad I am at it. I've spent so much time
| fiddling with keywords, refreshing splash pages for app stores,
| making a good landing page, buying ads, adjusting paywalls,
| etc. But the uptake has been depressingly low. A few people
| downloaded the app, but not only have I had no paying customers
| and no reviews, no one has even _tried_ the sync aspect of the
| app that I built a backend for! I really misjudged how little
| attention it would get in the app store, and how rapidly they
| 'd bail from it.
|
| My wife and I use the app. I find that code improvements bring
| some satisfaction even if there is no external ROI, whereas
| marketing type efforts are just a drag.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| IIRC quite a large percentage of apps in the Mac apps store
| have 0 downloads. You definitely can't rely on the app store
| to do your marketing for you.
| LVB wrote:
| I fell victim to the line offered by certain indie devs
| along the line of, "Sure, it's hard to get a big piece of
| the pie, but with a BILLION users even a small piece is
| significant."
|
| I'm seriously considering a simple web app for my next
| project. Yeah the UX will be worse, but I'll completely
| bypass trying to appease Apple, and it will get into the
| world much quicker, mostly likely. If it's a dud, I might
| as well fail fast.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| If you rely on the Apple app store, you have a single
| point of failure and have to jump through whatever hoops
| Apple decides. Which rather calls into question just how
| "indie" you really are.
|
| BTW it is possible to sell Mac apps and not use the Mac
| app store (I do). But I sell for Windows as well.
| cageface wrote:
| Have you found the extra work to also sell on windows to
| have been justified by the sales on that platform?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The economics of the app store were horrible even in 2010:
| https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/07/11/iphone-app-
| store-e...
|
| There are now more than 2 million apps in the store:
| https://42matters.com/ios-apple-app-store-statistics-and-
| tre...
| jamil7 wrote:
| I'm trying to relaunch my indie app which did have success
| getting a lot of users. But I failed to properly monetise it and
| the support burden and stress on top of a full time job drove me
| to pull it from the store. I'm attempting to relaunch with a
| proper paid tier. I guess my point is don't neglect the getting
| paid part too long or you can also burn yourself out.
| deze333 wrote:
| As an indie developer for the last 10 years my key learning is
| writing apps for "under privileged" communities. Firstly, it's a
| niche. Secondly, people really value your effort and appreciate
| giving. This creates a nice feeling.
|
| I have created my major app, Time Nomad [1], out of pure
| curiosity. Don't laugh, scientific minds... I wanted to see how
| astronomy and astrology coexisted for hundreds of years without
| all that new age nonsense that corrupted the ancient discipline.
|
| So I made it different. It's more of a toolkit to calculate and
| grok movements of celestial bodies and find moments of specific
| alignments. That is pure fun. I have enjoyed maths and
| computational challenges, while the users surprised me by liking
| the app's ability to give quick answers about what (and equally
| importantly when) is happening in the sky -- from an astronomical
| standpoint. No voodoo language needed, just pure geometry.
|
| Why am I saying all this? Taking an old idea and giving it a new
| modern spin can win hearts. There are communities of people who
| are open to support that.
|
| [1] https://timenomad.app
| briandear wrote:
| The app itself isn't something that interests me, but wanted to
| complement your beautiful home page. Nicely done. You've
| executed it very beautifully. I wish more apps were like yours.
| criddell wrote:
| Isn't a big part of your userbase into new age stuff? If you
| think of it as nonsense, how do you earnestly try to serve
| them? Aren't they asking for features you think are bunk?
| diggan wrote:
| > Isn't a big part of your userbase into new age stuff? If
| you think of it as nonsense, how do you earnestly try to
| serve them? Aren't they asking for features you think are
| bunk?
|
| A chiropractor uses maps of human bodies to understand where
| things are, even though they use the information differently
| than doctors and surgeons, both groups base their
| understanding on the same facts.
|
| I'm guessing the same can apply in more areas than medicine
| too.
| criddell wrote:
| Absolutely. So if you made a body map and your user base
| starts asking for you to add chakras or reflexology areas
| or acupuncture locations and you think that's all a bunch
| of woo, how do you respond?
| diggan wrote:
| For reflexology/acupuncture, you could have a section
| where you highlight typical focus points used in
| reflexology/acupuncture, without giving any sort of
| positive acknowledgement for them as treatments.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > both groups base their understanding on the same facts
|
| Chiropractors base their knowledge on secret messages from
| a ghost [1].
|
| [1]: https://nationalpost.com/health/the-first-
| chiropractor-was-a...
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Don't generalize all practitioners based on the
| strangeness of the first one.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The strangeness of the first one is the basis of the
| field. Literally all of chiropractic practice stems,
| objectively, from the one guy and his ghost revelations
| circa 1896 or so.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Chiropractic medicine is quackery. I am happy to
| acknowledge that some people find it helpful!
|
| But let's be honest: it isn't scientific in the least, no
| matter what modern practitioners have gussied it up with.
| ukuina wrote:
| Great-looking website and app. How did you decide on what
| becomes an IAP and what is core functionality? Why did you
| disable family-sharing of IAPs (or is that just an Apple quirk
| on iOS)?
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| How do you find these underserved communities?
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| App looks great, but astrology is still nonsense, with our
| without the new age stuff.
| braza wrote:
| Most of the success cases for Indie Hackers comes from B2C or
| personal apps usage. Does someone knows great public cases
| related with B2B?
|
| My impression is that in the B2B sales there's a huge component
| in terms of being a corporation to give some sort of credibility.
| mnahkies wrote:
| I've been thinking about this a bit, and am also interested in
| others views of this.
|
| Increasingly I think the way to increase your chances of
| success is to pick a problem space that applies to both large
| and small businesses, and forget about the large businesses for
| a long time.
|
| Small businesses are generally going to be more open to
| building with you, taking a risk, accepting that you don't yet
| have SOC2, etc. Often they are in a similar place maturity wise
| so they are (more likely to be) understanding
|
| I'd love to hear others views on how to approach this though -
| most of my ideas for side projects are inspired by
| friction/frustration I'm encountering in the workplace, and
| therefore b2b. Even with targeting small businesses I'm still
| uncertain where the bar is, and how to balance financial risk
| when looking for product market fit in a bootstrapped/side gig
| fashion.
|
| I don't yet have anything ready to attempt to sell, but I'm
| thinking entrepreneur meetups or something might be a good
| route - assuming I've built something that solves an acute
| problem experienced early in a companies life might be the best
| way to go
| conception wrote:
| I think you should incorporate regardless for b2b but I know a
| couple of one person corporations that deal with fund
| accounting tools. It's a bit niche and the finance tools are
| few and far between.
| mtlynch wrote:
| My sense is the opposite. I meet and hear about many more
| successful B2B founders and a lot more struggling B2C founders.
|
| If you look at who's speaking at conferences or who's appearing
| on podcasts to talk about their successful business, it's
| almost always B2B.
|
| Look at the schedule for the last listed Microconf: all B2B.[0]
| Arvid Kahl's maybe the exception, as he does more B2C stuff
| now, but he was there presenting about his experience with his
| B2B SaaS.
|
| [0] https://vault.microconf.com/watch/americas-23
| arvidkahl wrote:
| Hey, Podscan is still very much B2B, I just had another
| Enterprise subscriber a few minutes ago :D
|
| I am actively moving further away from B2C, and even though I
| have a few individual users, the true power of the business
| shines with agencies, departments and enterprise companies.
| herval wrote:
| you probably hear a lot about the B2C ones because they keep
| blabbing about it (many of the big "indie hackers" are known to
| lie and pump their numbers). Most B2B businesses a) don't
| _need_ consumer street cred and b) don't want to attract
| unnecessary competition. There's tons and tons of very
| lucrative B2B micro-apps out there - I'd imagine way more than
| successful B2C.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Received wisdom in the indie developer community is that B2B is
| an easier way to make money than B2C.
|
| Generally, buyers don't know if you are 1 guy in his bedroom or
| 100 guys in California. In my experience, they also don't care
| that much as long as they like the product and price (might be
| different for mission critical software). I am a 1-man band and
| I have sold software to lots of big and famous companies and
| organizations.
| thomascountz wrote:
| A bit off-topic, but I have been searching extensively for
| exactly your Timelines app.[1] After listening to an episode of
| Hidden Brain, with guest Cassie Mogilner Holmes who studies the
| "illusion of time scarcity"[2], I've wanted to reproduce her
| self-reflections on where she was spending her time.
|
| Edit: After just an hour or so, I'm inspired. Not only am I
| excited to use your app to track my time, but--as an app
| developer--I'm inspired by the user experience you've designed. I
| can't thank you enough for the "export to file" feature.
|
| [1]: https://timelines.app/
|
| [2]: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/taking-control-of-your-time/
| zerop wrote:
| With the current advancement of AI in code generation,
| freelancers and Indies are going to have different trajectory
| than ever before
| grayprog wrote:
| As some who started similarly as an indie developer (albeit
| mostly for macOS) back in 2005 and still doing it (on the side
| now), it's a dream and lifestyle that are very desirable for me
| since (similarly to the OP) I've learned that people made a
| living this way in the Mac world.
|
| I left a well-paying engineering day job in 2009 while earning
| only $500/month on my indie apps in the hope of growing the
| business. The Mac/iOS developer conferences scene was great at
| that time ( NSConference, anyone) and I made a lot of connections
| and dev friends with whom I'm in contact still many years later.
| The dev community is still pretty good and helping.
|
| Marketing apps has become a real hard problem these days, though,
| because most of the press doesn't care about apps anymore, unless
| they are from the big corp, or they just focus on Apple's own
| news and rumours.
|
| Still, it's very fulfilling to see people who use your apps and
| recommend them.
| justanotheratom wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. Can you tell us more about this:
|
| "He told me about a small group of successful indie developers
| that he was a part of and alluded that maybe once they are
| looking for more members, I could try applying to join them. Half
| a year later, I applied and I got in."
| ozim wrote:
| I don't like part where equation is ,,do your creative thing but
| not earn much" or ,,be a drone but earn easy money".
|
| That's not true. To thrive in corporate you still have to be
| creative to navigate all the BS plus you have to do whatever you
| have to actually do.
|
| Not to downplay solopreneurs as they have their own challenges
| but still...
| bn-l wrote:
| This is a very generic list that reads like a ChatGPT "advice for
| ____"
| mdbauman wrote:
| > Truly understand your motivation
|
| Sad to say I've only recently come to this realization. It
| applies to pretty much anything, whether it's building a business
| or exercise or learning to draw. And if your motivation can't
| sustain you long-term, change your perspective so that you have a
| motivation that will let you see it through. "Make something cool
| and get rich" doesn't take you very far once you step back for a
| moment.
| dabinat wrote:
| I've had my own software business for 17 years, and a lot of this
| article read like my own life story.
|
| My advice would be to create a product that YOU need and design
| it how you would want it to work if it was an app someone else
| made. Then dog-food the hell out of it.
|
| Also, make sure not to compete directly with enormous companies
| because you will always lose. If an enormous company creates a
| feature that could Sherlock your app, find a way to pivot. Always
| be on your toes.
|
| Finally, recognize the strengths you have that large companies
| cannot provide. For me, that is support. My customers can
| instantly get access to the person who wrote the software and
| don't have to go through multiple tiers of support to get the
| correct answer. Several customers have said the support I provide
| is the main reason they do not use my larger, better-funded
| competitors.
| mfld wrote:
| Wonderful writing, thanks for sharing! I particularly like how
| it's staying away from over-generalizing "do this" advice while
| giving hints how OP overcomes some challenges of being a solo dev
| (e.g. therapeutic writing). May the luck be on your side :)
| croisillon wrote:
| @OP: surprised to see glimsoft doesn't have https?
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