I Made My First Sale and Made It to #7 on the App Store
@murph37's retrospective from 2020 captures the critical transition from initial concept to the first dollar of customer revenue.
Discussions analyzed Show HN launch mechanics, cold DM outreach conversion rates, and the psychology of validating customer demand before writing code.
That’s amazing work, do keep it up.
I wonder how much difference it would make to have a free trial for a week. I don’t mind paying for apps, but I also don’t like paying for something I’m not sure I’ll be using. Especially when I’m already using an app with (from what I can tell at least) pretty much the same features. Once I try it it’s possible I’ll change my mind and actually buy it.
I’ve been using Hack for awhile. Just looked and saw there is a bunch of option now in the App Store! Does yours, or is there one that collapses threads like the reddit app? So many times I upvote and star a post on Hack because that’s what the swipe does.
After a year of being free on the iOS app store, my app Dark Hacker News has received some positive reviews and maintained a 5-star rating.
About a month and a half ago, I decided to make Dark Hacker News a paid app at $1.99. I felt at this point it had enough features and I've never had a paid app on the app store so I decided to just go for it!
In the first month and a half as a paid app, its been able to generate $42 in sales! I've never made money off of an app I've built so its been awesome to see those sales come in.
At one point in June I even made it to #7 on the list of top paid news apps!!! (I'm not exactly sure how the app store algorithm works, but hey I'll take it) Up to this point I really haven't done any marketing so I'm considering getting the word out there to see how it would impact sales.
All in all, it's been awesome to make my first real dollars as an Indie Developer!