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
Published in 2022, this chronicle by @strongpigeon details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $1000.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
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.
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.
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.
This is really cool. I've worked on a lot of side projects in my free time, and my most successful one (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1607228378) pulls in just $11 in MRR. Even though it's so little, I get really excited when I get a new subscription or a subscription renews.
I've had a lot of trouble trying to market the app. I've experimented with Instagram ads, but the conversion rates were really bad. I'll try the Instagram accounts strategy you mentioned and hopefully that helps.
Will this notify through a connected Apple Watch? So that I can just get up and take a breather and get a vibration on my wrist when it's time for my next set? That'd be awesome.
A thought- the notification in the screenshot tells you your next weight, but it seems that it's telling you after your rest- not after your last set. A notification to set your next weight before you rest would be helpful, so that you're ready to go when rest is over.