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Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

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11–20 of 120 posts

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#11
I launched the beta of my app in mid-November, although I must admit I did start mid-October so I'm hoping I still qualify!

I decided to build a revenue generating URL shortener. This was one of the first full projects where I basically did everything myself - research, design, development etc, which was a bit frustrating a times. It's ridiculous how unproductive my design days were compared to my development days, but I guess I'm just going against the grain there (I'd be interested to know how many people have 'mastered' both design & development.) That said, I learned quite a lot about the whole process, so definitely a good result.

I decided to launch before a lot of the esential functionality was complete (conversions, payments etc) just to get a feel for what people wanted, and most importantly if it was worth persuing the idea further. I'd probably do the same again next time, although I must admit I felt a bit helpless in the first week of launch when bugs were being uncovered/features were being requested and I was still working on the core.

I'm now onto marketing my app with my business partner. The market we're trying to is obviously insanely saturated, so it's a little frustrating at times, but I'm super motivated to get this out so lets hope we get some traction sometime soon :)

The URL of the app is http://shrtn.co

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#12
I launched http://imendi.com

It is basically some web app to learn other languages (Spanish, Portuguese and Czech right now, few will follow soon). Principle is very simple: you assign foreign words to its english equivalent.

I build this because I am learning Portuguese right now and it is hard to learn grammar without knowledge of basic words. There are around 300 most common words in the app right now.

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#13
I didn't launch but I made huge progress to my webgame

Looking for advice and suggestions to the alpha release version:

http://four2go.gumyum.com

Feel free to login as foxhop, no authentication needed, and try it out with a buddy.

Uses ajax long polling to update the games.

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#14
I launched my first Android app, Fanorona, a traditional board game from Madagascar. So far I've made four sales. At 99¢ each, minus Google's 30%, I've made $2.78. But it was fun. (I also listed it with Archos's AppsLib, but I don't expect to see any money there; they don't pay out until you hit $50.)

http://fanorona.thibault.org/android/

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#15
I managed to amalgamate some similar projects into http://feedladder.com and move it from activerecord to mongomapper. Basically it allows for twitter feeds to have their own submission and voting for their tweets. Best example right now is probably http://profquotes.feedladder.com.

Haven't gotten around to making workflow to add new ones automatically though, school and work take a toll.

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#16
post #8

I am still working on mine. It'll take a few more weeks before the MVP ready to be launched. I have my landing page up at http://www.serverfabu.com/ The inspiration for this project came from the feedback I've received for my ASK HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1815344

I am very interested in seeing what you come up with, even if I have no immediate use for it now. The last month taught me, again, why I am not a sysadmin.

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#18
post #4

Still working on it. But I started late. It's also my first app push - I'm a "business guy" learning to code.

I am in this position as well, learning to code and work on my idea at the same time. Very interested in hearing about what resources and tools you used!

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#19
Terrible, although I am smack in the middle of selling my house and moving from the east coast to the west coast, so perhaps this wasn't a great time to try to build and launch an app.

I really like the idea of setting a deadline to launch an app though. November wasn't really a workable time period for me personally, but it would definitely be helpful for me to set a deadline and possibly make it public so it would force me to really get something done.

Re: Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

#20
post #10

I launched one. See all of the groupon deals in your town and others in one simple interface: http://www.groupongroupie.com/ I'm still working on a few kinks in the daily email list. The daily inspirational emails from 21times really helped.

Ha! Since I 'discovered' this I've used it nearly daily in preparation for Christmas travels as well as gift shopping for friends around the country. I had a suspicion that you were a HN-er.
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