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Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

news.ycombinator.com

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Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

#1

Post by strongpigeon »

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

Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

#2

Post by silvi9 »

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!

Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

#4

Post by strongpigeon »

silvi9 wrote: post #2

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!

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

Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

#7

Post by strongpigeon »

reducesuffering wrote: post #5

Congrats! What does your tech stack look like? How long did it take you?

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)

Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

#8

Post by TameAntelope »

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?

Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo

#10

Post by newbie578 »

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!

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