Very impressive and bravo on your success! I love seeing indie hackers launching their projects and get positive feedback in the form of revenue. Also appreciate the weightlifting focus, will check out the app for sure.
Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
21–30 of 186 posts
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#22Can anyone share what is their thought process regarding on deciding what app to build? Say you have a Word document with 15 different ideas, how do you decide which one is worth investing?
In my case, the one that has a larger community where it can be promoted at low cost.
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#23Congratulations! 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!
Another indie hacker here, to add to OP’s reply, I’ve been using Syften[0] to monitor relevant keywords across various sites to find people my product can be of value to, or I provide answers to their related questions (which can lead them to checking out my profile and then product).
I’m building Conjure[1] a habits, behavior and goals platform, so I track everything from ‘habits’/‘productivity’/‘quantified-self’ type keywords, to people looking for alternatives to XYZ product name, to specific questions I’ve answered before (eg organization, time tracking, building exercise habit, achievement, etc).
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#24Excellent, congrats! Can you elaborate on IAPs (or other insights)? The app is free, yes? Then what can users buy while using the app?
Found this on the iOS App store page: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/five-three-one/id1560266240
Features include:
- Planning and scheduling your whole 5/3/1 cycle
- Charting your progress
- Rest timer with notifications
- Automatic plating calculation
- Calculating your next cycle based on your performance
- Notes associated with each sets
- Home screen widget showing your your current and upcoming workouts
- Lbs/kg support
Optional paid features:
- Customize which plates you're using and change your barbell's weight
- Customize templates assistance work and define your own exercises
- Beyond 5/3/1 templates and options, from Joker Sets to FSL, Pyramid and much more!
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#25Excellent, congrats! Can you elaborate on IAPs (or other insights)? The app is free, yes? Then what can users buy while using the app?
My thinking was that unless you have a killer video / app store page, people won't pay for a brand new app. I'm not really good at this part, so I figured I'd just make the base app for free (you can do most workout templates from the first book), and charge for features. If people like the app, they'll feel invested and will want to invest more by buying features.
Right now there are 3 Premium Features : - Custom Plating [0]: Which allows users to define which weight plates they have for the calculator - Custom Assistance [1]: Which allows users to customize the assistance sets they have - Beyond 5/3/1 Pack [2]: Which contains stuff from the Beyond 5/3/1 book.
The thinking was that most of the stuff from the base app, you can easily do with the tools already out there (e.g. the black iron beast calculator), but that people would pay for new capabilities.
[0] https://fivethreeone.app/custom-plating [1] https://fivethreeone.app/custom-assistance [2] https://fivethreeone.app/beyond-pack
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#26We’ll done! Keep going. Be aware that you may find premium feature take up/download ratio lower on Android.
Thank you!
That's what I'm expecting. I'm mostly doing the Android version for my friends and for the "brand awareness" of the app. I'm curious to see how that'll turn out.
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#27$500/mth is $6,000/yr
At a 4% safe withdrawal rate what you've built is the equivilent of saving $150,000.
You should be EXTREMELY proud of yourself, and never underestimate the power and value of the asset you've built
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#28Can anyone share what is their thought process regarding on deciding what app to build? Say you have a Word document with 15 different ideas, how do you decide which one is worth investing?
I built this app because I wanted to use it. Being user 0 is really helpful and is quite fun I can say.
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#29Great app. I’m using it tonight. Well done on the cash flow, well deserved. A good workout app can be life-changing.
Re: Tell HN: I made $1000 with my app and now making $500/mo
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
If there is no backend, and also if you are not collecting any personal data, maybe you can add a “privacy friendly, your personal data is not collected” marketing section as well. Although I am not sure if your users would care about that.
That's a good point. My app store Privacy Section is pretty clean, but I might put it on the front page of my marketing site.