91–100 of 186 posts
Currently using Strong (more than 400 workouts logged).
Curious, how did you go about marketing this?
I thought about an fitness app myself. I'm curious when it will be available: With ML you could really analyse what someone is doing and counting and basically playing fitness coache for you including proper counting of your things.
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.
Nice to hear Side note I think 'Tell HN:' is for problems, vs. 'Show HN:'
I perceive it more as `interesting story` vs `interesting project`. OP's project-story is right on the edge between the two for me. At least for Show HN there is an official guideline [0] which mentions: > Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread. Does anyone know whether there is an official `Tell HN` guideline?…
Anyway I only mention it because I looked at this post and I was like "what happened/what went wrong".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn’t really want to go down this route but since you guys wanted to I would also point out the OP likely hasn’t been making $500/mo for a full year yet so to make that kind of projection is premature. I think at best he will make that for a few months then it will taper off within the year as the app gets less popular. You can’t just say your app makes $500/mo without giving the time period for how long it has been…
The app made $300 last month and $500 this month. It indeed hasn't been very long, and I agree that $500/mo is a bit of a generous take. However I do plan on adding extra paid features which I think will push that even further.
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I want to push back against this a little. He gets $500/month now, there is no guarantee he will keep receiving that number when he stops maintaining and improving his app. I would assume the number will go up if he keeps improving it, but if he stops it will eventually become 0$/month.
Doesn't time value of money decrease this effect? Assuming a fixed revenue over time, future revenue is much less relevant, so is its loss.
$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
Despite the valid criticisms against the specifics of your comment, I found this perspective interesting. You could model the specifics differently, of course: maybe we assume the $500/month is a peak and it tapers off exponentially somehow. What sort of capital returns does this correspond to? I haven't done the maths, so I don't know, but the fact that I can even ask the question means I've learned something from y…
However, as others have hinted at, assuming this app will continue to generate $500 a month forever at roughly the same risk premium as a perpetuity from any remotely reputable seller is dubious at best. Major banks and insurers that have existed for several centuries have histories of selling instruments like these that actually have paid out their promised coupon value for many decades and even centuries in some cases. In contrast, the Apple App Store has existed for almost 14 years. The 5/3/1 strength program has existed for 13 years.
What are the chances this app can generate the same revenue for the next 30 years? You can't rely on just keeping the existing users due to the way lifters tend to program-hop eventually. Anyone doing 5/3/1 today is unlikely to be doing it in 30 years. Then you have to factor in the possibility of competition. I'm kind of surprised the author of the 5/3/1 books has never bothered to commission an app and apparently only distributes official spreadsheets for generating a program template and workout log. If he ever does, any unofficial app seems unlikely to survive.
Not to take away from the work. I think this is the right idea. The developer wanted something that didn't exist and made it. Whether or not you ever acquire a single customer other than yourself, I think that is worth doing. But if anyone in this comment thread truly thinks it is worth $150,000, offer him $150,000 and I'm sure he'll be glad to sell.
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, wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no guarantee $150k invested will have 4% returns either.
No, but if I had to bet on one over the other, I'm going with 4% returns.