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

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101–110 of 186 posts

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

#102
post #93

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…

I love the "too expensive" button. I'm the sort of person who'd probably want to test a dozen variations of that, half of them being jokes, and try to figure out exactly why it works. Do you know how many of the full price buyers ever click the button and find out it has a discount?

Nope. I have some more ideas to try, but with my sale frequency once in 1-2 days, it's quite difficult to make any statistical conclusions. However, since it's a meme website, I don't think there are any limits on creativity of psychological experiments. :D

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

#103
Congrats on the success! I just started a newsletter - Indie Watch (http://indie.watch/) - that features cool apps built by indie iOS developers.

Would you mind if I featured your app in our first release?

Since it's our first release, I can't guarantee any results or conversions, but the mailing list has a few hundred people on it, so it couldn't hurt...

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

#104
Can I ask about your experience implementing Stripe Connect Express, especially how did you choose that over Stripe Connect Standard? My understanding is you have to do more heavy lifting integration work, pay monthly fee per account, KYC, and are responsible for refunds for Express. Whereas a lot of that are taken care of in Standard.

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

#105

Grats. That's awesome! How did you market it? Seems like weightlifting apps has to be a pretty saturated market. Also assuming its a native iOS app since there isn't an android equivalent. Were you an iOS developer in big tech? Building UIs feels so much nicer with the native frameworks, but I'm always hesitant to do so because writing the same app twice seems so grueling.

I wrote my first full-blown mobile apps (fairly simple and spartan) with React Native, I target both iOS and Android, and it was a breeze using Expo. It's seriously good, I have no affiliation, just a happy customer (I tested the paid tier out but currently use the free one).

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

#106
Thank you for sharing! I wish more people were transparent about money (to know what's possible).

In my example, I created Video Hub App that sells for $5 (and $3.50 goes to a cost-effective charity). I'm averaging about $500 for over a year now (with almost $15,000 donated to charity).

https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App (MIT open source)

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

#107
post #73
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fair, but as a milestone in long-term self-sufficiency, creating a $500/mo app is significant achievement. Saving $150,000 is, too. Which is more likely to lead to true self-sufficiency? Barring other possibilities, the savings. But given human response to positive feedback loops, a successful dev often becomes a more successful dev overtime. Hence, I favor the "first app I wrote that made $500/mo" is more si…

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…

Mandatory XKCD on the dangers of extrapolating : https://xkcd.com/605/

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

#108
post #89
post #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

I think its a great achievement in itself but your post does push people in the thinking of 'i can just make a no work sustainable something as a service app and become rich'. I don't think it works. I think the best bet by far is either to optimize your job salary (switching after 2-3 years, being proactive, trying leetcode, persuing FAANG) or following FIRE. $500 would be 5h per month freelancing. And to be really…

Yeah leaving you job at Google to do this is not recommended in 99% of the cases. Especially in a recession.

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

#109
post #56

Super cool project man, congrats. I was unable to figure it out in the app, but is it possible to build your own routine instead of 5/3/1? I have been looking for this kinda of app and am willing to pay for it.

Custom Templates is a feature I go back and forth on, mainly because it'd complicate the data model a lot, but also some parts of the product. I might get around to it, but I'm going to work on other things (Android version, Apple Watch companion) first.

Does the data model have to be changed? Can't it just be a simple "fill exercise and how many reps/kg you want" type of thing?

And understandable with your limited time!

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

#110

Congrats on the success! Any chance of an Android version of that app? I'm glad you made a 5/3/1-specific app; I've always had to shoehorn 5/3/1 into some other "Build your own routine" apps and it's always been clunky at best.

Personally I use FitNotes to track my workouts (5/3/1 or not) and keep (the totally not responsive) http://lift.eha-ab.ca/ open in my mobile browser.
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