Last December I started digging into poetry, it was a topic I always thought I liked, but just hadn’t explored very much. I soon discovered that a lot of the poetry sites online had pretty annoying designs, e.g. ads right at the end of the poem, (muting any emotional impact).
I also wanted to be able to easily save a list of my favourites to come back to.
I decided to build and release a react native app which addressed these needs/issues. It took about 4 weeks during the winter break to release an MVP to the App Store. The backend is using Firebase, which has been superb in allowing me to bootstrap the app quickly.
I soon added a poem of the day feature, which forced me into curation (needing to find 365 poems for the year!). I’ve discovered so many amazing poems and poets as a result. One of the things I love about tech is that it can touch so many different domains and industries.
Anyway, fast forward six months of continuous development, adding features and refining the design, lots of late nights. I finally had enough of a feature set to demarcate some out to a paid plan with a free trial. And the first users have actually started subscribing!
I’ll soon be ramping up ads, currently just on the App Store Search, but soon with Google and Instagram. I’ll be seeing if I can spend x amount on ads to net a return in subscriptions. If so, I’ll be scaling it as fast as the budget will allow.
For the instagram ads, I’ll be marketing the poetry app with a mindfulness twist. Some people have already talked about this connection online, and I’ve personally experienced a deeper bond with nature and awareness of my own feelings as a result of reading so many poems.
So that’s where the app is now, and where I have in mind to take it. It’s been super fun working on it and any feedback is welcome!
Show HN: The Poetry Corner – A React Native app to read public domain poems
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