Hello,20 days ago I decided to do an application for iOS and 10 days ago I lunched my application on the app store. Today it hits 260$ in subscriptions! As a developer with the first SaaS app this was a new experience that I learned a ton from and I'd like to share all what I learned (long post ahead)!To start the app is a bio page maker. It is similar to linktree as an idea, but very different in the design and implementation. My pain point was that linktree doesn't have an iOS app, and updating regularly the page via the phone is quite a hassle. Being the eager developer I am, I decided to do my own app.I was skeptical if I should do it or not. But after some research, I found that this niche is not overly crowded in the app store. Basically two apps are the leading ones in the app store and both are for from the same company! Yeah the company is making a competition against itself. However since my study showed that this area is not overly crowded in the app store, I decided to take my shot.Here was my first mistake, I'm a developer and not a businessman. We developers do have a ton of experience doing the best product but we have no experience in branding. I was thinking of the name for the app and settled with linkstree since it is very similar to linktree. I thought having a similar name leads to appearing in the search if someone searched for linktree. I also thought that having a similar name makes the app self explanatory. After release and when the app started collecting users, some people pointed out that having a very similar name has two big problems. #1 is that since I'm in the same area as linktree, a very similar name can lead to trademark issues. #2 is that having a similar name may confuse people to thinking they downloaded linktree and not my app. To be honest this feedback was very important to me as I didn't look at it that way at all if this wasn't highlighted. After I got this feedback I changed the name from to 'Tree Links'. It is still somehow similar but in no way a person can confuse 'Tree Links: Bio Page Maker' to 'Linktree'. I also changed the logo to look entirely different that linktree.After 1 week of development, the app was ready to be released. I decided to put aside 150$ for marketing for this app and call it a day. Since I'm a developer and not a businessman, this 150$ is from my full time salary. I know 150$ seem like peanuts but I wanted to see if the 150$ gives its return of investment.Here is the shocking part, After the release I realized that this kind of app self markets itself. I discovered after the release that the number of users is increasing exponentially without any explanation. Low and behold in the same day the app s released I got 3 paying customers! But how did they?Turns out when a user makes a bio page he gets his custom link (example: treelinks.co/catz) and the user adds it to his instagram or tiktok or reddit, etc.., followers will click this link. Many followers will then click on the product name on the bottom of the link, downloading the app, making their own links and the loop goes on and on!I ran the ads regardless but noticed that the ads did next to nothing with respect to the organic reach. After 11.5$/150$ spent I stopped the ads. 11.5$ got my 0 paying customers.When the app scaled to +500 users, I started reaching my limits in term of backend services and needed upgrade my plans to keep everything smooth. These services cost money ~70$ a month all in all. But hey if I did 250$ in 10 days then it's a good deal!Also with scaling, the smallest problem starts to become big. I had to optimize the image upload and render dramatically because leaving them as is would lead to a big fat bill at the end of the month. I had to roll quick updated to address multiple issues before they scale.One last thing I saw is that I only got the sales when I lowered my prices. My competition plans are a minimum of 3.99 a month (for the Pro) and up to 39.99 a year in IAP (for the premium). I priced my subscription offers 1.99 a month or 14.99 a year. From the data I have, between each 5 subscriptions almost 1 is a yearly.Today to my surprise, my app is appearing as the 3rd result in the app store, just under the two competitors I mentioned earlier. That's a big win as it drives a ton users. When I released the app it would appear as the 10th or 11th.I'm learning a lot from this experience! And what started as a small side project started actually bringing money! I know the numbers may seem little but seeing it works feels awesome! I'll definitely be posting my new learnings in the near future! see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
0 comments:
Post a Comment