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Thank you for sharing your success. I hope I can learn one or thing from your sharing.

Currently, I'm selling a consumer productivity app (Android only) in Google Play store.

The characteristics of this category are large consumer demand, and low barrier to entry. Because of this, there are a lot of players in this category.

My pricing model is pretty simple - $20 one time payment to unlock everything. I know I can earn significant more by having subscription / in-app advertising. Since I can make a living with current income, I will leave it that way. I want to sacrifice short-term good profit, in exchange for long term growth.

Initially, I get the first 10k users, by promoting the app, via forum self-post. Later, we notice this is not something scale-able. As, you can only get that much of users from forums.

Right now, I have around 500k users. That mostly attributes to Google Play store organic/search traffic. Because of this, I spend a lot of time in optimizing Google Play store page listing - provide proper localization on product description, performing A/B testing on different product screenshots.

However, that is pretty much risky. What if Google stops sending traffic to my Google Play store page?

I spend some advertising dollar each day in Google Ads, with the hope able to keep our app ranking afloat.

Do you have any suggestion, how I can have a better marketing strategy?

From your post, I will start by purchasing

- "Rework" by Basecamp

- "This is Marketing" from Seth Godin

I also like your suggestion "Write articles that teach people something". Do you have suggestion which publishing platform I should use? Since I don't have a good writing skill, should I hire a freelancer to help me do so? How can I get an idea what to write about?

Thank you, and BIG congratulation on your achievement.

500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid!

It's hard to say anything about your pricing model. If it works for you, there's probably no need to optimize. However, 500K users with a $20 IAP – I wonder if you could introduce subscriptions for something like $1-2 per month. Maybe make it cheaper per year, but more expensive on the long run. But this depends heavily on how often your app is used. If it's used daily, it provides daily value and this makes people appreciate it more. If you use it only occasionally, a one-time fee is alright. Just from my gut feeling: a single unlock-all $20 fee is quite high for an IAP and I wonder if there's a way to price it better.

> "What if Google stops sending traffic to my Google Play store page?"

Yeah, that is a very good question for all indie developers. My app is somewhat detached from Google's hand, because a) it used to be a webapp, b) there's also an iOS version, c) I could make it a progressive web app in no time. But still, it'd reduce convenience and discoverability. This is a complex question. On the one hand, I don't think many legitimate apps are kicked out of the Play Store for no reason. There are horror stories, but well, they are rare. Maybe you could find a way to make it more distributed. Offer an iOS app. Offer a web app. Or do make sure to keep Google happy at all times.

> "I spend some advertising dollar each day in Google Ads, with the hope able to keep our app ranking afloat."

It's similar with SEO. If SEO is the only strategy, you get dependend on it. So diversification is the key here. Paid apps + SEO + occasionally forum promotions + maybe a good website with good content for a loyal fan base (but it depends on what kind of app this is).

> "Do you have any suggestion, how I can have a better marketing strategy?"

Not really, depends on the kind of app. Read indiehackers.com for inspiration and the books I recommend. I don't do paid ads, because the CPC is way too high / the conversion rate too low.

> "Do you have suggestion which publishing platform I should use? Since I don't have a good writing skill, should I hire a freelancer to help me do so? How can I get an idea what to write about?"

Absolutely! I wrote probably over 200,000 words and invested a lot of time in improving my writing skills. Good content is easy to read. If your app is in English and English is not your native language, get someone to write for you or someone to correct your rough English. This is about brand perception and if you want to teach someone something, it helps if your written voice doesn't sound off. On a forum/comment site like HN, this is less important ;)

But again, just from my gut feeling: I wonder if there's a way for you to REDUCE the number of active users and turn free users into loyal paid users. This makes for more stable income and lets you focus on improving the app and stressing less about marketing.

> "500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid!"

Not quite :) As, majority of them are from tier-2 countries. Purchasing digital goods is not part of their culture.

> "But again, just from my gut feeling: I wonder if there's a way for you to REDUCE the number of active users and turn free users into loyal paid users."

Thank you for your suggestion! What you have mentioned are valid.

Maybe at some point, I want to introduce "ads" + "subscription" model. However, this is a competitive landscape. Most of the similar apps are using ads model. At this moment, I want to offer a compelling reason, for user to use my app instead of others. Luckily, this landscape has high stickiness, because user generated personal data are stored within the app. If they use the app for long enough, the cost is high, when they want to switch to other apps.

So, my hypothesis is that, as long as the free users are using my app, there will always be an opportunity to monetize from them, one day.

Yes. You're right. Currently, there is stress to do marketing. I need to keep attracting new users especially from tier-1 countries, so that new users' one-time purchase can help to cover my monthly living expense. I try to control the CPI cost to USD0.10 for Germany, Japan, Korea. I didn't invest for US, because the high cost is not justifiable. I do notice higher cost is required, if the tier-1 countries are English speaking country. My guess is that, less language barrier, will encourage more players in the market, and drive up the advertising cost.

> Absolutely! I wrote probably over 200,000 words and invested a lot of time in improving my writing skills

I really wish I can build a long term traffic like what you have done. Can you recommend me a publishing platform to publish all writings?

Currently, I am already using google sites (Because I do not have website design skill), to build a landing page to introduce the app features, hosing FAQ, and showing video on how to use the app. But, I don't think that is the suitable platform to host long written article.

When you write your writing, do you need to hire some graphics designer, to help to decorate your writing with nice graphic assets, to attract more readers?

Thank you!

Sounds like you have a plan, good :)

> "Can you recommend me a publishing platform to publish all writings?"

Whatever works best for you. Wordpress, Ghost, whatever. It doesn't matter. I have mostly static files.

I think you need a somewhat okay design. Doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be clean and professionally-looking. I do design myself. I'm self-taught. If you can't do it, get someone who does it. You don't need a lot of images, but yeah, it should look clean and good. There are millions of themes, which are alright if you just start. Don't stress too much over the design. The message is more important.

Also: This is a bit out of scope of this discussion. There's probably a lot of discussion on the internet for designing articles or blogs :)

I honestly can learn a lot from you.. just launched an app struggling to get users. Would you be able to mentor me and provide some insights??

“ So, my hypothesis is that, as long as the free users are using my app, there will always be an opportunity to monetize from them, one day.”

Yeah, but each day those users are churning out and you will have missed the opportunity to monetize them forever - that lost revenue will never come back.

I would be interested in writing blog posts and articles for you. Send me a message at [redacted] for some samples and ideas.

I have so many questions, but let's start with a few ones:

Is this a web application or a smartphone one?

What did you have to learn, tech-wise, to be able to build it?

How long did it take you, from your first line of code until you released the first prototype?

How did you get your first user(s)?

How did you get the business idea (without details)? Was it a personal pain point, or did you work in that field before?

And congrats BTW, it looks like you did an amazing job.

I'd argue that only the last two questions are relevant.

- Both web and smartphone apps can create this kind of revenue. - The tech stack is 99% irrelevant unless the end customer depends on it, which in 99% of the times, isn't the case.

Please note that I have just edited my answer and added a question, so your comment actually refers to the 2 questions before the last one.

> "Is this a web application or a smartphone one?"

It used to be a web app, but nowadays, most people use it as an app.

> "What did you have to learn, tech-wise, to be able to build it?"

At first, PHP. Then JS. I've been coding for 15-20 years now. The app is made in Ionic + Cordova. As I wrote often here on HN: End users give zero fucks about the technology. Most people (unless they're designers or coders) don't even see the difference between a native app and a hybrid one.

As a single developer, Ionic is great, because you have truly one code base for all platforms. If the apps were native, I probably couldn't do all of this by myself.

> "How long did it take you, from your first line of code until you released the first prototype?"

2-3 weeks, and then I iterated a lot with actual feedback. But: I didn't introduce a pricing model for the first couple years. It was a hobby back then. It also was a different internet. So take this with a grain of salt. I don't have experience on how to start a niche product and get paying customers from day 1.

> How did you get your first user(s)?

Through forums.

> How did you get the business idea (without details)?

A friend of mine said: "It'd be great if there was a software that could do X". It wasn't directly my own pain point, but of a friend. I didn't work in that field before, but read a lot over the years to acquire the domain knowledge.

Thanks :)

How has Ionic and Cordova performed for you? Have you considered moving to another framework?

Pretty well. Performance isn’t an issue anymore, although it’s still faster on iOS. My biggest issue with it is the lack of fine-grained control over input elements. Safari is the culprit here. For example, you can’t really make an input element that allows entering a time in this format "23:30" AND only show a specific keyboard with decimals and the colon.

Textarea elements are also sometimes behaving weird when selecting text, just like your regular iOS Safari.

And of course, all input elements and animations don’t respect your OS accessibility settings. Neglectable in some apps, not in others.

I probably wouldn’t write a diary app or an app for writers in Ionic, but for most other things it’s good enough.

Keep in mind that all development comes with trade offs. Native iOS development gives you maximal control over the platform, but your code isn’t really re-usable. As a solo developer, having a single code base is gold and customers don’t really care.

As a solo developer, I tried maintaining two native code bases for an app. It was first iOS native only. The Android version came later, and never reached feature parity. It was just too much work.

If you were to start over, would you still choose Ionic and Cordova, or go with something else like Xamarin or React Native?

I'd still use Ionic + Cordova. Or to be a bit more specific: The Ionic team released Stencil a few months ago, which is a compiler for Web Components. They also released Capacitor, which is a replacement for Cordova.

I'm considering switching to these, because it gives me a bit more control over all of the code (and I'm not really a fan of Angular). But I'd use JS for apps again whenever I can. It's just so much more convenient and especially since I can release a PWA or web version without much effort.

You weren't asking me, but if you don't have loads of content to display onscreen and your design is relatively straightforward, it might be best to go with React Native, since it gives you proper native controls.

You make a ton of concessions (imo) by locking yourself in a webview.

> This year, it's going to be around 370,000€ (and since I live in Germany, my income is in the top 0,5% or so).

Is your business focused on the German market or the US market? Or is it multi-lingual / international? What percentage of time is spent answering support requests?

> The subscription model helps you to stay afloat. People will pay for a product they use every day (and thus, derive value from every day).

Have you experimented with different pricing models? Is Duolingo / Tinder model (1 month / 6 months / 12 months) the best choice for B2C subscriptions without Spotify / Netflix-like licensing costs?

German market only. Going international is an option I considered, but it is a lot more complex than simply localizing the app. Since I make more money than I need and I don't want my job to become a different one (I still get to code a lot), I didn't do it yet.

> "Have you experimented with different pricing models?"

No, I kept the pricing model very simple. The price increased a bit throughout the years. I charge what feels fair.

There's a trial period and if you like the product, you pay for it. If not, then not. There is no freemium, I never give discounts, I don't sell ads or data or make money in any other way. It's a simple thing :)

Some people claim that it's easy to test prices. But this is not true.

If you serve a niche, people talk. If one person pays more than another for the same product (and signed up for the same version at a similar time), you'd lose trust.

The nice thing about making more money than you need is that it frees you from thinking about "making even more money". Yeah, I like making more money, because all of this could be over one day, but there is no need to stress myself about it.

> If you serve a niche, people talk.

Another thing probably is, that a subscription price of a niche product can be considerably higher than of a mainstream one?

For a single person, it must be much easier to support 1,000 users paying something like $25 / month than 5,000 users paying $5 / month.

Thanks for asking this, because it is a thing that many many people have in their mind: "Will support requests crush me?" And this was actually my biggest fear when I turned my hobby project into a commercial one many years ago. The reality is this:

I have over 10,000 paying customers. I receive maybe 5 emails per day. There was never a time when I received much more than 10. I have three explanations for this:

1. I have a really good FAQ that answers almost any question. On my contact form, I urge people to read the damn FAQ. If they still send me an email, I usually reply with a specific link to the FAQ item. If a question comes up a couple times, I add it to the FAQ.

2. Since my product isn't free (and not cheap compared to a 0.99 one-time-fee app), there's a lot of self-selection. I don't have to support freeloaders with their stupid questions. If people pay for something, it seems to help to reduce the support burden.

3. I wonder if this is a mentality thing and Germans are more likely to help themselves through reading FAQ than others who rather send an email like "yo, shit is broken, fix asap". Most emails I receive read a lot more like a letter and not this one-line blurp bullshit some have to deal with.

In essence: Build a product with a somewhat sophisticated target group. They are more likely to pay, more likely to help themselves by reading FAQ and more likely to send no stupid emails.

This isn’t just because you have a good FAQ, it’s because it’s relatively expensive. The more expensive your product is the more likely people are to respect it and you, and to be the kind of professionals who actually read to find answers to things. Yet another reason to charge more.

> This isn’t just because you have a good FAQ, it’s because it’s relatively expensive.

As a B2C SaaS product it actually seems to be relatively cheap: 10,000+ paying users and 370,000€ in yearly revenue points to around 2.99€ / month and 29.99€ / year subscription fees – similar to Instapaper Premium[1].

[1] https://www.instapaper.com/premium

Yep, I have similar revenue and I charge somewhere between 25-45 per user.

#3 is not specific to Germans, it depends mainly on the audience. The more technical it is, the more likely it is to generate non-trivial and meaningful support requests.

Also the fact that you don't sell at discount likely filters out the bulk of self-entitled users that tend to stress support with trivia.

And your summary is 100% spot on - catering to a more savvy audience and aggressively culling other users is a good way to keep support manageable (and even pleasant!)

How come so much focus on Seo rather than ASO or paying to acquire users directly from the App Store? I’m launching an app soon and Wondering if what the conversion would be from web to App Store and where to focus my marketing

Because I don't want to acquire some random people. I serve a specific niche. This niche is better reached with high quality articles. Writing good articles costs once (and the occasional updates and improvements). Paying for reach isn't scalable. SEO is.

I don't think I'm alone here in desperately wanting to know what business this is. :)

> I'm a single developer with no employees. I work between 10-30 hours per week.

I'm curious -- how much time do you spend on marketing? How do your customers find your app?

Nowadays, I spend zero time on marketing. I have a whole bunch of well-written articles on my subject. They still rank okay on Google and are evergreen. Marketing these days is word of mouth + SEO.

But for someone starting out: Write articles that teach people something (in a niche). Articles get read for many years. Social media posts go down after minutes.

Good idea. Are the articles teaching how to use your software to solve an issue people have, or do you just mention/link to the the software in the end of the article?

The latter. The articles teach people about the niche domain/subject. The app is merely mentioned as an option to make life a bit easier.

Having the graphs in the app is much easier than doing yourself.

Thanks for sharing. Do you have stress or anxiety that some other competitor will gain market? Future technology change worries etc.

Competitors: No, I've seen competitors come and go.

There are some competitors, but they target a broader audience (and have to because of VC money) and thus, their product is less focused on sophisticated users. What would you rather buy, a general purpose app that does many things half-assed or the specialized version that is exactly what you need? I can say that my app is simply the best in its category and there are way too many small details so that a copy-cat can't get everything right. Furthermore, in that niche, most people know my app, which helps.

Future technology changes: Not really. They will probably take a long time to replace the domain I'm in. However, there could be a black swan kind of thing, something nobody expects ;) But I don't really stress myself about this.

I have no daily anxiety, but there's one thing on my mind: The app space will get more regulated in the near future. GDPR was one thing. ePrivacy is coming. More privacy laws, upload filters and whatnot. The entire health and fitness market WILL get more regulated. So far, you can claim whatever health benefits you want with your app. Expect that you might need some kind of light FDA-approval (or the European equivalent) in the coming years if your app claims things. On the one hand, this is a big annoyance, on the other hand, I am in a good position and make already enough money to build up cash reserves to handle regulatory affairs if they happen to affect my app.

Whats your take home (netto) after taxes for all of that? I'm an American living in Germany, wondering what the effective tax rate is for someone like you here.

Danke sehr!

Good question. I have two kids, so there are some deductions. I don't know for last year yet, because the tax forms aren't yet submitted by my accountant (and last year it was a lot more than the year before). I calculate with about 59% take home pay. Give or take 2-3%.

Thanks for the response. Are you GmbH or selbständig for this? Wondering which is better for a situation like a one man job. I'm in a similar situation.

I am sole proprietor / Einzelunternehmer. A GmbH works too. Cons:

- more work to set it up

- more paper work

- unnecessary in some cases

Pros:

- cash flow for you as a founder is more stable / taxes can be calculated and predicted more easily (only relevant if you expect a good year and then a bad year)

Neutral:

- Your personal liability is supposedly limited. This is only partially true. There's still the liability of the owner of the company (Geschäftsführerhaftung) and if you do illegal stuff, they can still hold you liable.

- Also for a GmbH, it is more important to manage risks by getting the required insurances and NOT rely on "limited liability". For apps, this would be "IT-Betriebshaftpflicht", possibly something about data protection with regards to GDPR violations. Maybe add insurance that covers personal liability so that you don't lose your personal cash if something goes wrong. That's about it. Optionally add domain-specific insurance if your domain is complex.

This is, btw. a typical German question. Mulling about the type of business is secondary. Get paying customers first, you can still incorporate a GmbH later. On the other hand: If nobody pays you money, you don't need a GmbH or be a sole proprietor.

You hit the nail on the head, that's for sure. :)

Hit me up and would be glad to buy you a beer if you're ever in Munich! Email is in the profile. Cheers.

Will do :)

German here. I am mulling over the type of business because I want to grow a B2B company where there is potential for loss of service for a big corporate customer, and my fear is getting hit with a justified (or frivolous) lawsuit that will wipe me out.

So, to come back to your comment: Is there ever a situation where you as a solo-founder/owner would consider a limited-liability corp (GmbH/UG) for reasons of liability or are the only good reasons for such a corp to be able to employ people, take in outside investments and set up something like a holding structure?

I honestly can’t answer that, because I’m not in the B2B sector. Some people wouldn’t do anything without a GmbH. They say it’s an absolute necessity. Others see it differently.

I just want to add to this discussion: Think about risks and insurance first and then about limited liability. If you think about it: what actually happens to your company if a scenario happens that triggers the limited liability aspect? It goes bust, if I’m not entirely mistaken. Every asset will be seized, except for your personal assets. But the company is basically gone afterwards. This scenario should be avoided in any case I think. It’s probably not fun.

I can only say that in my case with many independent customers paying a small amount of money, I managed my risk with insurance as far as possible. But maybe an accountant would be the better person to discuss your individual case.

> Get paying customers first, you can still incorporate a GmbH later. On the other hand: If nobody pays you money, you don't need a GmbH or be a sole proprietor.

is it possible to sell the product first and then register as Einzelunternehmer later (within the same fiscal year)? Or you have to register before?

After registering as Einzelunternehmer, if the business stops existing, does one have to "close activity" as Einzelunternehmer somehow?

You can only do some occasional work without registering yourself in any special form.

You can check, if you can start as a Freiberufler. It is a bit more lightweight than going with Einzelunternehmen. For example, I am a Freiberufler now working as a consultant / contractor in data engineering and management. I can also potentially sell my product, but I did not check the limitations.

You do not have to close you Einzelunternehmen afaik, if you do not make money, but you are still responsible for sending regular declarations to the Finanzamt.

Thank you for sharing, I totally agree with numbers over business details, it's very nice to see.

I have a couple of questions too if you don't mind.

1. Is your business salable? If you got bored of it, would it be easy for someone to take over? Sometimes I wonder about small businesses and many seem to rely a lot on the expertise of the founder. Or if you don't want to scale, then having someone manage the day-to-day operations while starting a second product might be liberating.

2. You mention SEO. Is this the nuts and bolts "use the right keywords, in the right tags, the right number of times" type of SEO or do you focus more on writing long lived compelling content with simple language? It sounds like you'd be doing this in German, so I wonder if that changes things a lot due to the competitive landscape (and/or Google's capability to parse various languages).

Curious what in app purchase plugin you use for Cordova. The one I'd been using has been abandoned.

Ionic enterprise has a bunch of plugins that are actively supported by real people.

> release a prototype after 2-6 weeks

I'm in the situation where my product overlaps significantly with others but brings (IMO) some missing features and a better overall experience. I would love to launch quickly but feel I need some feature parity with competitors first.

If people are looking to switch for a different offering, they will tell you.

Also, there is not a way to know if the features being made into parity are in fact all valued.

You can't reach feature parity to an active product.

Say they have 10 developers and 200 features. You can go from 0 to 200 features in 2? years. How many new features have they added in 2 years, 100? So the cycle repeats.

Do a subset of the competitor but do it really well.

Remember the Innovator's Dilemma. Worse is better for new products, because competitors over time add so many features that they become bloated, and so a newer entrant can create a basic version that doesn't have all the features, but it has the top 1 or 2 or even 3 features that most customers want, for a lower price. This usually will win out and the cycle continues :)

> People will pay for a product they use every day (and thus, derive value from every day). If your product is not used every day, but only once per month or so, expect way lower revenue.

This is my takeaway. Thank you so much for that!

I have some German specific questions since I’m currently also looking into registering a company.

Which kind of business form (UG, Gmbh, einzelgewerbe) do you use? Have you used something like a „Kleingewerbe“ when you were starting out?

And how do you handle all the legal stuff? And how much time do you spend on this?

In all those year did your app become top ranking or all the income comes from small no of people?

Rankings plays no significant role for my app, although it does affect downloads a bit. My app has been in the top 10 for a while, but also around 30-40 or so. It was never featured by Apple.

My app doesn't target people who just browse the app store and look for new stuff. It requires people with domain knowledge to actively seek a solution (I offer). So, before people get to know my app, they usually find themselves to get to know about the domain.

As an example: Before you download an app for vegans, you read about veganism first. There is no point in downloading an app for vegans otherwise. It's similar with my app (different domain though). But once your vegan app is somewhat popular in vegan communities, you depend less on rankings and more on SEO and word of mouth.

Of course, being featured by a vegan magazine would do a lot for you, probably more than being #1 in the app store or being featured by Apple (in terms of customer loyalty).

> t pricing models? Is Duolingo / Tinder model (1 month / 6 months / 12 months) the best choice for B2C subscriptions without Spotify / Netflix-like licensing costs?

is it a mobile app or a desktop or SAAS? just curious.

Mobile/webapp, not really SaaS, because there is hardly a backend. It works basically standalone in the browser.

I'm so curious about what your app does I can almost die!

Good for you though, living the dream.

Did you implement the payment process on your own, or does it come within a CMS that you are using? what kind of technology are you using to enable subscriptions after payments arrives?

Thanks for sharing. How do you price a prototype? I have a bias of thinking people won't initially pay for it. What are your thoughts?

I think you can't really price a prototype. On the other hand, people are paying actual cash on promises every day (see Kickstarter, or does anyone remember this blogging engine powered by "AI" that pre-sold at $1 and increased by 1 with every purchase?).

But you need something to get some kind of validation. If you fail to attract users for a free product, nobody will pay for it either. It's a small test if anyone wants to have it – and for yourself: whether or not you want to keep investing time and energy into this project.

How many users do you have on your platform? If there are many, how do you provide "customer services"?