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Comment by LVB | Hacker News Reader

I'll say, this has been the worst part of my little indie dev adventure.

I knew I'd be uncomfortable with a lot of it, but I also didn't realize how flat out bad I am at it. I've spent so much time fiddling with keywords, refreshing splash pages for app stores, making a good landing page, buying ads, adjusting paywalls, etc. But the uptake has been depressingly low. A few people downloaded the app, but not only have I had no paying customers and no reviews, no one has even tried the sync aspect of the app that I built a backend for! I really misjudged how little attention it would get in the app store, and how rapidly they'd bail from it.

My wife and I use the app. I find that code improvements bring some satisfaction even if there is no external ROI, whereas marketing type efforts are just a drag.

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The economics of the app store were horrible even in 2010: https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/07/11/iphone-app-store-e...

There are now more than 2 million apps in the store: https://42matters.com/ios-apple-app-store-statistics-and-tre...

IIRC quite a large percentage of apps in the Mac apps store have 0 downloads. You definitely can't rely on the app store to do your marketing for you.

I fell victim to the line offered by certain indie devs along the line of, "Sure, it's hard to get a big piece of the pie, but with a BILLION users even a small piece is significant."

I'm seriously considering a simple web app for my next project. Yeah the UX will be worse, but I'll completely bypass trying to appease Apple, and it will get into the world much quicker, mostly likely. If it's a dud, I might as well fail fast.

If you rely on the Apple app store, you have a single point of failure and have to jump through whatever hoops Apple decides. Which rather calls into question just how "indie" you really are.

BTW it is possible to sell Mac apps and not use the Mac app store (I do). But I sell for Windows as well.

Have you found the extra work to also sell on windows to have been justified by the sales on that platform?

Windows is a bigger market. So I think it is more a question of 'is the extra work to sell on Mac justified'.

It is hard to give a precise answer, because:

-I don't know how the sales exactly split between Windows and Mac (my licence covers both), but I have an idea from downloads.

-It is more work to develop cross platform.

-Cross platform development always results in some compromises.

But, on the whole, I am happy that I choose Windows + Mac, rather than just choosing one or the other.

What framework did you settle on?

I know it to be Qt

Yes, Qt and C++.

Fellow indie Qt developer here, curious to learn more about your apps.

The apps I sell are:

https://www.easydatatransform.com

https://www.hyperplan.com

https://www.perfecttableplan.com

Note that while there still is a market for desktop software, it is shrinking. Many Indie developers now sell web-based products (SaaS).

That's awesome. Glad to see successful Qt desktop apps in the wild. I'm working on: https://get-notes.com

And yes, that's true. But Qt can differentiate among the web apps that try to integrate into the OS (aka Electron apps).

>https://get-notes.com

Looks cools. Note taking/outliners/productivity is a super competitive market, but I guess you know that already.

I'm a bit confused by the pricing. How is a personal license potentially more expensive than a commercial license?

> How is a personal license potentially more expensive than a commercial license?

What do you mean? The personal license is billed at $4 a month paid monthly or $24 paid yearly. The commercial license is $24 per year, per user.

If you pay for the personal licence monthly, it is more expensive than commercial ($48 per year vs $24 per year). If you pay yearly they are the same price and the features are identical. I was confused.

Yes, it's to incentivize buying the yearly plan. I'm thinking of getting rid of the Commercial license, tho, not much traction there.

The more complicated and confusing the buying page, the more people are going to hit the back button.

I put "Buying licenses for more than one user? Contact us". Then I can find out a bit more, send them a quote, negotiate discounts etc.

That's very helpful, thanks! Is there anywhere I can keep in touch with you? Discord? X? Email? I got some of my social links in my profile.

My blog is: https://successfulsoftware.net/

My email is at: https://successfulsoftware.net/about/

Also: https://bsky.app/profile/andybrice.bsky.social

Should also mention that I am very experienced at cross-platform development.

I have done OK on the Mac App Store, but I can tell you that selling two or three copies in 1 day is enough to make you top 5 in the Education Category.

I'm surprised to hear that, given the size of the market.

I should clarify, top 5 in paid.

What is the app, if you don't mind sharing?

https://scoreconnect.app

Thanks! Clearly a lot of dev work, even sharing scores on the web. Sorry to hear it hasn’t been a success.

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