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SHOW IH: How I built my new app in two weeks and got $35 in revenue in the first month

How to Create Preview Videos from Podcast Episodes? The Story of My New App – Podcast Preview – My journey into independent iOS development

Hey everyone,
my name is Máté and I'm an indie iOS developer. I made a new app called Podcast Preview which helps you to create video previews from your podcast episodes to share it on social media. I am really interested in your opinion and I hope you'll find the post interesting! If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know!

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    Hey @MateKovacs congrats on getting something out there.

    A few questions/thoughts:

    • Why an iOS app (not a web app)? I assume most professional podcasters are working with their laptop/desktop normally anyway, so is switching to an iOS app not unnecessary friction? (plus, longer update/deploy times)

    • How are you driving initial sales?

    Good luck!

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      Hey Louis, thanks for your comment!
      The reason why I went with iOS first is based on two reasons:

      • I have experience with the platform
      • I did not want to create something for desktop because it's not part of the podcast creation, just the promotion which I suppose a lot of people are doing from their mobile phones (posting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) So the idea was to create something super simple that they can do on their phones on the way to work in 2 minutes for example.

      For the second question, the initial sales were 50% product hunt and 50% reaching people manually on twitter. What I tried is to share an interesting snippet from their podcast episodes generated with my app.

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        Ok cool. Thanks for the reply and good luck!

        Is there anything you need help with from other IHers on the forum?

        Or any questions you have? :)

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          Thank you!
          Yeah, I'm looking for ideas how could I reach podcasters on a bigger scale than contacting everybody personally. If you have some ideas just let me know please! :)

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            Ok, I'd split it up into three categories: Organic/viral wins, repeatable wins, and one-off wins. Bear in mind I don't know that much about your product and/or customers.

            Organic/Viral wins:

            • Create a free/heavily discounted version which inserts "created by {{ your logo }}" as a watermark or splash screen into the preview videos.
            • Give podcast producers 1/3/6 months free access if they do a shout out for your product on their podcast and social media accounts.
            • Create a landing page ASAP so you can track and retarget potential customers.

            Repeatable wins:

            • Set up an automated cold email service like LemList.com and pay someone from UpWork to manually scrape the contact details of various potential customers. They are easy to find (podcasters want to be contacted generally) and this could be really effective.
            • Publish case studies and articles on the effectiveness of podcast marketing. Share them on groups/forums.

            One-off wins:

            • Do partnerships/cross-promotion with other people who are selling to podcasters.
            • Share and contribute on FB groups, forums etc

            Good luck!

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    I love your lean approach @MateKovacs , many (myself included) might have wasted weeks improving the UI until it was "perfect" (which is rarely the case when working without real feedback), but you took the right approach: ship fast, get feedback, and then improve the product.

    Wish you all the best with this app and future ones!

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      Thank you Kevin! I am not sure this is the right tactic, but building something with the lean approach was always closer to my heart. I am an anti-perfectionist and forgot about the details until somebody showing it to me! For me ​the harder part is to make an app polished​ once it gets some traction!