Got featured in the App Store, and now I'm freaking out.
For the last 2 years I've been working on my app Astound, trucking along with about 10 new users/day. Now Astound was featured by Apple in Germany, and it's kinda going crazy. I know I wanted this, but for some reason the larger the audience the more nervous and scared I'm getting. I don't really know of what exactly... Perhaps of being judged by more people at once, or because I'm doing this all solo, and fear I can't prioritize well. Are there any indie hackers that have also gone through a radical growth transition, that could offer some advise, or simply some soothing words?
You got this!
A few App I’ve published were featured by Apple. One went from 40-50 downloads a day to eventually grow to a few thousand a day.
One of the immediate changes in mindset was around maintenance and roadmap. Originally I was just tinkering on the app, building it for myself and a small group of users. I would release code and not care too much about the impact, but once the number of users grew I had to be more careful with my deployment. This also made me think more about roadmap. It was no longer just my needs I needed to be concerned about if I wanted to maintain this growth.
Get used to people hating you or telling you something you did sucks. When a mass of random people show up, the most vocal ones will be the ones who are negative. It’ll be easy to get caught up in that noise, but don’t. Once in a while someone will have a good point, but they will be easy to identify because they are interested in seeing something get better. I added easy ways for someone to provide feedback directly. Be comfortable ignoring most of it. Don’t take it upon yourself to please everyone.
Ignore ratings... initially the app was rated 2.2 stars in the App Store. We didn’t solicit ratings. This sometimes took a toll on morale. Once we understood how people were using our apps to accomplish something and we saw the # of those actions being significant, we started prompting for reviews when someone successfully accomplished something that benefited them. This increased our ratings from 2.2 to 4.8 almost overnight. One app is now regularly ranked in the top 100 of its primary category.
Continue to keep things simple. If you intend to remain solo as your app grows, then make sure you stick with keeping things simple. I had lofty goals for one app that I published about 6 years ago. I was able to quickly grow it to over 100k downloads and I wanted it to be a lot more advanced in a short period of time. Eventually I burnt out and lost passion in the project. The user base dwindled and I never went back to it.
If you want to scale, consider hiring someone to handle things you can manage someone else doing. Be aware that they won’t be able to execute as quick as you or the exact quality you want. You’ll need to figure out how to manage.
Don’t panic when things slow down. Features from Apple are a good bump, but they aren’t repeatable or sustainable. Learn from your new set of users and think about ways for them to share what they love about your app.
You got this!
Wow Tobin, you're speaking my language. First thing I noticed were negative reviews.. almost troll like. But you're right. It's the extreme emotions, mostly negative, that become vocal. Thanks for your insight there.
Just like you said, I intend to use this bump to get some real knowledge about user experience. Until now, one or two anecdotes would determine my entire development process. I hope now to use real data to drive my decisions.
Thanks for sharing.. On point, and very helpful!
I downloaded the app and it's really well done! Kudos for making it and getting recognition from Apple.
I look forward to trying out the exercises.
That's awesome! Have fun! And let me know if you start hearing a difference in your voice, or have any questions. Also, I know I still have a lot to improve, so please let me know how you think I can make it better.
Great advice @tobins!
Thanks! (:
You were totally right about the ratings :) The most vocal are for sure negative.
Looks like you're getting some pretty positive feedback from the App Store. You've got yourself a solid start so far.
Keep up the good work!
If you would have been featured right off the bat I would be cautious however since you've had a 2 year runway I don't think there should be any major problems.
Congratulations and enjoy! :)
Thats right, I should remind myself that. Were you once featured right off the bat? Or have you run into any challenges early on?
Yes, I can say from experience that this is the worst thing that can happen to an app.
You're on the good side, keep up the momentum!
Are you willing to share a little more?
The problem was the huge amount of users that joined the app and the audience suddenly shifted from niche to general (non-related) people and essentially destroyed the community.
That's it in a nutshell :)
Interesting. We’re you able to strengthen the niche community again later?
Look at stackoverflow for example, it used to be the cool place to hang out, same goes for facebook. Today it's really uncool to be there.
Once a community has been poisoned, it's very hard to cure it.
Link?
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/astound/id1253443132?mt=8
Great idea! I was digging into books and courses about the voice for quite some time. Had it been on Android, I would definitely try your application.
Just hire a support/marketing person to deal with all user requests and prepare default answers. So you could stay calm and continue to deliver
Thanks. At this time I don't have the money to hire anyone else, but it's def a good idea to start automating responses.
Very cool idea for an app. Will download and give it a try.
Please do Jason. Let me know how things go.
I just downloaded the app, and I'm amazed that you are doing this solo. Great value for the user, fair business model for you, really nice user experience. I'd love to read more about the process, especially on how/why you registered Astound Inc and why you didn't go for an apple developper account as you're solo? Would you share about this?
Wow, thanks Cedric. Great question. To be honest, I think because I was afraid of something happening. In the app, I am asking people to get up, breath and stretch, and I thought if anybody hurts themselves I want to be covered. The voice is also something pretty delicate. I don't want people to use this app as an alternative to real medical treatment, and I try to communicate that. However, maybe there are some who do. Plus I wanted to keep my finances separate. Now in hindsight, I probably could have done it as an individual. But at the time I found "Clerky", a service that handles all the legal paperwork for you, and isn't too expensive, and I just used that. I think every business is different, but in my case I saw a very tiny chance of a user hurting themselves, and that was enough to incorporate. Are you distributing an app as an individual, and if so, what is your experience?
Thank you so much for sharing this. I had a small IOS game under my name for a couple of years called kinglinez. I always felt like a potential user would not feel as good downloading an app from an individual. It's kind of dumb, but I feel like it's more legit to download a voice coach from an Astound Inc than a developer name. It feels like there is a team researching behind the scene. I never heard of Clerky, thank you for sharing, do you have to be in the US to use it?
You do not have to be in the US to incorporate, but you might need to be when opening up a business bank account. There are some banks like SVB that have international clients. You should check out Stripe Atlas - it's a one stop shop for all that, and is all for a global working community.
Hi mate! My app (www.uvimate.com) was recently featured on Google Play in Spain. As a result - +1000 downloads per day that is 10x more than daily average and it's freaking cool. Things I've learned from that:
Optimize your monetisations funnel from the bottom and on the early stage of the app. It doesn't matter how many times you will be featured if you have a leaky bucket and don't able to capture the value from that splash.
Do load testing for your backend. I was done mine while ago and literally was ready to handle that loading.
Don't shortcut on ASO. Better screenshoots and decent copy could bring you +10-15% of installs that's quite substantial if featuring will happen.
And the last thing - don't be afraid of success. If you know your app does help people it's a shame to hide it from a bigger audience :) So don't stress and keep going.
Thanks Alex! Really appreciate your pointers, and agree 100%. I have not done any load testing. Are there any tools your recommend?
Just one quick note on this - I wouldn't do the load testing on the same backend hardware while you're raking in this number of users!
You may accidentally take down your own service and ruin the customer experience. Keep an eye on your application errors, CPU and RAM on both the servers and any databases you have - that should give you the heads up if something is starting to go off.
Congrats on the growth! 🙌🏻
Thanks for the follow up
Hi Robin! Sure, I was using loader.io. Pretty happy with all the free features the service provides. It also has API so you could run load tests as a part of your CI/CD pipeline or run it periodically as a backend check.
Sweet, thanks!
Congratulations!!!
Thanks :)
just posting my congrats, looks like an amazing achievement! make sure to screenshot for the day where you have to tell your grandkids about it :)
haha, took it :)
how many users did you get?
So it took me one year to reach 1000 users.
Then came the feature.
Now in 6 days I got an additional 2500 users.
Will you be adding your product details on IH so we can follow along with the journey? 😀
I'd love to, but I'm not using Stripe. I need to investigate that more. So far I've been a more silent reader on IH, but I'd be happy to share.
I'll read along. I'm been quiet here for about a year and have been spending more time helping people out and sharing what I'm working on. Hope everything goes smoothly for you!
Sounds good Rich. I'll follow you, and look forward to learning from you as well.
That's awesome, congrats. Your app looks really polished and it seems like a really unique idea. You deserve it and enjoy it, I hope I'll make a post like this at some stage. So did you get features off a recent form submission to Apple or did it just happen out of the blue?
I got really lucky and was invited to an event hosted by Apple here in Berlin. The people were great. They had setup a few desks, each with a particular concern, ie. design, app store, marketing, etc. and you could consult with Apple staff. Sitting at the App Store table I was able to meet the people in charge (at least for Germany). They did mention that they read each submission for app store promotion. So there's no need to feel like nobody will read it anyway - they actually do. Try it! The worst thing that can happen is that they ask you to improve certain things.
Thats awesome, its an inspiring story. Thanks for sharing and all the best in the future. I'll start posting on here about my app in a couple of months either way :)
The app looks great. Voice training seems like something a lot of us desk-workers could use. I like that it's a subscription model ( for you ). :-)
As for instant growth -- the big thing I think about is customer support. As long as you've got systems set up for that, try to mine the feedback for improvements and enjoy the ride.
I agree. Right now I've been doing everything manually. Using my private email address in fact. Are there any systems you suggest for automating that? Thanks!
Shoot me an email if you actually have any thing you want to discuss, but the rest would depend on the nature of the support requests coming in.
Thanks Brian.
If that app consumes any backend APIs, look on how to scale them. Check the logs, if everything runs smoothly.
The only thing backend related I have is Firebase for database, S3 for storage of my training videos, and Heroku server for validating App Store receipts. Do you have experience in any of those, and tips for scale?
I don't, but you are in good shape with firebase and S3. They are built for stuff like this.
I am sure there are plenty of guides online on how to scale.
The internet can be great :)
Congrats Robin 😀
Thanks! :)
I would say hang on and enjoy! Share the excitement with IH community by showing growth and the new challenges and rewards that come with it.
Congrats! Your hard work is paying off.
Thanks Zach! I will definitely do that. I'll share as much of my challenges and rewards as I can. For starters, if anyone wants to be featured by Apple, take the application form on their website serious. There actually are people behind their desks that read them :)
Congrats! I am interested in the app myself!
I think you should relax and enjoy the ride! From what I've seen everything looks very polished and professional. I'm sure you'll be fine 👍
Thanks Sergio, that means a lot! Do you have a very voice intensive day, or what makes you interested in the app? For me I got interested in voice training, cause I was always hoarse after talking a lot..
Actually the opposite. I rarely need to speak at work and I sometimes feel like my voice is... weaker?
Also I have always had a somewhat soft voice and have always wanted to work on that.
Thanks for sharing. That’s great. You can train your voice like any other muscle. Please email me at robincgreenwood@gmail.com and keep me in the loop to how things go!
Do you have an android version?
Unfortunately not. I actually just started coding a few years ago, and iOS and Swift came quite natural to me. So I decided to just go with that. Obviously if this becomes a success, I wouldn't want to limit it to one platform, and will see how to reach Android users. You have Android?
Yup! Congrats on this app! Really beautifully done! What's your typical target market?
Great question, and one of my biggest challenges. So I based the app on my girlfriend's SLP and voice coaching practice. Besides her actual patients who come for speech therapy, she has a bunch of clients that include public speakers, doctors, authors, teachers, actors - all who want to boost their voice and subsequently their presence in a room. I wanted to go after the same audience for the app, but I'm getting a much wider (hard to define) audience. For example, many people said that they're using the app because they want their coworkers to hear them better, or want their voices to be heard over the bar noise when out with friends. So I'm kinda stuck identifying the typical customer, and taking a step back from specific professions, and a step towards a wider self improvement market. What do you think?