Any mobile Indie Hackers here?

Mobile indie hacking still feels under-discussed compared with SaaS. For Kinetic Override, the hardest part has been distribution language: generic Android utility channels are broad, but exact-intent searches like no-root auto clicker, macro recorder, and record taps/swipes bring much better signal.

Mobile app stores can be a grind for minimal payoff because of the 30% cut to Google & Apple. I enjoy seeing mobile related content here though & still continue to love and build mobile apps. I have made for Android & iOS and now dabbling into building for the web with React. I did make this straightforward guide to ASO for mobile devs starting with their first apps on mobile: https://asochecklist.com. Happy to connect with any other mobile devs!

I worked for a mobile app business for a few years, and I will try my hardest to avoid working in mobile apps ever again, it was such a terrible experience. A bunch of people here have commented on the 30% app store tax, which is certainly an issue, but the bigger problems to me are as follows:

• Mobile apps have a largely b2c consumer focus where the expectation is for apps to be free or very cheap. It's hard to charge $50/month (or even $20/mo or $10/mo) and be successful. Many consumers think an app that's $4.99 for a one-time purchase is expensive.
• Both app stores reinforce this by featuring and increasing search-ranking for apps that fit the free/low-price mold; apps that are "expensive" languish in obscurity.
• There are really only two marketing channels in the app store: ASO and paid advertising. It's very difficult to get other channels (SEO, content marketing, email, social media, affiliates, referrals, etc.) to work. So in addition to paying 30%, you also have to pay for ads just to get your product seen because in all likelihood your app isn't going to be at the top of the search results.
• In ASO, revenue follows a power-law distribution where rank #1 and #2 get almost all the revenue. To be successful, I think your app needs to be in the top 5 for a reasonably popular keyword. This is very hard to do. Apple/Google sells the pipedream of success, but I think only a tiny fraction of mobile apps are really financially successful.
• Apple/Google make it difficult to have a direct relationship with the customer. In my opinion, if you can't email your users, they're not your users.
• App store review processes can be a pain, and slow down the pace of iteration and development. You have to play by their rules here. App store submissions are rejected for stupid reasons a lot more than you imagine.
• Every year, Apple (more so than Google) loves to update iOS with breaking changes. We basically had to dedicate 3-8 weeks every year to fixing/replacing/testing things that the new iOS releases would break every year depending on the quantity and severity of breaking changes. This affects older codebases more than newer ones and is more problematic if you have multiple apps.

This was my experience, you may have a different one.

At the end of the day, part of the reason I became an Indiehacker is I hate people telling me what to do, and I want to play by my own rules. So having to pay 30% plus ad expenses to play by their rules in their store while renting their user base... that just doesn't work for me.

Of course, web apps aren't a walk in the park. But I think you have a greater chance of being able to charge a reasonable price for your app, and you have many more marketing channels that work.

Maybe it's slightly off topic but I want to add a side note:
As a mobile dev myself I can say: Don't build a mobile app unless you absolutely need it.
The mobile ecosystem is a bitch. You have to change something in your app every year when a major OS update hits the shelf.
If all you do is grab data via a REST Api to show it to users, without using hardware capabilities (background location tracking? Bluetooth?) then the only reason to be on the app store is to be on the app store. Meaning: You want to use the app store to be visible to end users since they are more used to installing an app than to save a PWA.

Besides that, you are investing a lot of money to develop and maintain software which isn't really better than your website.

Minimalist Retro Clock App (70k+ downloads, 1.5k daily active users)
https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/minimalist-retro-clock/id1491920613

I've been working on https://usegravity.app/native to make mobile dev more accessible to web devs.

I started off selling a web boilerplate, and wanted to make it super-easy for anyone using it to expand to native apps without having to learn native code.

I believe that you're correct in your assumption that web dev is definitely more popular. I sell a lot more web boilerplates than I do mobile, but then the mobile version is relatively new and not well marketed yet.

I think a large part of this is accessibility, mobile dev is pretty complicated. I've been coding for 20+ years and could never get my head around Objective-C or Swift.

Financially, web dev seems to be more lucrative. It's much easier to launch a web app and charge $20 a month than to do it with mobile, plus the factor of losing 30% of revenue to the app store.

This is an interesting topic.

imo apps offer the best user experience (I'm including desktop apps here), whereas with web you get the best device coverage for the least effort. I know many will disagree, but the web cannot compete with the performance, native device capabilities, and touch interfaces of native implementations.

Then there's also the developer's skillset to consider. Web developers have a massive advantage here, as this single skillset gives them great device / audience coverage. Most app developers are skilled in a single platform, and this doesn't really help capture a market.

As far as indie hacking is concerned, you also want to get to market testing asap - the audience coverage, and much easier deployment model for the web is fantastic for this.
Onboarding is also typically much easier where all the user needs is a web link to get started.

With http://www.remotime.net I've gone with fully native apps (currently on iOS and Android, but coming to Windows and MacOS soon)
That's why I love the Xamarin technology stack - 95% of my code is cross platform, but because it all renders to the actual native implementations, I can dive in and tweak any platform specific component at any time. So, this gives me fully native experiences and performance without duplicating my effort.
That being said, what I gain in native experiences, comes at a cost of lengthier development times (although not nearly as much as dedicated native), and more complicated deployment models - but for me, I'm happy to do that to deliver the native experience.

Lastly - motivation is also a factor. Even though I'm perfectly capable of building web apps, I don't enjoy it nearly as much as native. I would not be motivated to give up sleep if I knew that what awaited me was wrangling with CSS & Javascript.

My product is both Mobile and Web. I agree with what most everyone is saying but I have a few counterpoints:

• The 30% "tax" is only for the first year of a subscription then it drops to 15%. If you've got good product-market fit, hopefully your users are staying longer than a year!

"Web dev is faster to develop"

• This is mostly true, but with tools like CodePush that let you do over-the-air updates, you can push out an update (for a lot of things) just as fast as you can develop it. I sometimes push out 3-4 OTA updates in a day without having to go through the app stores.

Any recommendations for a good designer to help with the graphics elements of an app (for a bootstrapper)?
Such as Playstore screenshots, feature graphic, logo,etc.

I've created a gamebook to bring back the nostalgia, it's quite basic but hey, it's a side project. Curious what you think:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.warquest

I made recently an iOS and Android app for Fortnite.
Getfoyl.com

I make MeetFriends.app

I do this app to solve my own need and not just for MRR. I like reminders like Duolingo for languages, Zero for fasting, Oak for meditating, HabitMinder and I don't want some crazy complex CRM for personal reminders etc.

I can only repeat the points already mentioned:

• 30 % cut
• Usually it's B2C and the general willingness of customers to pay is low (apps are free mindset)
• Web dev is faster to develop
• More maintenance and updates every year as apps easily break with SDK changes (iOS 13 was a buggy mess initially)
• Maybe your app gets rejected
• You have to pay money to submit apps to the App Store

I know the guy who created https://everyday.app/ hangs out here. I'm not sure his name, but his app is really cool!

👋🏻 Mobile here -- in the fintech space.

I've been working on a fintech app for over a year now:
https://www.chromabill.com/

Technological innovation across the financial services space is growing rapidly. Fintech companies such as Cleo, Dave, Stash, Chime, and Acorns have already amassed more than 1 million customer accounts. It's clear that the fintech industry is rapidly growing.

I'm here! 👋🏻

My baby is Snap Search 🙂

Yup, building pipfeed.

I built a video dating app with my cofounder. https://stepup.app. Had some early traction and then slowly died out. We are struggling with marketing.

Yes. We are focusing on mobile app only product, with over millions download - https://wenote.me

By creating web apps everyone has access to it from desktop to mobile phones. You can even create mobile hybrid apps by doing knowing how to code for web.

By working only on mobile you either work on iOS or Android so you are narrowing down your audience. If you don't know web development you cannot connect to any meaningful API and to some backend logic.

I had the same question. I'm starting my path to an indie mobile hacker and I missing more topics about mobile. I just add extra energy to filter which knowledge about SaaS projects can be adapted to mobile products. (It's a lot)

Hi 👋👋
I've few apps on the google play. I've just released an app called Lilbite - Food Tracker
Calorie Counter & Diet Log.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lilbite.ai

Yup! Building an Indie Hackers mobile app!

Yes! https://apps.apple.com/app/brabble-fm/id1497910767