Biggest mistakes (so far) getting to $1k/mo in 6 months

Looking back now, it was the right decision to hold off on a mobile app. Keeping parity with both web and mobile while iterating regularly on the product would have been nearly impossible. The web version changed so quickly with many features having been completely re-written in the last 6 months. That would have taken more than twice the time if I also had to consider the mobile app whose update cycles are at the mercy of Apple and Google.

This is identical to why I haven't built a mobile app for Indie Hackers. It's waaaaayyy too much work for a solo developer, especially if you're still trying to figure out your product and how it should work. You'll make some users happier in the short term, yes, but at the expense of significantly diminishing your development speed, and dev speed is crucial.

Great example of how to focus as an indie hacker, even though it's painful to say no to something so many people want.

Thank you for sharing @lunchbag (for a second I thought courtland started another business lol). Many of these things are so reassuring to hear as I struggle with a mild inferiority complex for just being a web developer and not a mobile dev also. Plus the whole not knowing wth to do about pricing.

@lunchbag Great article. Enjoyed it. You are a natural storyteller.

It’s worth mentioning now that this realization and the realization that I was charging too little happened in parallel so I actually ended up increasing the pricing to $8/month AND decreasing the free trial length to 14 days on the same day. Yes, I changed two very important variables at the same time. My sign ups dropped drastically and I had no way of knowing if it was because I was charging too high or my trial length was too short.

This is a lovely blog. I wouldn't call them mistakes, you really did your best at the time with what you knew. Thanks for sharing the lessons.

Congrats on the success @lunchbag

Hi Jen and CS,

Read the article on mistakes made with Lunch Money release. Immediate question in my mind was why u didn’t dev mobile / desktop Progressive Web App? Then you could always wrap that into native iOS/Android later (or not).

I am working on a social media aggregator platform app builder that builds a PWA app directly from a public instagram account (initial free version). And by directly i mean typing ceri.us/{IG account} in any desktop or mobile browser creates the app with access to full features for 20 days.

My challenge is that the user must get my free chrome extension from google chrome web store in order to make changes and access full trial features and also subscribe.

My pricing is fairly low (could be a mistake) at $1-$15 / month. I chose to have 3 subscriptions and no registration (except to my payment provider stripe) because I don’t know how to price it. Other difference is freemium model so there is always a free version. Subscriptions open up options but only for changes. A user could use 20 day trial with full features and never subscribe as long as they also never update their app.

Thanks for the article and any feedback to the above is welcome from anyone. Working somewhat now but not launched quite yet. Still anyone welcome to try. You can also use my same platform to create a 3 wheel photoslot with instagram account and/or #hash. Ex ceri.us/slot/{IGacct} or /#{IG hash search }

Ceri.us/curiodyssey

Ceri.us/starwars

ceri.us/slot/starwars

Kerry

Great article. Thanks for sharing.