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Everyday.app Year 3: Approaching $5k MRR

Hello and happy new 2020 IndieHackers!!

I'm not gonna lie, 2019 was a tough year for me, quite a few things didn't work out as I expected while I wasn't brave enough to face others.

However, there are definitely some positive takeaways. Here's a little summary of my 2019's resolutions:
📕 Read 28/40 books. Read on 95% of the days!
👥 Met 846/1000 people. Met new ppl on 61% of the days!
🚀 Grew my indie biz everyday.app from $1.2k/mo to $4.8k/mo. Worked on it 100% of the days!
💪 Did 14840 push-ups. Did push-ups on 100% of days.

I also and most importantly managed to work on everyday.app every day! Some of the days, the workload was almost irrelevant but still worth it enough for me to feel like I had moved a little bit forward!
Worked on everyday.app every day!

When it comes to everyday.app, 2019 was definitely a good year. The mobile apps got super polished which earned the iOS app a feature on the AppStore's frontpage of the iOS13 release 12x-ing the traffic for a full month... ah... if only you could just be featured all year long ;D

Now that I'm just a few days away from the third anniversary of me writing the first line of the back then called everydayCheck, I've put things in perspective to realize how important the long term game is. It feels like my little daily efforts have kept on compounding to get the app to where it is now. Now, don't get me wrong, I've still got a loooooong way to go, but when I think about how unattainable this situation felt back then, I'm still amazed. My mindset has changed so much with each burnt phase (initial idea, first payment, first renewal, getting featured, experimenting with prices, storytelling...) it's even hard to recognize some of my old journaling writings... ah... that 2017 IndieHackers interview looks from another decade now ;D

I think a lot of people give up on ideas too early. Even here on IndieHackers we can see repetitive patterns of ideas (what the hell, for the sake of an example, I'm working on a habit tracker!) and I think in most cases the main differentiator between an idea, a nice side-project and a real business is the amount of long-term invested time. I now realize I could have made solid businesses out of most of my previous sideprojects...

My point here is, unless you are really sure you are going nowhere, work on your project everyday a little bit, for a very long time.

PS: By the way, I decided to start the year launching Everyday 2.0 on ProductHunt so make sure to check it out :)

PS2: IndieHackers has definitely played an important role for inspiration and learning to avoid some of our major pitfalls (If you haven't read Rob's post, please stop reading this right now and do it). Organizing the IH Barcelona Meetup with @tair and @manceraio has brought a new dimension into indiehackerism for me. It's like satiating the necessity of finding your identity and your bunch all at once! Make sure to join us when you are in town!

  1. 5

    I feel like this is a strong signal that people are willing to pay for conceptually simple apps that add value and provide a great UX. Well done Joan!

    1. 2

      Definitely Courtney! There's so much opportunity in minimalist apps that do less! For Everyday 3.0 I have already thought of a couple things "to get rid of" :)

  2. 3

    This is awesome man! I just downloaded your app. Love the Bojack Horseman quote on the home page.

    1. 2

      It's the quote that started it all for me! Make sure to shoot me some feedback once you've tried building your first healthy streak :)

  3. 3

    Barcelona going strong :P

    Hadn't realized you had started 2019 so low on MRR -- super impressive to get up to where you are now in just a year. Also, the app is looking beautiful.

    1. 1

      Yeah, last January was quite of a bump up (also because I had quitted freelancing in November 18 and started showing the app to people other than my mom ;d). The problem is that when I focus on product, numbers don't move, but then when I make some noise the results immediately show.

      1. 2

        A bit of both is required, I'd imagine. Noise only works if the product is already great. Otherwise it's just... noise. It may cause a little bump, but would soon be undermined by bad retention.

  4. 2

    Love it! Well done Joan — keep up your awesome work 💪

  5. 2

    That is awesome, congratulation and keep going strong !
    As some pointed out, the great UI and UX you provide might be a game changer, this is what I struggle the most personally. Do you have a background in design ? What tools and frameworks do you use (design tools and tech stack) ? and would you advise some paths to follow to get started on this ?

    1. 3

      I'm afraid saying the truth here might hurt my business... just kidding ;D The truth is that I don't have any background in design but I've always appreciated good design and worked with a few designers when doing frontend. I agree that the design and visuals of the app help a lot to make the product more enticing, so it's good to think of that from the beginning. I've only learnt Sketch to do some visuals but really and here comes the funny truth, I've always made a Balsamiq wireframe (great tool), then coded, and then designed on top of the code. I obviously have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do and then keep tweaking it. My tip? If you are not a designer, keep it minimal.

  6. 2

    This product is awesome! But, with all due respect, if you're looking for a quick free alternative I just hacked together a Google Spreadsheets template, feel free to use it and share it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pGGjaMCYppJ6VWtxVBY40j6-6X299AGDufVqRtl-fQk/edit

    1. 1

      This is awesome! I think if you polish a little bit the rough edges you are onto something ;D (Trust me, for once in my life I know what I'm talking about! haha)

      I feel you are not being open with your feedback here, though ;D And honestly, I'd appreciate to hear your thoughts. After all you've been so committed that pulled off a "full" alternative solution just not to use mine, so, share your thoughts ;D PLEASE 🙏

      1. 2

        Nah, I don't think that could go anywhere... or could it?

        No really, the app you built is awesome but yeah, you got me, being honest, I didn't even download it.. I just instantly thought: "wait a minute, how is he making money with this? I could build a very MVP rough version of that in a matter of minutes on a spreadsheet... challenge accepted! Oh, and it might be useful to someone... and get my name out there maybe?". So I did it.

        I'm really interested on the subject of habits and productivity but right now I'm using no tools for that other than just doing those things every single day. It's not like I will forget to do them because they're usually really simple like: wake up early, exercise every day and eat less.

        However, I think it's really important to have somewhere to show yourself your own progress and be proud and conscious of what you've achieved. To help with that I usually text my gf telling her I've just finished exercising, making myself somewhat accountable. As for other habits I've pretty much burnt them into my mind or daily routine mostly.

        1. 1

          I really appreciate the "could it" mindset :)

          To be honest I thought you were going to talk about the price (we all get that a lot...) so it's awesome how this developed!

          I think you ara falling for the mistake of thinking that the idea is all that matters ;)

          Awesome to learn about how your gf keeps you accountable!

  7. 2

    Thanks for sharing this, very inspiring and a lot of good advices. Best of luck next year. Hope this 2020 is the year I launch my first side project 😆

    1. 1

      Hope less and start thinking of which 10 minutes you can squeeze from tomorrow to start working on something ;)

  8. 2

    Awesome App!!! Just downloaded and can't wait to use it, well done:)

  9. 2

    Congrats. Everyday looks awesome 👌

    Consistency definitely pays off. I’m seeing that with my running routine.

    How long was the App Store Feature? And how much customers it brought you if you tracked them (or a guess would be cool)?

    1. 2

      Thank you :)

      The feature lasted about a month (depending on the locale) and varied widely in traffic (after dark mode was released the impact was way bigger than on the last days), I'm saying it from memory but it was about 10 yearly sales a day out of above 1000 signups and quite a few more insttalls. Nope, this is not my normal conversion rate. It just sucked big time because most of the traffic was not people searching for this sort of tool (mostly people testing the new iOS13 dark mode).

      1. 1

        10 yearly sales a day sounds awesome. 300 customers in a month is great 👌

  10. 2

    Well done @mezod Congrats!

  11. 2

    Thank you for sharing your story of 2019!

  12. 2

    Congrats Joan, good job & good luck with your PH launch!
    PS:I would try to attend the next IH Bcn meetup

    1. 1

      make sure to say hi!

  13. 2

    Great write up and huge congrats on reaching $5k MRR...consumer apps are hard man :) Just upvoted you on ProductHunt and downloaded to give the app a spin as well, it looks great so far 👍

    1. 1

      Haven't reached the $5k yet! :P Let January be the month pls! They are! Thanks a ton, wasn't the best day upvote wise but wanted new year's traffic :-) Hope the app helps!

  14. 2

    Congrats on the last year and on the amazing MRR growth!

    Everyday work compounds over time, and I agree on the importance of the long term game.

    Consistency is the key.

    If you could throw some numbers, I'm curious about the expenses related to everyday.app: hosting? database? development? design? And how is your time divided across the different areas of product development (% of time allocated to marketing, development, etc.) ?

    1. 1

      hosting - free on aws startups plan (few credits left tho, but shouldnt be above $100)
      db - ^
      dev - my time and now semihiring a friend who is completely underpaid x)
      design - my time

      time is divided poorly. x) The plan is to try to get my friend to help a lot on the coding/maintenance/sysadmin so that I can focus on product / marketing (until I can find someone to help me here too)

      but I'd say too little % of marketing... gonna try to change this on 2020!

      1. 1

        Awesome! Thanks for the insight!

  15. 1

    Did u validate the app before your built it?

  16. 1

    Amazing news, congratulations on the quadrupling! Your point about putting in the time being the key difference between success and failure is so spot-on.

  17. 1

    This is just amazing! Do you think you'd reach the same amount of success, if your product was only a web app instead of a mobile app?

  18. 1

    Good seeing everyday.app popup again! How much did you pay for the new everyday.app domain? And was it worth it in your opinion?

    1. 1

      Thanks :P I got it during sunrise release of .app. I put a bid on 3 or 4 different registrars, got it for about $400. Definitely worth it at that price!

  19. 1

    Awesome story Joan! Great motivation for others to keep going.

  20. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 2

      The web app is React, the mobile apps are react native (same code base, with some slightly native code changes) :)

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

        1. 1

          AWS RDS

          Not really, databases are pretty inexpensive. RDS is relatively expensive but still, unless you charge your customer $.5 I wouldn't worry too much about it now

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