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14 Comments

I am about the reach the milestone of $10k in sales before WWDC 2020

I started making apps for mac os in 2014 in my spare time. I made 9 apps out of which few had done well and most of them failed.
I probably could have done a better job if I had more time. This was all done after work hours and on weekends.

Here are the few mistakes that I made:

I didn't focus on one product

In the hindsight, I think I should have worked on just one or two apps. Working on multiple apps is a very tiring job which I should have avoided.

No mentor

I should have found someone as my mentor as I had spent a lot of time figuring simple things out the hard way.

Making the perfect app before releasing 1.0

I should have made the MVP's for some of my apps and shipped them immediately instead of making them perfect before release. Community feedback is very very important and iterating in isolation is the worst thing one could do.

Didn't emphasize on marketing the product and ASO

I am still not working on these but planning to start soon.

Here is the link of my apps profile https://kaunteya.github.io/apps/

Let me know your feedback.

on June 20, 2020
  1. 3

    Wow that's awesome! How did you promote your apps? What apps of yours became more successful than others?

    1. 2

      Honestly. I didn't put any effort into promoting the apps. I just asked users to rate the app on the App Store after a while.
      Apps that are well maintained are the ones that people like. Especially for paid apps, people look for ratings and when it was last updated. Simply dumping an app on the store would not work. It needs constant bug fixes/feature updates.
      Also responding to the complaints makes people very very happy.

      1. 1

        Interesting. But where are the users coming from? If you didn't promote the apps at all, does it mean all traffic is from App Store?

        1. 3

          Yes. 95% of users come from App Store searches, and remaining come from App Store browse. App Store browse is when customers view your app while browsing some sections or top charts.

          Also, mac users are different when comparing to phone users. Macs are usually used for work and purchasing an app is not a big deal

          1. 1

            That's very interesting, thanks, I'll check out your apps.

        2. 2

          Probably from App Store search and browse. 65/70% is of every downloaded app is from that source.

  2. 2

    Congratulations Kaunteya!

  3. 2

    Congratulations. That's wonderful!

  4. 1

    iterating in isolation is the worst thing one could do

    This is going on my wall

  5. 1

    Congratulation!

  6. 1

    Is your App Store profile tied to a country? I couldn’t open it, just a blank page with your name (I’m in the Dutch/Netherlands store)

    Anyway, congrats with the sales

    1. 1

      Hey Navin. I just checked. That link was only visible from the desktop browser. I have updated the link. Please check now.

      1. 1

        It opens now, thanks

    2. 1

      Same here from the UK!