I just launched my first iOS app as a solo developer — Here's What I Learned.

Yeah, I am certainly directing focus there for right now. I will keep you updated on how this turns out!

First batch of downloads have been purely word of mouth and cold reaching out to my network. In my current field I have a lot of individuals that feel the same pain as mee, so I have been utilizing that. But I am now trying to segue into outside my network, but similar industries. I think I will then take my campaign online into the social networks

But yes, many responses have been about the demo of the product. Which I am almost done with, and I will make sure that is visible to anyone who can find the app. The next step, as mentioned before, is pushing it to people in and outside of my network with that exact focus.

Thanks for the comment Doremon!

Thank you! I appreciate the kind words.

Yes, it actually costs me less than a penny per scan. So, an unlimited user would have to scan an unreal amount of receipts to make it even show up in the costs section. I would have to be generating quite a lot of traffic for it to be even recognizable on a ledger.

Hmm.. I see what you're saying. The idea of the price itself may pose a bit of a subconscious 'gimmick' rather than something that is actually worth purchasing to solve your problem.

This is an interesting point. How do you recommend one price test? I am not certain how I would take advantage of this leverage, other than the research of 'What are other people charging?' or just trying to scalp something close to them but just under.

Any recommendations you have I will surely do the research and gather information. Thanks for the comment!

My first organic customer was actually word of mouth, and they are a contractor that had the same problem as me, but they were just able to bill the monthly fee back to their client.

And you're right, this immediately got me thinking about how can I focus an angle like this, where the price doesn't actually 'matter' as much as someone who may be paying out of pocket with this.

As for spray and pray, I definitely do not want to spend more than 30-60 days in this method. I am hoping to get at least a little bit of traction to where I can maybe create more focused content in a couple channels and then maybe mix in some social media ads. That seems like the common play, but ultimately, if done effiectively, it could be a good one.

Let me know if you have any other thoughts or what your experiences might have been! I am eager to learn!

Thank you!

Yeah, I think I dropped the ball on product hunt. Didn't do enough there to gain any traction to be honest. But yes, I will start trying to post on Reddit as well.

I want to avoid too much self promotion, but I see some posts on there that follow that path. Do you have any experience with an effective approach without being pushy or something that seems like spam?

Yes, I really need to lean into this and I have generated a decent chunk of feedback, but maybe I can do something to direct users there, or show them this tool in their onboarding.

Showing them that it contains already populated information may prompt them to engage more, which, would absolutely be a positive impact. I like this approach.

Thank you for your thoughts!

I have tried to optimize my ASO as best as possible, I have named the app 'Capsule: AI Expense Tracker' to try and cover some of the additional 'findable words' too. As for screenshots, I definitely have the feature there, though it isn't the receipt capture itself, it is the elegant dashboard. But, maybe I should change that so users can see exactly what it does for them. Not just what it looks like after the fact.

How do you recommend I continue to support ASO? I find there is only limited space for the relevant wording. My current intent is to try and generate enough traffic word of mouth to try to get moved up the list in the app store a bit via feedback and ratings. But I know it doesn't always work like that.

Let me know if you have any further suggestions, I will definitely do a little more research regarding this topic.

Thank you! And thank you for sharing your experience, this is a great comment too. I typically am seeing customers that already have an accountant and/or bookkeeper. And that's because this tool helps you organize what you may give to them, or if you do it yourself, you could absolutely use this tool to do so. But you are right, someone is not looking for capsule to make their taxes easier, it's just to make their lives less painful while they spend all of their time entering in all of the tax information.

The clean exports, tracking of spends, 'snap it and forget it' gives them comfort in knowing where to find a receipt come that time of the year, not necessarily that it will do the work for them. But, for example, for someone who travels for work, now you have a clean export to send to your company to bill for the expense. a couple captures, a clean summary, ready for upload and submission.

So, all in all, to answer your question, there are avenues for people who want to use it for tax time surely, but it would be more beneficial to hand these exports and their receipts to a bookkeeper themselves. I personally use it more for expense reporting than for taxes. But, for a business case, I snap receipts because I know where I can come back and find them.

Hopefully this made sense and answered your question. I appreciate the question, it drove me to a couple thoughts.

Hmm great question. If I shipped again, the one thing that I would do differently is certainly try to get the word out at least 30 days before I launched. Trying to generate some buzz rather than a cold, hard launch might have been the way to go.

An honorable mention might have been trying to gather users to test the app from random communities, not just people I knew. I think this would have been a great way to learn honest feedback, not that friends and family aren't honest, but they tend to be more delicate.

This is a good question, and will surely be implemented into my next project.

Thank you, Richard! Definitely one of my most exciting projects.

But to answer your question, I don't have enough data to particularly see one way or the other who is benefiting the most from it. Currently, I have individuals who do contractor work that are using it that bill the monthly costs back to their client, mostly in the construction industry. I also have a couple people who do book keeping, and this helps their process.

These are the only data points that align with what you're saying, to specifically push towards specific groups. But, as I grow (hopefully) I will be able to identify the most active and impacted communities.

I agree with this, and I appreciate your thoughts. Saving someone time and effort, and getting the immediate result should certainly be the focus. The demo is a great idea; it can be quick and clean, showing the simplicity and the desired result. I will definitely look into the Reddit communities too, I am sure there are many on there that would be of interest in some of those communities come Q1. Thanks, Omri Ben!

Yes, I definitely have an eye on the pricing flag and the API costs. With the current setup, it would take hundreds of customers and thousands of receipts a month to make a meaningful impact to create costs against the revenue. At Capule's current stage, this is not a concern. But it doesn't mean it will never be one!

As for the distribution confidence, are you referencing the confusion and overwhelming experience of marketing efforts? Just want to make sure I am understanding the comment. Because, yes, I think I knew that it would be an ongoing effort and not a one-time activity. I think it was the thought of 'How do I get this off the ground?', and not as much 'How do I keep this in the air?', if that makes sense.

The comments here have given me my first few strategies to try, the Demo being the most important. But I truly appreciate everyone's comments and feedback! Thank you.

You hit the nail on the head. Everyone likes to see a pretty dashboard and read the data there, but I wanted to focus on how 3 clicks (or taps in this case) can save you minutes, even hours of time depending on how often you have to repeat the process for your current workflows.

The demo has been mentioned a few times in this comment section and I am surely going to take everyone's advice and make that my next focus!

I will have to take a look at DictFlow, I like the idea of that as well. Do it now, or else you will never do it. Sounds like how I felt when I was staring at the screen deciding if I was going to release the app to the app store. Congratulations on your app as well, hopefully it is thriving!

This is a great question, and I actually compiled 10s of builds before I finally decided that I was going to even submit it for app store review.

I built probably 80% of the application, including all the major components and some of the intermediate/nuanced items. I then tried to break it in every single possible way I could, corrected all those bugs, then holistically looked at what I had.

I wrote down the 5-10 most important things that needed to be implemented, 3-5 things I'd like to have, and then 3 things where I said 'This needs more attention.' I went through that list and again, made sure I couldn't break the app.

Once that was done, I had some testers take a look and try it out. After some positive (and harsh feedback). I made adjustments based on user feedback and then went to release. I knew that if I kept trying to make everything perfect, then I would never get it out to the world.

I appreciate the feedback on both sides of the coin, this is exactly what I was hoping for with the engagement in this community.

Another comment mentioned the demo/marketing tactic, and I totally agree. A 15-second short clip of the app being used is quite a beneficial selling point that I will utilize. All questions can be answered in a quick clip and 90% of the value add can be seen there, which is the biggest attention grabber I can offer at this point I think.

As for the non-marketing flag and the API usage, this is definitely something I have taken a look at, and will need to be addressed... However, I have crunched the numbers, and the reason I priced deliberately low is because the token inputs and outputs for 1 receipt cost very very little. So, as I scale, things will change, but given the volume now, the costs are so near obsolete that it currently isn't a concern.

But, you are absolutely right in the fact that it will need be monitored as progression and growth continue. I think a scaled in usage tier (a middle tier) will certainly become an reality.

Building never felt like the hard part, in fact, it was the most fun. And I am sure others feel the same.

One thing I read much of was to create a waitlist, seemingly to help verify that people would even be interested in the product itself. However, I quickly realized that I didn't even have that understanding.

It still felt like the same idea to me, of needing money and a larger network to even make that worthwhile. So, ultimately I felt like I was in the same boat that I was already in.

My biggest takeway from this journey to identify or plan out how I should show the world what I built at an earlier stage, in a slow gradual path. It will surely be something I spend more time on in future endeavors.