I launched my side project on Reddit a week ago, here are the stats
A week ago I launched a side project after only 4 days of dev time spread over a week. I started the project because I couldn't find an iOS 14 Icon pack that included all the apps I used, so I built my own - MyIcon.io
I launched first on Reddit to test the waters and get some feedback. I've had some very positive comments and some decent upvotes across all the posts.
Here are the stats for the first week.
- 211 unique users
- Users from 40 different countries
- 2m 59s average engagement time
- 187 downloads by 41 users
- 67.7% of users are on a mobile device
All in all, not a bad week. Along with the positive feedback I've received, the stats show that the tool is useful to people.
Tomorrow I plan to launch a small update that includes some pre-configured Icon packs that users can pay to download. I'll also be launching for the first time ever on Hacker News. So if anyone has any advice on how to do that successfully, please fire it my way :-)
Congrats! I'd also be interested how launching on Reddit works. As far as I know there's a lot of hate for people who market their products on Reddit...
Thank you :-)
You’re very right. However there are some subreddits open to self promotion.
I posted on r/sideProject which was probably the biggest traffic driver. Posted some screenshots with links the comments on r/ios14homescreen and r/design_critique which also seems to be yielding good results. Also posted on a few smaller subreddits like r/imadethis.
I just made sure I read the rules of each sub.
Thanks for the answer. I bookmarked the Subreddits and will maybe launch my Laravel + Next.js Starter Kit there. This will definitely help me :)
Your starter kit looks great. I built MyIcon.io on Next.js and I love it. I'll be sharing your kit with my Laravel friends to hopefuly get them using Next.js aswell.
By the way, here is a Github repo with a list of other places to launch your kit
That's so cool, thank you very much! I wish you all the best & you got yourself a new follower here on Indie Hackers ;)
There are some subreddits that allow/encourage you to share your progress. You just have to find the right one for your product/service. Sometimes, you can ask for feedback so it does not seem like a promotion.
Launching on Reddit to test waters is a smart idea. Congratulations!
Thank you
Can you link to the posts? Curious how did you formulated them as from my experience the Reddit community can be quite thought and easily label everything as self-promo
I know what you mean. I posted a link to the r/iOS sub thinking they would be interested but it got taken down super quick. You just have to find subreddits that are ok with self-promoting. Here are the posts;
what are your tech stack?
Kept it very simple with a Next.js front-end and tailwind CSS for styling. I'm pulling the icons through from styled-icons then converting them to PNGs with save-SVG-as-png library, then zipping them with zip.js on the client.
I've also just set up a Stripe client-side integration to handle the premium pack payments that will be going out later today.
No API or DB needed :-)
Converting to PNG and zipping on the client is probably not the most performant way to do it, as it relies on the user's device. The alternative option I explored was sending the SVG blob data to be converted and zipped on a server. This didn't work so well because I had to increase the server memory allowance which may get maxed out pretty quick if I have a lot of concurrent users on the site downloading icons at the same time.
If anyone has a better solution, please share.
I like how your tool is directly available to use. Did you post multiple times on Reddit or at all subreddits in one day?
Thanks,
I previously bought and downloaded a bunch of different themes that I wasn't completely happy with once I set them up on my phone. So, I thought a free tool that allows you to create and download as much as you like so you can find what works for you would be the best option. Today I'll be launching an update that gives you the option to purchase a premium theme.
I used Later For Reddit to find the ideal time to post on the subreddit that I shortlisted from this useful list of places to launch your startup. On some subreddits I posted once because I didn't want to be spammy. On other like r/ios14homescreen I posted multiple images of different home screen setups over the week.
Later for Reddit seems a promising tool. Well, Thank you for sharing the insights & all the best wishes for your update!
Good start! Where did you post, what subreddit(s)?
Thanks,
I posted on r/sideProject which was probably the biggest traffic driver. Posted some screenshots with links in the comments on r/ios14homescreen and r/design_critique which also seems to be yielding good results. Also posted on a few smaller subreddits like r/imadethis that seem to be dead lol.
Awesome stuff, congrats!
My reddit tries pretty much never succeed, due to the "awesome" moderators there :D
haha, yeah it's tricky sometimes.
You just have to read the rules and find subreddits that are OK with self-promoting. This Github Repo has a good list of subs you can launch on
I know it is, been there, done (and failed) that :D
Thanks for the link - I did try those channels a while ago, and was not happy with the result (at all). To me, the amount of traffic I got was infinitesimal.
I am not familiar with launching on Reddit, how does that work ? posted on specific subreddits ? Good start and I like the idea btw :D Congrats !
Thanks Abd,
I posted on r/sideProject which was probably the biggest traffic driver. Posted some screenshots with links the comments on r/ios14homescreen and r/design_critique which also seems to be yielding good results. Also posted on a few smaller subreddits like r/imadethis.
I should add, I also used later for Reddit to find an optimal time to post in these subreddits
Very good insight :) and regarding the website, why did you build it ? did you have the need for it or so you people or friends around asking for something to customise their iOS icons ?
I built it because I had download a bunch of different icon packs but non had icons for all the apps I use. Some include the illustrator files that I could just edit myself but I would have had to do it one icon at a time. So I started thinking I ways I could make this easier.
The more I thought about it the more I was excited to take on the challenge. I built a prototype to start just to see if it's even possible to export SVGs as PNG and if I could source enough icons.
It didn't take very long before I had a working MVP and with all the hype around customisable iOS icons, I thought it might be worth making it available for free.
It's been a really fun project to work on, and I've learnt a lot in the last 2 weeks.
Thanks for sharing. Smart move.
It would be awesome to see how you launch :)