Released. My learnings and numbers.

The last 5 months were tough for me. I had to work a full-time job, do some contracting and find a time for my own project. But, finally, it's released and I expect next few months to be even crazier as now I have to focus on promoting it and trying to get the first users.

What I have learned so far:

• Do work when you have a willing to do that and not overload yourself. By that, I mean the most productive time for me was when I felt an energy and aspiration for working on the project. Remember, there is a life to live, don't let your project to ruin it.
• Try to keep expenses on the minimum. From my previous projects, I did realise that if it will "eat" some/lots of money you will be thinking if it's worth it and at what point I should close it if it's not profitable. My other App took about 4 years to have 1.3k monthly downloads, 3.5k MAU and around 25k user base. It might be a marathon rather a sprint (in some cases) if you want to achieve something. It doesn't cost me anything now, but bring some extra cash and allows me to have the ads to bring users in the new App.
• Be useful. Don't just advertise your product, instead be useful to people. In the end, I found myself happier to help 1 person instead bring 1 customer.
• People are helpful too. I got 245 beta testers (mostly from reddit, indiehackers and twitter) for the first version of an App. When I first shared a very raw alpha version on Reddit people were saying that there was not much functionality, but no one was rude or negative. It was super early, but I got initial feedback and after some time asked them to take a look on it again. They were happy to do that. I did create a community about SwiftUI after some thoughts on how I can get more traffic to an App, but now (after people’s feedback) I'm more interested to grow it by itself without relation to the project.
• Try things. You never know what's gonna work. Nothing might work too. But that doesn't mean you don't have to try it. Especially if it will bring you knowledge or joy. I still learn while going through this indie developer path and will try to keep you up to date.

Here will be some numbers. Up to this time I spent:
£10 - (yearly) domain name
$15 - (yearly) no-code website builder
$10 - (monthly) subscription to photo stock to have premium photos
I also already had Apple Developer program.

I got about 40 pre-orders so far:
https://imgur.com/a/77mvqjw

If you are interested in the App it's currently available on the App Store https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cre8-photo-editor/id1529769524

If you would like to stay up to date please follow me here on IndieHackers or Reddit community https://www.reddit.com/r/cre8app/

I'll Also appreciate your support and comments on ProductHuct https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cre8