35
27 Comments

Reddit loves our App!

On Sunday I was casually browsing through r/reactnative when I figured out that people actually share their apps there.

So I thought, why not try and share Avocation there as well. I might get some more downloads?

https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/er1yt1/my_new_app_avocation_entirely_built_with_react/

Well we didn't expect this.

When I woke up the next morning and checked my App statistics I saw around 100 new installations over night! I checked Reddit and the post already had almost a hundred upvotes and a lot of people sharing nice feedback in there.

In the end this one little post gained around 200 upvotes and brought as approximately 350 downloads (distributed equally between iOS and Android) which is crazy for us, because previously we gained around 200 in total (over one month after release)!

I kinda expected users to deinstall the app right away after checking it out, since I thought a lot are only interested in the technical details, but two days later only a very tiny amount deinstalled the app yet (around 20 out of 350). So that gives us a lot of hope :)

We already prepared a list of other relevant subreddits where we try to pull of the same, let's see if it will work out 🙌

This has been an insane boost in motivation, so let's see what the future brings!

  1. 11

    I think the key here is you posted it in r/reactnative a ("community for learning and developing native mobile applications using React Native") and not in something like r/Habits ("a place to share news and discuss the formation, cessation, and alteration of habits in people").

    That turns your post from self promotion into a "look at this cool thing I built..." with a hidden "...but that you may also like".

    Good work

    1. 1

      Great analysis! Makes sense looking back at it like this now, I guess that’s a good lesson learned.

  2. 5

    It's you guys who did that. I didn't know you were on indie hackers... I just installed interested in the technical details but found ot was actually a really good app. So I just said lemme try it out just to see if it's worth it. I really want to see how the tree grows!! I'm loving it so far. Thank you for a good product.

    1. 1

      Haha funny that you found us here as well! 😄
      Thanks for the awesome feedback, it’s nice to hear that you stayed because you like the product!
      Good luck with your habits! 🙌

  3. 2

    Beautiful app! Found you here. Got curious. Looked at the app store page. Immediately reached for my phone. Installed. More love. Decided to leave my first product review on the app store.

    Congrats on such great work!

    This is a react app? Wow, didn't know react native apps could run so seamlessly!

    1. 1

      Awesome! Thanks a lot! 🙇‍♂️

      Yes, you can do a lot of awesome stuff with React Native if you know how to do it. I already have some experience with it even thought I still learned a ton building the app.

  4. 2

    I tried to DL the app, but it isn't available from France?

    Seems like a cool product

    1. 1

      Yes unfortunately we currently do not distribute the app in France since there is a Trademark registered there on the name “Avocation”. Found out about it pretty late so we kept the name.

      If the app gets good traction we want to get some proper advice from a lawyer how to approach this. But for now we just do not distribute there to avoid any conflicts.

  5. 2

    Well done! Beautiful app and beautiful concept! I've been using it for a few days now and LOVE it.

  6. 2

    Congrats! Didn’t know you are here too! I saw that list and downloaded your app. It’s a beautiful app! I’ve been also using reddit as one of my main channels. It’s like posting on a shared twitter account with many existing followers. Keep up the momentum!

    1. 1

      Yep another fellow Indie Hacker 🙃 Thanks for the feedback, I am glad you like the app!

  7. 2

    That's awesome! Reddit can be a really tough crowd sometimes!

  8. 2

    Would be intersting if you could share again here after some days how many of them deinstalled the app. If you do, please do tag me

    1. 1

      Will share a follow up if I do not forget 👍

  9. 2

    Congratulation, Did you follow some best practices when you post your app on Reddit?

    1. 1

      Not really, I honestly didn’t expect a lot from posting it there. @dogsbody already pointed out that is was most likely the type of subreddit I posted in and the way I formulated it that led to this success.

  10. 1

    Yes, there is huge user activity on Reddit. Many can support you if you can show people something or tell your story. Some, on the contrary, will radiate only hate because you don't want to do anything. One day I decided to demonstrate my application, and all Reddit users laughed at me and lowered my account rating. I can't participate in discussions for you. I can only view them... How good that there are sites like https://www.viralboost.io/collections/reddit-accounts where you can purchase Reddit accounts with good karma! So Reddit is not always a kind and positive platform, my man...

  11. 1

    This inspired me to try this myself with my own app: https://www.reddit.com/r/vuejs/comments/esyev9/notably_a_webbased_markdown_editor_built_using/

    Normally, I get absolutely nothing from posts on Reddit (I get much better traffic from sources like Hackernews and here) but I've followed your model about posting to a tech subreddit and am genuinely intrigued to see if this works any better!

  12. 1

    That's awesome. I've never had any luck with reddit. No matter where I've posted to it invariably gets blocked/deleted by moderators for self promotion for some reason so usually end up wasting my time lol.

    1. 3

      Yeah, like I said above, Reddit has been a notoriously tough -- and negative -- crowd. One person noted that it does make a huge difference what sub you share it in. But even still.

      Ironically, I saw a person share a todo list app in one of the most popular subreddits on the site and somehow it was well-received by tons of people. Truly an anomaly. It didn't make sense to me how an app that literally didn't do anything worthy of note had gotten so much positive attention. I feel like they'd downvote the cure for cancer in that sub.

    2. 1

      Same here, I've seen big spikes with posts on other sites, the most popular being ycombinator, but my reddit posts have all fallen totally flat. Glad I'm not the only one!

    3. 1

      r/Entrepreneur is usually pretty lax about posting links...

      1. 1

        Ah cheers. Might give it a try at some point when I'm feeling brave again :)

  13. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 1

      Awesome! Let me know how you like the app! 👍

  14. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 14 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments