I launched my first own app in less than 30 days

I'm a professional software developer by trade and I've built 100s of mobile and web apps for clients over the last 20 years or so.

I've always wanted to launch my own products and apps, but like everyone else, I need to put food on the table and keep the lights on, and with a young family, time after work is scarce and I prefer spending it with my family and friends.

However, I made some recent changes at home and since our child is growing quickly and almost in pre-school, I have found a way to still spend time with my family after work but also spend some time working on my own products.

We are now expecting a second child and we were struggling to find a name, just like we did with our first child (we only registered the child's name 6 weeks after they were born, right on time for the deadline!).

So I had an idea for an app and decided to act on it. Tired of missing the boat on other ideas I had, just to see someone else eventually come up with a similar idea and have some success, I decided it was time to give it a go.

Hence, BabyTrove was born. I tried to keep it as simple as possible and I'm sure there are a lot of things to improve, especially around design, UI / UX (I'm not a designer). I'll tackle these things as time goes, for now, I just want to see if the app gains any traction and if it's worth spending more time on it.

As mentioned before, I tried to keep everything as simple as possible and stuck to it and managed to build the app in just under 30 days. I submitted both the iOS and Android app for review last Friday (28th of June 2024) and it has now (1st of July 2024) been approved and is available on Android. The iOS version is currently in review and should be available in the app store really soon, probably today or tomorrow.

Tech Stack

The app is compatible with Phones and Tablets on both iOS and Android. In order to achieve this, I used the following stack:

React Native (Front End)
Firebase Firestore (Back End)
Firebase Authentication
Firebase Crashlytics (Crash and Error Reporting)
Firebase Analytics

I've used open source or free resources wherever I could, especially for images, icons, etc.

UX / UI and all design was made by myself (probably it shows) - again, it needs improvement.

I've also used AI Assistants to help me with data gathering etc (PAID)
I used Canva for designing templates for images for social media posts (PAID)
I wrote scripts to generate social media posts about the babies names and used a third party tool to schedule those posts so that I have 1 post every day for the next 5 years (I might write another blog about this) (Scheduler is paid, I might write my own scheduler scripts if the project takes off).

As I have a professional Google Workspace account for my company (solo employee), I was given $500 in Google Ads which I'm planning to use to get some downloads for the app and get things started.

I'm also planning to spend a small amount of money on Meta ads to get my Facebook Page, Instagram and Threads profiles some attention and hopefully some likes etc, and get things moving there as well.

Monetization

I'm not expecting to make a huge amount of money out of this app. But I do have some revenue strategies from the get go, and if the app gets a reasonable amount of attention, I plan to build this further, but for now, I kept it simple:

The app is free to download and to start using. I have added some limits to the free account: Number of Babies, number of languages you can choose, number of names you can pick, number of combinations you can create and number of family members you can add.

The in-app purchase converts your account into a Premium account which lifts these limits considerably and should be good enough for most people, but I might adjust these depending on feedback or maybe even add more tiers.

I also planned to have ads on the app if you are on a free account. All the work is done and ready to go from an implementation perspective, but maybe because it's a new app and new account, Admob rejected my account for now. I will need to investigate this further and see if I can get them to accept me, or find another ad provider to implement on the app.

And that's it!

The app is launched and I'll see how it goes. Again, not expecting to retire on the back of this project, but I'll certainly learn a lot in the coming months, which might help me with future projects.

It was already a good project to work on as it was the first time I have worked with Firebase and I'm really happy with the product. It's another skill and tool in the belt that I might use for client projects in the future to save me time!

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to ask any questions!

Also, please check out the app and if you have any feedback, I'm all ears! If you know someone who's becoming a parent soon, please pass the word!

Cheers,
Emanuel