Caliverse

Since last post on Indie Hackers it's been more than a year but work on Caliverse continues. 🔥

A year ago Caliverse had a bit more than 16 000 users and in this time we have grown more than 3 times having more than 55 000 users world wide. Numbers on workouts and time spent on app have increased dramatically as well. For example, in 2020 there were more than 3 million push ups done through Caliverse. 💪

In October 2020 we introduced paid subscriptions that would give users some benefits like access to more training plans, possibility to create private plans and workouts and many more.

This is a challenge to offer users such features that they would be willing to pay for but at the moment there are more than 150 users with paid subscriptions and although this is quite small number compared to the whole user base I feel really grateful that I have made something others value enough to spend their money on. 🤩

It's a great start and I believe that this number will continue to increase. And in the end - a fun journey to get the first experience in making my own business. 🙂

Challenges that are coming across now when there is some money coming in? How to use it the best to convert it to more users and more subscriptions. You don't want to spend your first money on some ads that will not return anything but it is still not enough to do some big scale marketing.

How make mobile app popular with limited resources that I currently have? No idea! This is the trick question I need to figure out now and if I do - a great topic for next post here on Indie Hackers. 😎

It's been almost a year since Caliverse was launched on Play and App stores and I want to share with you guys how it went.

At first - the numbers. This might be quite interesting for any app developers out there to see and compare. Caliverse is calisthenics fitness app so some numbers are just fitness related.

In this year Caliverse got a bit more than 16 000 users and several of them are using the app every week.

In total, taking all the variations of push-up exercise, there are more than 1 000 000 push-ups done through Caliverse. 💪 This was done in almost 15 000 hours that were spent working out. We have built quite a strong community 🙂

Caliverse has users from all over the world, in fact, there are only 8 countries in the world that doesn't use Caliverse. Top countries are USA, UK, Germany, India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, Australia, Spain and France. Calisthenics stays beyond nationality, race and ethnic group - it is done in every where. 🌍

You sometimes feel that you are getting too old for calisthenics or sports in general? Don't be! We have 40 users that might give you some confidence - they are 65+ years old and still working out pretty damn hard. 🤩

And this is done with spending around $20 in ads just trying them out and doing two giveaways. So total amount spent in marketing is around $60. Quite impressive, isn't it?

Still working really hard and waiting what the future will bring us!

Cheers! 🙌

Caliverse is on ProductHunt and getting some attention. Slowly starting to build a community around the app.

What, in my opinion, is the best thing about ProductHunt except that it brings new users? I was forced to make a beautiful presentation of Caliverse - including photos of the app and description.

Check our ProductHunt page here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/caliverse-2

Lately I got this feeling that Caliverse is starting to get some small breakthrough. More users are registering and more of them are using Caliverse on a daily basis. In the last two weeks, I got almost 1000 new users which is quite great when I got almost 3000 users in total.

I have almost scored one of my important milestones - 200 workout hours per week. Last week it was 182 hours so hopefully soon this will be achieved.

And in a way it became clear to me why this time the project was more successful than any other I have ever made. And I shared my thoughts on Hackernoon.

If you got 10-15 minutes to read an article that might help you in your struggle, here is the link: https://hackernoon.com/key-to-success-time-management-ma7h3n4d.

Cheers,
Daniels

One of the most popular calisthenics blogs, Calisthenics 101, made a review on calisthenics workout programs and apps and Caliverse appeared there! 🎉

Review was good and author made a conclusion that he highly recommends the app to everyone and that is awesome!

Of course the article had some valid critics about user interface and some bugs that occur from time to time so this is what I have to think about in the future.

What this article gave to me? Firstly, I really felt happy that someone is saying good words about it after making quite detailed review. It means that I am doing something correctly. Not everything but at least something. 🙂

And of course quite a lot of new users since the article was published. Previously I had around 110-120 daily users. The day after this blog post was made, I got around 350 daily users! That is one suuuuper nice increase in users that are actually using Caliverse!

Cheers to that!

Hey everyone!

Caliverse got first 1000 registered users! 🎉 Together with user increase, we got more people who actually work out, new reviews are added every few weeks and they all are great.

So this proves to me - Caliverse is quite good and people need an app like this. Great motivation booster!

This was the good. But this all comes with some price, and in this case this is meant literally. While I don't have any marketing costs, I have to pay for all my server infrastructure and it is not cheap. Worst thing is that I don't see a way to earn some money from my app in the nearest future, at least to cover server costs. I don't want to make it cheap with ads but have nothing to offer in "PRO" version yet and it will take quite some time to make a "PRO" version.

But all in all I'm happy that I have this project up and running and I believe that at some point I will be able to pay my bills with money that comes in from Caliverse.

If you got other ideas on how to monetise app, please share with me! 🙌

Caliverse reached 500 registered users today which feels like a big deal. It is just a very beginning of what hopefully will happen in the future but feeling great about these numbers!
But recently I found out that something has changed. I am not really looking at the user count the way as I was before. I have understood that having existing users to workout more using my app, have them open Caliverse on a daily basis is much more important than having yet another 100 users. And this might be also a great way how new users will arrive - if user will be happy about my app, he will tell others and they will join.
So, I will focus more on existing users, improving their experience. As more users are joining, there are more of those that leave reviews in App store/Play store. While I had like 100 users they all gave me 5 stars for basically that the app existed. Now users are a bit more demanding. That is both good and bad - good that I know what users are seeking in my app but bad that it scares away potential users.
So, let's see what future will bring!

This day started with some random but great user increase. Probably there is an article or post made about Caliverse that I don't know of yet 😃
But this means that 250 user milestone is achieved today. At the time I am writing this post, Caliverse 264 registered users. Yesterday there were only 190. Almost 75 new users acquired in 12 hours. This is a bit unexpected but I'm quite happy about that.
But one thing that is even more important - Caliverse has 17 app reviews including App store and Play store. And all reviews are 5 stars! 🤩
So, great day today!

It's been a month since my app is live on App Store and 2 weeks for Play Store. And more than 6 months since the first line of code written for Caliverse.
I'm not earning a penny now but there are still a lot of things that I have gained. And it's time to appreciate them. Maybe others will find this article the exact thing they need to still keep going!
First I start with coding - I have learned and practiced a new programming language called Dart together with a framework - Flutter. This is a nice getaway from my everyday life and gives me chance to see other opinions on common issues occurring regardless of programming language used. Even though I haven't earned anything, I believe that this improves me as a programmer and will help in my career.
Next big thing is system administration, server setup, configuration and all that magic that is usually done by system administrator or devops. This was a black box for me. I have done some simple server configuration but things like load balancer, automatic deployment, pipelines, certificate management were impossible. But when you know that this is required for everything to work as smoothly as possible, there is no way out. So after long hours of ready, screwing up a few times, the result actually makes me proud! And while no money for me from Caliverse, I get this knowledge and that happy feeling that I've done it myself and done it quite good.
And last but not least is making connections. I've found United Calisthenics Group that helps me out quite a lot, I've talked to many people about any help that would take Caliverse to next level. I have received feedbacks and asked for reviews. I finally start to understand what business is and what it takes to make one. And my illusion that all it takes is a great idea, you launch it and you are rich, is gone. It is hard work for a long period of time. Each action you make will bring you some audience but your actions must be constant and without a break.
So guys, this is an interesting path to go and just don't stop - keep trying even if you think you are failing.
Cheers!

Today we reached one of our milestones - first 100 registered users! And this is big for us.
I start to get the feeling that every improvement pays off with registered users. Every new app version gives more users in less time. New features in website, like, exercise list that was added quite recently, gives more traffic to website which forwards users to App/Play stores.
What else? Social networking. Each post got around 50 interactions and around 10% of users that interact with post actually opens Caliverse website. I believe that from 50 users that interact with every single post, I get around 0.5 registered users. Not much but that is something.
Recently I came to a conclusion that every small thing matters and it will take a lot of time till my app returns something.