lvlup - habits & journal

It's been a while since my last post here and a lot has changed since then. My last post (31 March 2020) was about how I hit 3k users in 1 month with no marketing, which was a great success for me at the time. But after that COVID got worse, we had to switch to working from home, we couldn't get out and life got pretty lazy. I had stopped working on lvlup and improving it, and all I did was play video games and binge on Netflix. And while I was doing that I realized that the app I'd created doesn't really do what it was supposed to do and I lost motivation even more. From time to time I would get some bursts of motivation, which helped me re-imagine the idea of the app and do it properly this time. But it was again followed by long periods of just doing nothing...

Until the beginning of summer this year. As things started to ease out with COVID and we could be free again, my will and motivation to do stuff, to create stuff, came back. And I've decided to redo the app, but do it properly this time. I did a lot of research on the subject of habits and a lot of the things in the new version are based on the 'Atomic Habits' book, which is a must-read if you haven't already.

Fast forward to today, the v2 of the app - 'lvlup: habits & journal' - is now live. It includes a redesigned habit-building system, improved gamification, a journaling feature for self-reflection and many more improvements to help you actually build long-lasting habits.

It is also re-launched on Product Hunt, go check it out and I am looking forward to getting your feedback on it.

lvlup now has more than 3000 registered users! 🎉

We have all been affected by this pandemic in one way or another, and with people losing their jobs and being constantly projected with fear by the media, building better habits is not their priority right now. Still, lvlup managed to acquire 3k+ users with absolutely zero marketing, no ads, no social media posts, no forum posts, no nothing. 85% of the user base is converted organically through the respective app store. This strongly proves my initial hypothesis that people will actually want to use the app.

I am grateful for all the feedback I received on how to improve the app and I am already working on the updates. Now that I am stuck at home I will have more time to work on upgrading the website, creating a social presence and start pushing the app to more users.

Next stop getting to 10k users and start testing out the premium plans! 🤘

Stay safe.

lvlup is now on PH! 🥳.

I don't really consider this a launch, more like a pre-launch or just a way to test it out with real people. I didn't manage to get on the popular page and i didn't get a lot of upvotes but a got bunch of new users to test out the app.

I didn't have any marketing preparation before launching, no emails list, no telegram groups, nothing but a group of friends to check it out. And i thought that by having a lot of upvotes in a short time will get you to the popular page, but it turns out you actually need upvotes from the 'right' people to get there. But i am still happy with the results and i might try launching again on PH with v2 in the future.

So the results are:
20 upvotes
150+ new registered users

Time to iterate on the feedback and continue growing.

After a lot of pauses and moments where I almost gave up on this idea, the beta version of the app is finally alive! 🎊🎉. Both apps for Android and Ios are live on their respective app stores and the landing page was just updated - https://lvlup.app

Now it's time to get some feedback and iterate! 🥳

I've read so many times that you should solve your own problem, and so last week I sat down to think about all the problems in my life.
It turned out that I had quite a few problems worth solving, and the most interesting one led me to the idea for lvlup! The existing solutions only let you track your habits, which could be done using a pen and a paper as well. I needed something more.