Metadeal Real Estate Analyzer

I signed up with Google AdMob, got my token, and peppered my app with ads. That should do it, right?

I don't know. And I'm a bit lost. After trying my best at ASO (App Store Optimization), my download rate hasn't really gotten any better. I still have fewer than 200 downloads, and have made a whopping $0.02 in ad revenue.

Worse, Apple tells me my app has no reviews or ratings. I have no idea what I should do next.

I'd been wanting to do this for a while. The reports provide a break-even analysis showing at what points the property will start cash flowing. Another screenshot to add to the app page. Yay.

Wait... I wanted to make money from this app, right?

I began researching ads.

That's right. I didn't touch the app for... a long time. A friend who was actually using the app suggested I allow people to save properties -- without signing in. With only a bit under 100 downloads, I decided no one would mind if I added the feature. So I did. Rate of downloads ticked up a bit. Was it because of the new feature and additional screenshot? Maybe because there was a new version available and Apple improved its search ranking? Who knows...

At this point, I just wanted to see downloads. I had no idea what people liked about the app, and what they didn't like. I just wanted to get people using it so I could perfect it and make it the easy choice for any real estate investor to pull up when evaluating a deal.

Downloads began trickling in...

I'd priced the app at $7.99. Was I being an idiot? I didn't know. (I was). In my mind, just a few million sales and I'd be on Easy Street.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I don't know who bought it. I hope they are happy with their purchase.

I made a few more sales over the coming weeks, then... nothing.

Oh my goodness. What a royal pain.

I hadn't come up with a name for the app, so I did research, came up with "Metadeal" (I still don't like the name), got the domain, made a silly logo, and made a website from a bootstrap template I found online. Okay, done, right?

Nope.

Time to submit to the app store. I don't know how many screenshots I had to take. I wrote copy. I uploaded the build. And I hit "Submit".

Buzz.

Privacy policy? Okay, I can copy and paste, and search and replace.

Buzz.

Rinse and repeat. This took me a week. Yikeserz.

I honestly don't know why it took me so long to get around to actually writing the app. It's probably because I'd ended up closing on a property in July, and had been dealing with rehabbing it. Or maybe I just don't like coding.

Oh who am I kidding? I LOVE writing code.

Anyway, I wrote the app. Took me all of two hours to write v1. ClojureScript on top of expo / react native. It did what I wanted. Good/Bad deal at the top. Smart defaults so the user could enter as much or as little as they wanted. The thing worked.

Now, Step 2 was going to be the question marks and Step 3 was the profit, right? Is that how it goes?

I don't know. I got to write some code. Yay.

I was in the market for a new investment property, and was evaluating options by editing a spreadsheets in Google Sheets. Yuck. Did I mess up a cell with an equation?? Did I overwrite a property I was still considering? Should I add another row for this property, or edit old rows? Such manual. Much error-prone. Too headache!

I'd tried some deal analyzer apps that were out there. Such a pain. They wanted the address of the property I was evaluating. Why? They wanted me to upload a picture of the property. How come? More importantly, they just spat numbers out at me instead of just telling me whether I should buy the property or not.

Forget this; I can write my own app! It will allow users to add as much or as little detail as they like, while prominently displaying a "Good Deal" or "Bad Deal" right at the top. I already had the math done in the spreadsheets. How hard could writing a simple app be?