Mori

After about 10 days I started to notice that while I was getting a lot of traffic to my app’s page in the App Store, I wasn’t getting a whole lot of conversions. It seems like the freemium model is the dominant approach in the App Store. It’s not to say that there aren’t apps that charge upfront, but when I compare those apps to mine I feel like mine isn’t really at the same level. Apps that charge upfront (at least the most popular ones) tend to be really well designed and more fully featured.

Based on some conversations I’ve had with a few friends in the iOS community I have decided to try freemium. My hope to widen the top of the funnel, get as many people as I can to use Mori, and then start introducing in-app purchases in the future.

Have a lot of features in mind for the app and I can see some of them being quitE valuable to those that have the problem that Mori focuses on solving.

I decide to launch sooner rather than later. The app is light in features, but I decide to charge 2.99 upfront. I wonder if anyone will purchase this thing. I've heard for years that people don't just pay for apps upfront, but what's that based on? I decided to try this out and see for myself.

I start sharing on Instagram and Twitter, and a few people even purchased the app! 🎉

As I'm building my app, I decided to start recording quick videos to start documenting my journey.

No one's really watching, but I really enjoy making these videos. So I'm going to keep making them.

I consider shipping sooner rather than later. I want to ship soon, but will people pay for an app that's light in features?

I want to charge for my app upfront, but it seems to be contrary to the norm in iOS land. Almost everyone seems to charge nothing for entry, and then offer in-app purchases to unlock features or remove ads.

Ugh, I hate ads. I decide that I want to launch with a paid upfront model.

Shortly after my last update, I get a full-time job and my time quickly becomes limited.

I miss my deadline, but I spent most of the new year learning UIKit. I take Sean Allen's take home project course and learn as much UIKit as I can. Things begin to click and I'm feeling super confident.

On April Fools' Day, I decided to start coding.

I decided to build my app using SwiftUI. This decision was a mistake. It simply wasn't ready for someone with my lack of knowledge of the iOS APIs. I keep running into issues and I don't know if it's me or SwiftUI. Turns out, it was both.

I step back and decide to learn UIKit and build the skills I need to launch my app. I secretly commit to an April 1st 2020 launch.

I have never built an iOS app before. I've been a web developer for years, but I've only ever dipped my toes into iOS development, first in Objective-C, then in Swift.

SwiftUI was announced and I figured I'd try my hand at iOS again. I had the perfect project in mind. The spiritual successor to an app I used to love, Thinglist.

There used to be an app that I loved using called Thinglist. At some point, the app got sold off by the original creators and the product was subsequently shelved. It really bummed me out because I loved using this really simple app. I kept using it and soon enough started to wish it could do more.

One night, I was super frustrated that this app would never change. I hoped that one day, someone would build a replacement.