OwlOCR
Capture text easily on the Mac
MAU went down briefly after the crazy days in late 2020 where lots of people tried the app and for some of them it didn't stick of course. March has been great with a few media pickups that always helps a lot.
Looking back at December, it's a good +33% increase in 3 months! Happy with the rate, as people have still been psyched about the app and are enjoying it.
How did I accomplish this? Not sure, part luck I suppose. Honestly I did close to nothing on the day it was featured. When I logged on in it was already second and stayed there.
I did prepare the other release otherwise according to best practices found online like adding a video and screenshots. I think people get drawn to visuals so I'd like to think the video made an impact. After that I suppose it's down to the product and whether the popular people find and like bringing in their followers.
Feels great that this turned out such a success after an initial disappointment on the actual day it went live!
Launching on PH today and I'm really nervous about it. Did my best to prep by putting together a demo video of the features and everything.
If you haven't yet checked out OwlOCR for Mac this is exactly the right time to do that and the link is this: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/owlocr-for-mac
If you have and like it any support via letting your friends now or leaving a comment on the site is much much much appreciated as these can be huge events for a bootstrapped like myself. 🙏
I'm hoping to find lots of new happy users today. 😊
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Congrats on the launch!
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Great tool. Where does your users come from except PH/IN?
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The biggest spikes in downloads so far have been when a couple publications, especially in Germany, have picked it up.
I do respect the privacy of the users as much as possible, so I don't have data on which channels would get the people in that would appreciate in the long term and would find it genuinely useful.
I've had a lot of great chats with users on different subreddits. The nice thing about that platform is that it makes giving user feedback and responding to that very easy.
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Amazing. Good job.
I found some of your threads on Reddit and they seem to generate a good amount of activity. I need to start using Reddit more for self promotion :)
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Good luck to you Tommi!
Sadly, I can't be a new user... I use Windows! 😬
(I was your 3rd upvote)
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Appreciate the love coming from the dark side! 😃
Will have to look into if this would be feasible on Windows....
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Just upvoted. The app looks really quick and useful, and the owl sound on the video is a nice touch.
Godspeed on the big day!
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Haha, thanks so much!
Did that video in true bootstrapper fashion using iMovie and royalty-free music. The owl was among the default sound effects that come with iMovie. 😀
Fingers crossed for the day!
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Just passed 1,800 over the last 28 days!
The growth curve has been insane over the weeks leading to Black Friday and moving into December.
I plan to write something longer to dive into this at later time.
For now, just feeling grateful to reach so many people and a lot of new users finding the app and enjoying it!
-Tommi
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That's great, congratulations Tommi !
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Thank you!
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Congratulations, Tommi! 🎉 Really exciting to see such fantastic growth, I've no doubt you'll have continued success :-)
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Thanks silvi, hoping for compounding growth in 2021! (and not just hoping, also working towards it)
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Nice Tommi! Hopefully it keeps doubling ;)
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Haha, that makes two of us hoping for that!
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Smart & subtle use of the owl as your brand/logo/mascot. Nice work!
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Hey @NextTrillionDollars let me start off by saying you probably have one of the best IH handles "NextTrillionDollars" . That's like a hustling motivation I see your name on IH.
Also nice work on the website copy too. "How does it work? Glad you asked, couldn't be easier" - this is genius. Do you mind if I borrow the line for my website https://wecaresocial.co/ ?
Out of curiosity, have you noticed users using it for a specific purpose frequently? It would help find a pattern and target similar users.
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Well, one of the value promises I make to my users is that the app is private and secure, so I don't really collect any information at all about usage specifically. I do realize that that is a disadvantage for finding patterns and targeting, but I guess you can't have everything right.
Go ahead with the copy, I mean it's not trademarked or anything, but I do appreciate you asking. Your site and service looks good! Always nice to see socially responsible businesses.
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Thanks for the reply @NextTrillionDollars . Would you love to collect data and find patterns? It does provide more value. If yes, then would it be possible to give the users the option if they wish to share the data or not.
Usually, this sort of transparency is liked by users and in most cases are likely yo give permission to use the data to find patterns.
Thanks for the copy and the kind words about We Care Social :) Have a good ahead.
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It's been so exciting to see this kind of growth in the past three months. Looking back at my milestone update exactly three months ago, OwlOCR crossed 700 monthly active users and now it's more than doubled since then.
Much of the thanks here goes to the recent publication in Germany that brought in a boatload of new users.
How to keep it up is the main question.... Now the big waves come with articles, but it would be more sustainable to build on organic growth and search hits.
It's been an incredible week and weekend in particular.
OwlOCR was featured in a blog post / article (https://stadt-bremerhaven.de/owlocr-kleines-tool-erlaubt-texterkennung-unter-macos/) that got quite bit of views.
Downloads spiked to the second highest daily mark and many of those people also used the app.
This was great timing with the article since Big Sur launched this week and with that OwlOCR received official German support!
I could not be more grateful to the author of the article, feels so great to be able to reach more German users with the latest release.
In my August update I wrote that I hoped to break 1k users "perhaps next year", happy to break through that sooner.
While OwlOCR does not have subscription fees, a larger happy install base should be good for organic growth and with more growth I can justify more time to improve the app.
I resumed some promotional activities a few days ago and that led to a spike in downloads. I'm happiest with the product I've been so far so I have high hopes to retain many of these users. :)
I've done very limited promotion as have been waiting for Big Sur release to push out the latest update.
Finally Apple released Big Sur RC and Xcode to build Big Sur support into the app so I jumped on the chance and just released v4.0.
Super excited to push this now since I'm quite happy with the app itself at this point!
Just over two weeks since passing 700, it seems like 800 has now also been broken.
Downloads have been going down a bit lately, so will probably need to do something to keep momentum.
Happy to see this number increase though, it means people find value in the product and keep using it!
August was another month that ended up going really well. Half-way through the month a competitor launched their app which was a really good thing, since it kind of woke me up to this being a good idea and market fit, but not enough people still know about it.
I put more efforts in the later half of the month including:
- More active in Twitter / Indiehacker and other forums
- Refreshed landing site to be more value-oriented
Sales increased again from the previous month, so I'm happy with the result. Excited for September!
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