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43 Comments

Earned first $100 from subscription

This February, I added a premium subscription to Pomofocus and which have generated over $100 so far.

I'm surprised to learn that such a simple tool can actually be profitable!
It's just a web app and not on iOS nor Google Play. The daily unique visitor is around 2,000 and the main customer acquisition is from Google organic search.

Although the money it make is not that significant, this is a great success for me. Because I originally built the tool for myself (I'm still one of the heavy user) and which is also helping other people.

  1. 1

    I've already logged in a while ago... if I buy the lifetime premium, will I be able to to see events before the last month? Because until now the option to view the whole year has been locked

    1. 1

      Yes, the data has been saved and you can view the old data too.

  2. 4

    Awesome work . Can’t see a CTA to pay.

    1. 1

      Thank you! The CTA button should be visible when you click the locked item on config setting.

  3. 2

    Hi Yuya Uzu, I have been using PomoFocus for almost a year and I really liked it. For years I struggled to find decent iOS pomodora timer app, but with no success with their subscriptions and annoying adds. Thank you creating sth very useful and simple without ads.

    I also always wanted to start developing my ideas and therefore I have been teaching myself MERN stack . I created my first simple website but struggled with google search engine optimization. I was very curious about your app, because it consistently shows up very first search result in google. I really don't know anything about it. Can you briefly tell me how you did it? Would you recommend any courses, library or any advice how I can learn it?

    Thanks for your collaboration!

    1. 1

      Thanks, bayramn. Basically, what I did is:

      1. Used SEO checker tool and fixed some vital errors (not all)
      2. Posted on ProductHunt (which ended up 10+ backlinks)
      3. Listed as ad via Google Ads (just to get small initial users)

      I think the most important tip is to make the service better. After all, the actual user behavior (bounce rate, returning rate, etc.) are the most important metrics I think.

      1. 1

        Hi Yuya Uzu,

        Thanks for quick reply. I see. Got it.

        Do you mind telling how posting on ProductHunt creates backlinks?

        1. 1

          There are many bloggers watching ProductHunt. If they find the product interesting, they will feature it on their blogs.

          1. 1

            Oh wow. Interesting. Got it. Thanks

  4. 2

    I love PomoFocus, it's awesome. I've been using it for the past month or so and just signed up for a subscription.
    Here are my suggestions:

    • It's extremely easy to close out of the window while you have a pomo going. You should make it so there's an open form in the window so the browser notifies you "are you sure" before the window can close.
    • It's so easy to close out of a pomo and I want credit for my work time that I think you should let users add in pomo's for time tracking. I lost 3 today b/c I went pro, added a project, and logged in (all of which delete actively running pomos).
    • Let me attribute time off of projects to my projects. If i forget to click over to a project then it's just time not-attributed.

    Thanks for making such a cool thing!

    1. 1

      Hi, thank you for your feedback! I'm glad you liked Pomofocus.
      I reply to you as followings.

      1. Your advise make sense. I will consider adding it.

      2. Sorry, but all the tasks and pomodoros saved before you sign up are saved in the browser cache, not in the server. So they will be lost when you signup. (I could improve this but I don't think it would add much values considering the situation happens just one time. )

      3. You can transfer time from a project to another by clicking "Edit" button on the middle of the report modal.

      I hope it make sense.

  5. 2

    Hi Yuya Uzu, I have been using your app (Pomofocus) since April 2020 and I have finished 5 coursera courses by using it (1 hr pomofocus everyday). I am a big fan of your work because not only are your apps reliable, they are also good looking as well (are you also a ui/ux designer?)

    I am an up and coming react developer and you are my inspiration in becoming an indie hacker as well. Hopefully my apps will be as beautiful, fast, and as reliable as yours. Thank you and I hope I would be able to meet you in person in the future.

    1. 1

      Thank you for the encouraging comment! Wow, 5 courses are a lot. Great to hear that.
      Yes, I also design apps by myself. (have no experience in UI/UX job though)
      Would love to see your works in the future. Good luck!

      1. 1

        Your apps are really well designed and built. Do you have any good resources for learning about the technologies you use? Like jcroberto, I hope to become an Indie Hacker and your stuff is very inspiring

        1. 1

          Thanks for your comment, bennyruby. I use React/Redux and I learned the most of the knowledge from Udemy courses taught by Stephen Grider. Highly recommended.

          1. 1

            Thanks to you, I've been taking Stephen Grider's classes in the past few months. One of things I'm struggling with is designing responsive React applications, and choosing the right UI framework. I would love your input on any good courses you have for learning, or frameworks you know that work well. Once again, your design/style is incredible - it sets the standard for me.

            1. 1

              Hi, that's great you are taking the course. Actually, I don't use any UI frameworks for responsive design. I use media queries, which is plain css. The approach is: You design and complete the mobile version first, and then you add css for larger screen size within these media queries. That's everything I need to design responsive web app.

              https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_rwd_mediaqueries.asp

              1. 1

                Gotcha. Up until now I had opted to using frameworks such as Bootstrap to speed up the styling/development process - I was wondering if you used anything like that. Do you have any recommendations on tools to rapidly building up stylesheets (such as using Sass)?

                1. 1

                  I use Sass. I like to make common Sass file (such as default style for buttons, etc) and export them whenever I want. For me that’s better than using frameworks like Bootstrap. If you don’t want much customization, sure Bootstrap would help. I heard Tailwind CSS is also nice.

                  1. 1

                    Thank you for all this info, I really appreciate your help. Would you mind if I reached out to you again in the future? Directly would probably be better. Or we can continue on this thread indefinitely haha

                    1. 2

                      You can contact me anytime on [email protected] or Twitter (@uzu1989). Good luck with your project.

  6. 2

    Thank you for developing this! I use this nearly everyday

    Edit: Made this account just to say that, can't wait to see what you create next. I love the clean designs you have in all your applets.

    1. 1

      Thank you! I will build more!

  7. 2

    Hi, I am one of the users of Pomofocus! I just started this week since I was looking into the pomodoro technique and I found your app. Simple but it hits right to the functionality and the goal ;) :D

    1. 2

      Thank you for the feedback!

  8. 2

    Hello Yuya,

    I really enjoined Pomofocus simplicity and efficiency.

    I would like to contribute to the project coding some feature.

    Or, would you already considered to opensource your project?

    My best,
    Andre

    1. 1

      Hi Andre, Thank you for the comment.

      I'm not looking for contributions at this moment.
      Also, I am not thinking about making it opensource.
      This is my little side project and can be operated by myself.

  9. 2

    Looks great, it’s very user friendly and intuitive. I also like the color choice, it’s refreshing, great job!

    1. 1

      Yes, it took me while to choose the colors. Thanks!

  10. 2

    おめでとう。I think I know why you're seeing some success: 2,000 unique dailies from search engines is a lot of targeted visitors. For comparison, I have a ~10 year old website with 300 indexed pages, but only see ~100 organic visits per day.

    1. 1

      ありがとう!The figure 2,000 includes returning user, and new users from search results is about 700 users daily. But yeah, it's still a good amount of targeted users.

  11. 2

    Congrats! Fine work and the tool looks great. Love the clean design, how did you come up with that?

    1. 2

      Thank you! I designed it while I code, so most of them are random ideas. I just tried to stick with one color that may helped the UI look simple.

  12. 2

    Congrats! I just checked your web app and it looks really clean!

    1. 1

      Thank you, tgel0! I like to keep UI simple.

  13. 1

    Hi! Love the app and recently got the premium plan.

    Not sure where to share this, but I made a small script where the user can filter tasks by project. Hope this helps someone!

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460145-pomofocus-projects-filter

    1. 1

      Looks nice! However, Pomofocus does not recommend having too many tasks on the list. The ideal way is to do the task management outside of Pomofocus like Todoist.

      1. 1

        I understand, and I started using Todoist in the past few days because of the integration. Sadly I am not 100% organised yet 😅. I put too many tasks on Pomofocus and filtering this helps with visual clutter. But as you say, ideally I would just have a few immediate tasks on the list.

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          Yes, that's right. Pomofocus is a tool primarily for focus. So I would recommend you to add tasks only for the day. Hope Todoist integration helps here!

          1. 1

            Hello again!
            I still worked on this script a little because it helped my workflow. I now made it into an extension! It's still a little rough around the edges, but it works well enough for me and I needed to move onto more pressing work. plz understand I just made it because I really like using your app <3

            I cannot post links anymore but it's 'Pomofocus Quality of Life' on the chrome web store

            1. 1

              I tried it and it works well! Though I cannot endorse it (since it contradict the original design which allows only tasks for the day), it sure can work for someone ;)

  14. 1

    Curious to know how much the subscriptions have grown with the huge traffic it's getting now. Great job with SEO!

    1. 1

      Thanks, I will update you in the later post.

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