Simple Budget Planner

Hello Indie Hackers! 👋

It's with great excitement that I share the journey of my side project, Simple Budget Planner, which I embarked on in 2018. In a market saturated with budgeting tools, I've managed to grow it to $600 in monthly recurring revenue, all without spending a penny on marketing.

Looking back at my journey, I've come to appreciate the crucial role of addressing validated needs. Simple Budget Planner's success is not just because it was unique in a crowded market of budgeting apps, but because it truly fulfilled a need. I hope this realization sparks a similar understanding in you, inspiring you to identify and cater to real needs in your own projects.

As the developer of the Simple Budget Planner app, I have noticed that the app is typically purchased for only one day's use on average. In an effort to improve user engagement and increase revenue, I have decided to try a new paywall approach. Rather than forcing users to a single flow, I will show all potential products on the paywall.

By assuming that my audience is savvy enough to make informed purchasing decisions, I believe that this approach will be beneficial for users who want to make an informed decision about which products are the best fit for them. In many cases, users are already checking multiple options before making a purchase anyway.

I am excited to see how this new paywall approach will impact the usage and revenue of the Simple Budget Planner app. If you are interested in learning about the results, feel free to comment below and I will gladly share.

https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/simple-budget-planner/id1370056290

After rewriting the entire app in Swift UI (moved from React Native) and continuously improving it with user feedback, analytics.. Finally got the $400 MRR.

The next target is $1000, wish me luck!

The question now is should I add an Android version or invest more to grow on a single platform, IOS?

Recently I have released some updates to Simple Budget Planner. In one version I accidentally broke a custom number input fields one functionality. After release, in a couple of hours, I started to get emails notifying me about the bug. The great thing about them was that almost all of them were starting with amazing introductions showing love to my indie app. That was a great motivation boost for me.

"Love your app. My sister uses it too..."

"First of all. I love the app. I’ve purchased the upgrade to remove ads and I plan on using this app for a very long time..."

"Hi there, I’ve been enjoying the S. Budget for almost a year and have really enjoyed it..."

I immediately fixed the bug and send a new version. The surprising thing is while the new version is being released, I also received emails like, "Please regard my previous email it has been fixed!" from some people I could not reply yet.

That made me realize one thing well. Some people like it and use it regularly. Some people understand what I am trying to do and paying attention to it. The only thing I should do now is to find more people like them!

P.S. I have replied to every single user individually with a personal tone told them sorry and encouraged them to give more feedback. I already got some good feature requests which I will consider building.

I put the ad removal feature to Simple Budget Planner in the form of in-app purchases.

Even though I seen good number of installs in one week it was not converting. So, I released a new version and started to explicitly ask to the user "Do you want to buy?" after some usage with some frequency. If the answer is yes, I redirected them to the sales page.

I got my first sales after that. 🥳

The lesson here is I guess, explicitly ask your potential customer whatever you want him to do for you. Don't wait for her to find things herself. Explicitly ask.

I have published my app (a budgeting app that aims to be the easiest and most effective to manage personal & family finances) to the app store one year ago.

I have seen its getting traction organically and people sending me an email with feature requests such as IAP, family sync, exports, detailed reporting, etc. I have published the first request which is in-app purchases to remove ads.

Even though I have worked on this product for more than a year from time to time, I think the adventure starts now, with the proper monetization strategy.

Wish me luck guys, and don't forget to check it out!