Sleepy History - Sleep Stories
Boring History to Fall Asleep
I launched Sleepy History about two months ago. An app that plays deliberately boring history to help you fall asleep, I built it because nothing designed to relax me ever worked, but a dull, uneventful story where nothing is at stake put me out in fifteen minutes.
I've done zero marketing. No posts, no launch, no outreach. This is the first thing I've written about it anywhere.
Here's where it stands:
151 downloads. 28 paying users. Most of them bought lifetime. That's around 18% conversion, which I understand is not normal, and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. My best guess is that "boring history for sleep" is such a specific thing to search for that anyone who finds it already wants it. Tiny top of funnel, very high intent.
11 versions shipped. Almost every one of them fixing a stupid bug I personally introduced in the version before. That's the honest ratio, maybe a third real improvements, two thirds cleaning up after myself.
And the one that still stings: my payment page was broken for the first two weeks. Completely. I only found it because I'd wired up PostHog and built a dashboard, and the funnel just fell off a cliff at one specific step. Without that I'd have assumed nobody wanted to pay and probably drawn the wrong conclusion about the entire product.
If you take one thing from this post, make it that. Set up analytics before you launch, not after. It cost me two weeks and it could easily have cost me the belief that the thing was working at all.
The part I genuinely didn't expect: people send me story requests. And feedback. Unprompted. I built the feedback form assuming it would sit empty forever, the way they always do. People actually write in and tell me which eras they want more of. That has been far more motivating than the revenue.
I've been sitting on posting about this for weeks. Not from lack of time, every promo draft I wrote made me cringe, and I didn't want to be the guy doing the fake "hey, found this cool app" thing. But the alternative is letting it quietly die, which is worse.
So: this week I'm actually doing it. Product Hunt, Reddit, here.
Two things I'd genuinely like input on. For anyone who's been in this spot, is an 18% conversion at this scale just small-sample noise, or is it worth trusting and pouring fuel on? And how did you get past the discomfort of promoting your own thing?
Happy to share the PostHog dashboard setup if anyone wants it. It's the single highest-leverage thing I did.
7 Comments
Feels like the key question is why they’re paying:
• falling asleep faster?
• routine consistency?
• content itself?
That insight usually points to where this expands (or sharpens).
Right now it reads as content, but the value might actually be closer to a sleep aid / habit tool.
Curious what your paying users say they’re actually buying?
Happy to help shape this into something more scalable if you’re exploring that.
Honestly, that's the exact thing I don't know yet, and it's bugging me.
Right now I'm inferring rather than asking. What I can see from analytics is that most buyers convert fast, often in the first session or two, and most pick lifetime over subscription. That suggests they'd already decided the format works for them before they arrived, they weren't sold on it, they were looking for it. Which makes me lean toward your sleep aid framing over content.
The signal I'm trusting most right now is the story requests. People write in unprompted asking for specific eras. That's not passive consumption.
But that's all inference. I have no direct line to paying users, and that's my actual gap.
If anyone has a good pattern here I'd take it. Would genuinely appreciate the help.
The broken checkout story makes the 18% more interesting, because you’ve already seen how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion from early numbers.
Before you “pour fuel on,” what would you need to see to become confident the conversion is repeatable rather than a result of the small, unusually high-intent group finding you organically?
Fair, and you're right that I'd been treating the 18% as a property of the app when it's probably a property of the audience. Almost all came from App Store search, nobody stumbled in, they typed something specific.
Planning to ship a one-question in-app prompt to find out why they're paying, since right now I'm inferring from "most buy lifetime, most buy fast."
That’s helpful context. I appreciate you being candid about what the data does and doesn’t prove yet.
I’d like to continue the conversation outside the thread. What’s the best email to reach you on?
Hit me on krazeyk.1234@gmail. com
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.