No 4. | February 2024 | Indie Developer Projects Insight

Released on Tuesday March 12th in 2024 by Simon Braun

II. Marketing Insights

There are so very many things to do, if you are publishing software as an indie developer, but I think one of the most important ones, right after designing and developing great software, is to do marketing!

My main goals with marketing

1. Reach potential customers

2. Find suitable users

3. Grow following

4. Incentivise great AppStore ratings and reviews

5. Rank up my website

6. Build up relationships with press and influential people

7. Getting mentioned in the press and winning awards

SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT

To keep my marketing efforts going, I track some numbers. I try to keep steadily publish on all channels and increase my following:

Blog/RSS (Opens in a new window) 4 Posts +1
Mastodon (Opens in a new window) 137 Posts +32 | 98 Followers +8
Instagram (Opens in a new window) 15 Posts +1 | 66 Followers +4
Newsletter (Opens in a new window) 14 Followers +0 | 0 Business Insider +0
Producthunt (Opens in a new window) 2 Upvotes – Auricula +0 | 2 Upvotes – Next Size+2
Linkedin (Opens in a new window) 4 Posts +2 | 14 Followers +4

PUBLICATIONS, APPEARANCES AND TESTIMONIALS

2024 March | Next Size
“[…] I remember how quickly they grew, and having an app like Next Size is a great idea to help take the guesswork out of parents’ shopping trips.“ – John Voorhees
→ MacStories Weekly (Paywall) (Opens in a new window)

2021 January | Filmlog
“Track your watched and unwatched movies with Filmlog for iPhone“
→ iMore (Opens in a new window)

2020 December | Auricula
„Intervalle hören & üben mit der App AURICULA // Gehörbildung Erklärung mit Merkhilfen“ (German)
→Youtube (Opens in a new window)

Did I miss something? Please let me know: feedback@simonbraun.eu (Opens in a new window)

LOCALIZATION

Not everybody is speaking or understanding your language in this world and most people may prefer to use an app that is available in their native language, date and number format. That’s why I steadily improve the localization of my apps.

Filmlog | Product
Supports 15 languages: Arabic, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, traditional and simplified Chinese as well as Turkish

Auricula | Product
Supports 9 languages: German, English, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Spanish, Italian as well as traditional and simplified Chinese

Next Size | Product
Supports 4 languages: German, English, French and Spanish

Puinte.org | Prototype
Supports 2 languages: German, English

Infolge.org | Prototype
Supports 1 languages: German

TOTM – Tip of the month

Growth Hacking

I really do not like this term and attitude. But it is after all a very interesting and important topic. I had a pretty slow launch day with Next Size and did not gain much visibility. But a was mentioned in a newsletter and did buy some social media ads. This helped to get at least some traction, otherwise nobody will ever find my new app within the millions of other apps.

But I did not try to hack my growth and stopped wishful thinking. I believe in growth like a tree does grow. It starts very fragile and unbelievable small. But constant growth, sometimes hard to notice, leads one day to a quite strong and tall tree. So enough of the philosophical part …

What does an app need to grow?

Here is my list of things that I think fuel the steady growth of an app:

1. Explain the usefulness of your app to people regularly. Find opportunities to make your phrases and marketing material more understandable as well as more delightful.

2. Look out for people that use your app, while you take a look over their shoulder. Learn about your met and failed assumptions, how the app is understood and used.

3. Listen and reply to user feedback. Make updates more often, even if only small changes make the app a little better each time.

4. Define what kind of growth is important to you: active users, advertising revenue, revenue from purchases and so on.

5. Do not try to buy yourself into success, investing a lot of money hoping for instant success in return.

6. Accept that you may not know your product and your customers good enough, to grow steeply.

7. Use trial and error in small scale to learn about the dynamics first. For example start small with advertising or AppStore optimizations – increase your effort or spending on effective levers.

8. If you started your project to have fun. Make sure to keep this attitude and keep going.

9. If it is the wrong time, the wrong idea or your app not there yet, do not try to force it. Fighting against the wind is not sustainable. Keep your values and search for opportunities how the wind can work in your favor in the future.

Sometimes I wish for faster and bigger success. But I have to admit that I do learn so many things about my products, my customers and me, that I think this is the way to go. I prefer to think about it like that: success will hit as soon you are ready for it. And I want to be ready to ride the wave, as soon the opportunity shows. Learning while riding the big wave is way harder and riskier as well.

III. Sales Insights

Numbers are in EURO for last month of February 2024 and are provided for released projects.

Downloads

Filmlog 622 → 462 Installs | -28% | 0% via SearchAds
Auricula 558 → 377 Installs | -21% | 0% via SearchAds
Next Size 0 → 44 Installs | +100%| 0% via SearchAds

Sales (net revenue)

Filmlog 87,23€ → 28,34€ | -68%
Auricula 38.97€ → 63.08€ | +62%
Next Size 0€ → 6.40€ | +100%

Overall 126,20€ → 97,82€ | -22%

Paid user ratio (all time)

Filmlog not available yet
Auricula 87% → 87% Free | 13% → 13% Pro (iOS and iPadOS only)

I don’t find this metric too interesting, so I will not keep it.

Sessions (AppStore Analytics / opt-in)

Filmlog 6,304 → 5,405 | -14%
Auricula 1,667 → 1,027 | -38%
Next Size 0 → 23 | +100%

SearchAds

Filmlog– Paused
Auricula 25€ spend – Average CPI 0.17€ – 133 → 128 Installs | -5%
Next Size 0€ spend – 0 → 0 Installs | +0

I decided to stop advertising Filmlog until the next major release. – And I just started using the advanced mode of AppStore Search Ads in addition to the basic mode. So numbers will get more complicated and its harder to get a simple overview for the newsletter. Will keep € spend and installs as a metric for now.

Monthly costs

I try to keep monthly costs very low, but looking out for growth enablers.

Hosting 9.41€ – Legacy plan (112€ yearly)
Public work phone 10€ – fraenk

GitTower license expires April 18th 2024

RevenueCat Free plan – used for ‘Next Size’
TelemetryDeck Free plan – for now (4,039/100,000 monthly signals)
appfigures 20.64€ – Monitor (50% blackfriday discount for 12 months)
Mastodon Instance Support 1.19€ (via Patreon)

Other costs

To complete the insight other costs are added here.

2024
eagle license 29€ – my new home for visual ideas, interesting images, funny pics and informative graphics

2023
Company re-definition 30€ – german company paper work

Thank you for reading my newsletter! Until next month and stay safe, Simon

If you want to become a testimonial for the newsletter or if you have questions, suggestions or critique, please write me: feedback@simonbraun.eu (Opens in a new window)

Simon Braun – Website (Opens in a new window) / Mastodon (Opens in a new window)

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