No 3. | January 2024 | Indie Developer Projects Insight
Released on Sunday February 11th 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
Reach potential customers
Find suitable users
Grow following
Incentivise great AppStore ratings and reviews
Rank up my website
Build up relationships with press and influential people
Getting mentioned in the press and winning awards
The list of goals was extended for AppStore ratings and reviews – they are very important!
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) 3 Posts +0
Mastodon (Opens in a new window) 105 Posts +6 | 90 Followers +9
Instagram (Opens in a new window) 14 Posts +1 | 62 Followers +0
Newsletter (Opens in a new window) 14 Followers +6 | 0 Business Insider +0
Producthunt (Opens in a new window) 5 Followers +1 | 2 Upvotes Auricula -1
Linkedin (Opens in a new window) 2 Posts +1 | 10 Followers +0
PUBLICATIONS, APPEARANCES AND TESTIMONIALS
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 are likely to prefer to use an app that is 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
Puinte.org | Prototype
Supports 2 languages: German, English
Infolge.org | Prototype
Supports 1 languages: German
TOTM – Tip of the month
How to release a new app
I do not release new apps that much often, but the release of a first version can be used very effectively marketing wise. I mainly missed this opportunity with my first two apps. Why? Because I was not confident enough. – But now, with my third app ‘Next Size’ I won’t let this chance pass. It mainly comes down to being a newsworthy event. This is important to the news, publishers and bloggers. They want to be read and what does spark interest? Being newsworthy and this is way easier with releasing a new app than releasing an update.
Release Checklist
What do I focus on, when I’m marketing a new app release? (Of course this also valid for every other app update) This is a list that I try to check completely, but at least check off the first ones:
Apple and the AppStore team should know about it: There is an official site (Opens in a new window) where you can announce your app release/update. This is the first and most important step, to make sure you may be featured on the AppStore.
Get as many people on your Testflight: to validate your app idea, find bugs and spark interest within some first users:
Also make the Testflight available to the press: reaching out early is important, so the second/third time you reach out to announce the launch date, it is not the first time you are interacting.
Make the Testflight available to the developer community, they are very eager to help and if they like your app it is very much possible that your are boosted to some greater followings including a personal recommendation.
Reach out to influencers that are covering the interests of users, your app is focusing on. The problem is always , if you are getting mentioned in general media, that you are reaching many people, but mostly not people that align with your possible user interests:
Newspapers are read by android users as well, so if your app is iOS only, they do not care.
You are developing a recipe app: cooks, baking and cooking influencers are right at your topic – they could still be android users, but they all care about recipes somehow.
Create/Update a press kit. It is important, because this is the way a news/blog article is written. They need content, images and a description of your app, before they consider publishing something about your app.
Some prefer to create email lists with press people and other try to reach out on social media. If you have time and energy, do both.
Be creative:
Think outside the box and be creative.
Try to be where your possible and fitting users are.
The more your users love your app, the more likely it is that word of mouth will work for you.
It is very unlikely to have a rocket start, just because you checked off all the points above. But it is a great routine for every app release and udpate. Keep improving on your marketing text, relations to influencers, traditional media and other indie developers. Increase your reach and please do not get frustrated on not hearing back from about 95% of the time you reach out to someone. It is quite normal that it takes a while until you are recognized and some people want to see your persistence before they write/speak in your interest.
III. Sales Insights
Numbers are in EURO for last month of January 2023 and are provided for released projects.
Downloads
Filmlog 521 → 622 Installs | +19% | 23% via SearchAds
Auricula 465 → 558 Installs | +20% | 24% via SearchAds
Sales (net revenue)
Filmlog 57.80€ → 87,23€ | +51%
Auricula 38.57€ → 38.97€ | +1%
Overall 96.39€ → 126,20€ | +31%
Paid user ratio (all time)
Filmlog not available yet
Auricula 87% → 87% Free | 13% → 13% Pro (iOS and iPadOS only)
Sessions (AppStore Analytics / opt-in)
Filmlog 4,378 → 6,304 | +44%
Auricula 744 → 1,667 | +124%
SearchAds
Filmlog 25€ spend – Average CPI 0.19€ – 149 → 143 Installs | -6
Auricula 25€ spend – Average CPI 0.17€ – 125 → 133 Installs | +8
I keep the spending capped at 25€ – because I want to add an additional stream of possible new users, but do not want to pay high CPIs nor too much of my monthly sales income.
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 – not in use yet (will be part of ‘Next Size’ and ‘Filmlog 3.0.0’)
TelemetryDeck Free plan – for now (1,085/100,000 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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