Building An Indie App Business #65

Accountability, Vacation, and the Indie Developer Life

Welcome back to my weekly indie log! Another week has passed, and I'm back sharing what I've been doing to improve my app business. Sorry for missing last week's post: I took a short vacation trip to Copenhagen (cool city btw) and couldn't find the time to write. Let's get started:

📈 Business Updates

This week was super slow in terms of tending to my indie app business because of the vacation I mentioned above. I didn't even bring my laptop during the trip to Copenhagen, but it's still a great feeling that my business keeps delivering solid numbers even though I'm not actively working on it. The downloads and revenue stayed consistent, which always gives me a sense of accomplishment when I check the stats after being away.

I know HabitKit isn't truly "passive" income, but sometimes it feels that way. I honestly think if I took a 3-month vacation, nothing major would change in terms of downloads and revenue - as long as my rankings on the App Store and Google Play don't suddenly tank. Of course, I wouldn't actually disappear for that long because I genuinely enjoy improving the app and want it to stay relevant in the competitive app market.

The most calming part of building this business is the assurance it gives me. Knowing that my app continues to sustain my lifestyle even during periods when I'm less active is incredibly freeing. It's one of the main reasons I left my corporate job to pursue indie development in the first place. This stability allows me to occasionally take breaks without constant worry, which is something I never really had in my previous work life.

Another cool development this week was being invited as a guest on two media formats I really enjoy: a podcast and a video show. I'm actually a big fan of both, which made the experience even more special. It feels really rewarding to be asked to participate in content that I regularly watch and listen to myself. Getting recognition from creators whose work I admire gives me a sense of accomplishment and validates the path I've chosen as an indie developer. These opportunities to share my journey also help me reflect on how far I've come. I'll let you know when the episodes are out of course!

🛠️ Development Corner

This week wasn't very productive for feature development due to my vacation, but I still managed to make good progress on redesigning the habit detail view in HabitKit. The main challenge was figuring out how to display all the important information on a single screen without making users scroll vertically. After several attempts, I'm finally satisfied with the new layout and how it presents the data.

To solve the space problem, I decided to move some of the less frequently used actions like sharing and archiving into a context menu. This change freed up valuable screen real estate while keeping all functions accessible. I think this compromise works really well, it keeps the interface clean for everyday use but still gives users easy access to all the tools they might need.

I also posted a video of the new compact list view on the dashboard of the app this week. I wanted to know what users thought about abbreviating habit names to save space, so I asked for feedback on social media. The response was really helpful: many users thought that the abbreviations looked awkward. After thinking about all the comments, I decided to completely drop the abbreviation idea and instead created an option to hide the habit name completely, showing only the icon.

This "icon-only" option works much better than I expected, especially since I recently added emoji support to HabitKit. Now users have many more choices when selecting an icon or emoji that represents their habit. The combination of the compact list view with icon-only display gives users a clean, visual way to track their habits without text cluttering the screen. I'm quite happy with how this feature evolved based on user feedback, it ended up being much better than my original idea!

💡 Indie Insights

People often ask me how many views this newsletter gets and how many email subscribers I have. For subscribers, I do check the numbers occasionally out of curiosity, but when it comes to actual views per post, I honestly have no idea and never bother to look at these stats. It's not that I don't care about who reads my content, but these metrics aren't what drive me to write.

The real reason I'm writing these weekly posts is simple: accountability. Knowing that I need to write something meaningful at the end of each week pushes me to actually accomplish things with my indie app business. It's like having a weekly deadline that keeps me focused and productive. Without this self-imposed commitment, it would be too easy to let days slip by without making real progress on my apps. This weekly writing habit has become one of my most effective tools for staying consistent.

For example, last week (and a little bit of the start of this week) I went on vacation and couldn't write anything, which made me feel a bit guilty about it. But this isn't actually a bad thing because this feeling pushes me to be more motivated for next week. I'm already looking forward to diving back into development and creating new content for this blog. The small guilt I feel now will transform into productivity later, which is exactly why this accountability system works so well for me.

The same principle applies to my daily social media posts on X, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky. I've set a personal goal to share something every day about my indie journey. When I'm not actively working on my app business, I simply have nothing meaningful to post about. This creates some form of a positive pressure loop. I need to keep making progress on my apps to have interesting things to share, and sharing regularly motivates me to keep making that progress. It's a simple system, but it's been incredibly effective for maintaining my momentum.