Welcome back to another issue of my weekly indie log, in which I try to summarize my thoughts and activities regarding my indie app business. I decided to move my personal blog/newsletter from Hashnode to Substack.
I took it a bit slower this week and had time to reflect on my past journey.
Starting New Projects
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about my progress over the last two and a half years. When looking back at my journey and by looking at the successes or failures of countless other founders I’ve met on X and LinkedIn, one thing always stands out to me:
Your first app probably won't make it. You still have to develop and release it anyway, so you finally get to the second one! It can be tough to "abandon" your first project, but after a while, you must face the fact that it would be better to focus on something new. It’s a harsh truth, but an important lessons that many founders have to make.
While sharing this, some people pointed out that they only had success after their n-th app. Of course, I didn’t mean that your second app will definitely be a success. I just wanted to express that you have to do your iterations (it can take two or two hundred tried). As usual in life, it’s super rare that people succeed on their first try.
The lesson: Don’t get too attached to your first app/project and be ready to move on. The chances are high, that the next project will be much more successful. But sure, don’t abandon your app too quickly. Try your best to make it work, but don’t try to force it over many months or even years.
I knew it was time to move on to a new project, after I worked full-time on my first app Liftbear for six months without seeing the slightest bit of growth. I’m super happy that I chose to try something new, and that’s how HabitKit, my most successful app, was created.
I remember the start of 2023 when my app business had its first day where it generated over $200 in revenue. Back then, this number seemed incredibly high to me and I would never have thought to reach double the amount daily, only a year after reaching this milestone.
Churn
Another pleasant surprise this week when I checked the statistics of my app business in the RevenueCat dashboard: Churns seem to be at an all-time low right now. In case you don’t know, “churn” is the percentage of paid subscriptions that were lost during a given period and never resubscribed. I am really happy that I finally got the really high number from the start of the year down.
I always had mixed thoughts about the subscription revenue of my app business. Due to the high churn rates, it always felt like a “leaky bucket”. Although my subscription growth was higher than the churn, it felt like I was swimming against the current. This ultimately led to a long period of stagnating revenue numbers for the past six months. Happy that it’s finally over!
HabitKit 1.9.2
I worked on the next update for HabitKit this week: Version 1.9.2. I tackled some bugs that surfaced during the introduction of the last big feature (habit categories).
Upgraded the Flutter version from 3.22.2 to 3.24.3 and also updated all package dependencies.
Fixed a bug causing categories to show up in the filter bar although the assigned habits were deleted or archived. That lead to a lot of confusion.
I fixed the monochrome launcher icon for Android devices that use tinted home screen app icons.
I will also try to update the iOS app icon to support the new iOS 18 dark/tinted mode home screen icons.
Supernotes
In case you missed it: My note-taking approach was featured in the latest Supernotes blog article. I talk about my approach to building a second brain and how Supernotes helped me do that.
That’s it for this week, see you in the next one 👋
Hello, hello! Welcome to Substack! :D
I seem to be a bit early here as this is just your first post. I saw the link in your Twitter profile and I'm a bit surprised. I thought you normally post as article in Twitter.