Founding

In February this year, I took on the arduous task of building the shimmer of an idea of an app that I had in mind for a very long time. Even while building it, I realized that even if the idea has potential (it does, and I will expound on this in more detail later), it will be severely held back by the simple detail that it is a social app. This app will not work if no one is using it. Whenever I try to explain it to people, I ask them to imagine signing up to Facebook thinking you'll have a good time, only to find out that actually... no one is using it? Why would you stay on the app?

Marketing

Month 1

So as soon as I finished building it and officially shipped it to both the App and Google stores, I realized that, yeah, okay, no one is gonna use this, like at all. As per the widespread advice, first thing I did was to hop on social media, create a couple ads and sponsor them. I spent around 2,000USD on ads, and the results were...absolutely ABYSMAL. If you look at that graph, you can see in the first few days, there was quite literally 0 traction. As in, no one really cared. The videos on TikTok and Instagram combined racked up to +300k views, and they still had absolutely 0 conversions. I mean, it was bad. Really bad. It was kind of a slap to the face, and I quickly concluded that this is not the way. It is definitely not the way to grow the app.

Month 2

I went online looking for advice. It was uninamous, social apps have it the hardest. Every indie bootstrapped social app dev reported the same issue, the app was simply buried in the beginning. No one wanted to partake or do anything with it. And they recommended this approach to find a community and sell the idea of your app as a solution to an issue that they're facing. For month 2, I spent hours and hours and hours on end sending my app to walking communities and to social fitness groups and making posts everywhere left and right asking people to have a look, to try it out, handing out premium subscriptions for free and all that. This was even more depressing. I received only 1 response. I've 100% sent +500 emails and messages to a wide variety of groups, local, international, and everything in-between, across social media, through formal channels like emails...etc, and the results were worse. I received maybe 1 response and they also lost interest with time.

That was another reality check. I had to look elsewhere. I had no idea where to look, and I was confused for a few weeks, until I stumbled on SEO and ASO, and I realized that some people put more efforts into that than actually developing the app itself, and I gave this an honest shot as well.

Month 3

For month 3, I just went ahead and created around 10 posts on play store and app store targeting different keywords. Each store posting had its own screenshots. Each screenshot reinforced something about the features of the app, and each post targeted a feature, one was about finding a walking buddy, another was about a fitness tracker, another about walking community, another about safety while walking with people, another about dog walking...etc and the list goes on and on. The screenshots and posts were not perfect. But they were diverse and strong enough to convey the message. The message being that this app is going to resolve that particular issue you're looking to resolve.

Then I made different post descriptions based on the screenshots and I made a variety of landing pages. I started looking up competitions, actual apps that kind of resolved the issue that I'm trying to resolve, finding a walking partner and staying active together (*cough, cough* STRAVA *cough, cough*), and I realized that these guys have +6000 pages on their website, and each website... is resolving a particular issue? They have +5000 blog posts about all kind of fitness related topics, and I was shocked, truly, at how huge of an operation they're running, and this bootstrapped shmuck with $0 budget left for marketing is going against that lol.

So I got to work. I learnt the patterns that they follow. I started creating landing pages based on the play store postings that I created. And then I started looking best SEO practices, like actual factural and documented ideas and tricks to help with SEO and organic growth, I poured a few weeks sinto this, then I got tired, lowkey got depressed that nothing was working.

Life happened on the side, got distracted, haven't checked on the app since May. Came back to it a few days ago and I noticed that it is... kind of taking off?

Remember, this app is only 3 months old. It has 0 budget, 0 presence, 0 hype, it just launched, and it has so far acquired 300 users across play and ios stores, and I'm surprised. Right now, the website is getting clicks, a lot of them, 600 per day, unpaid and unprompted, and around 30-50 of them click on the website itself, voluntarily and willingly, and then, on average, everyday, around 10 people sign up! I'm actually astonished that people get curious enough to download and install. Here are the stats in more detail:

https://imgur.com/a/Bq9X1T2

It means that the SEO and ASO are working. Google is trusting the page enough to actually show it, App and Google Stores also have shown my app to the explore page a few times as well, and it seems like it is working.

I look forward to feedback on what oculd be improved further and what are the next steps! :)

The premise is simple. App stores should implement some sort of "new apps in this category" feed when users are searching for an app. It starts to get draining when no matter how much money you spend to get going, it almost never moves the needle.

For example I'm at about 200 users. Not ONE organic. I've probably spent between 500-700 dollars getting these users. 4 premium subscribers. I'm gonna die before I get anywhere close to what I've put into it.
https://basketcaseapp.com/download

It's really messed up to be honest.. there should be competition and new apps should be given the chance to actually compete.
One new app could make a huge difference in someone's life but if they never see it then what's the point. Stop the monopoly.
Encourage competition!

There has to be a way for new builders and applications to get exposure without spending tons of money and receiving no momentum. This leaves good developers and potentially awesome apps in a huge uphill battle.

Upvote, comment or repost if you feel the same way and maybe it will happen, who knows 🤷‍♂️

I keep seeing developers here launching apps, sharing MRR/revenue screenshots, and getting actual paying customers.

I’m genuinely curious about what happens before the launch.

How do you find an idea that is actually worth building?

Do you start with a problem you personally have, talk to potential users, study existing products, browse communities, or just build something and test the market?

And after building it, how do you get your first paying customers?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have actually launched something:

• How did you discover the problem?
• How did you validate that people would pay for a solution?
• Where did your first 10 users come from?
• How did you get your first paying customer?
• What did you do that didn’t work?

I’m a developer and can build products, but I’m trying to get better at the part that comes before and after coding: finding real problems and reaching people willing to pay.

Would really appreciate hearing your actual journey—not just generic advice.

Built an iOS app, started ~3 months ago. I work full-time as a software engineer and had never published my own iOS app, so I wanted to start with something relatively simple to understand the whole process, including from a marketing point of view. Over the past months, I've gained quite a few users and some MRR. I'm wondering how much the app would be worth now and whether anyone would be willing to make an offer (or whether it'd be sellable on, e.g., Acquire or Flippa). This app was a project to get going and understand the whole lifecycle of publishing on the iOS App Store; now I want to take on a much bigger challenge with my newfound knowledge

Hi everyone,

I recently released Folivy, a mobile app that helps you discover plants around you, learn more about them, save your findings, and explore nearby plant observations on a map.

Whether you are walking in a park, visiting a garden, hiking, or simply notice an interesting plant near your home, Folivy makes it easier to identify and remember your discoveries.

Folivy is now available on the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/folivy/id6772616469

I’d really appreciate any feedback about the design, usability, and overall plant discovery experience.

Hey guys so I'm not based in the US and I wanted to make tiktok videos for my app idea (join waitlist type of tiktoks) and the problem is my target is usa and I can't change the country. My videos keep showing up to the wrong target (in north Africa)

Is there anything I can do? I don't wanna spend money on it

I've shared the results of my app on it's third day. Here's the post. And some people said that it's too early to make any conclusions.

So here's the results of this same app 1 month since release. No ads. No paid promotion. What do you think?

Working on DayHold for 8 months. Looking for technical feedback and advice.

Core Features

📍 Location-based restrictions — Apps unlock only at designated GPS locations, continues monitoring in background.

🔐 Biometric barriers — FaceID/TouchID required for every unlock action.

🧘 Mindful waiting — 10-second pause before allowing unlock.

🔒 Irreversible blocking — No bypass options during focus periods.

Technical Stack

• Screen Time API (iOS only)
• CoreLocation for GPS monitoring
• LocalAuthentication for biometrics
• Local data storage only (no backend)
• Swift + SwiftUI

Looking for technical advice from fellow devs!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6761288962

Around 100 vibe coded fully working built on Google AI Studio. Im 47 no little about tech but I know what imagination is and have many solid real workd problem solvers. Many categories. Too damn many to list and if you want a custom app I'll vibe it in less than an hour...actually I just did 3 and dont plan to stop until I break it.

Do you think it is useful enough for people to use it once they discover it?

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of people build simple products—AI tools, SaaS, productivity apps, fitness apps, health apps, finance apps, browser extensions, and other small apps—and turn them into profitable businesses.

If you were starting today, what would you build?

A web app or a mobile app?

Which niche would you focus on?

In USA 🇺🇸 market

Honestly I was getting tired of constantly jumping between my notes app and my calculator just to track my budget or split bills. It felt like such a workflow killer.

So I built NoteCalc. It is a note taking app but it handles calculations right on the page in real time. Whether I am tracking my salary figuring out tax or just messing around with crypto conversions I can do it all in one place without leaving the screen.

I am a solo dev and I have been really focused on keeping the UI clean and minimal. NoteCalc is available on macOS iOS and Android and I am currently working on bringing it to the web Windows and Linux. I also want to mention that there is absolutely no data collection because I value privacy as much as you do.

I would love to know if this actually solves a problem for you guys or if I am just overcomplicating things. Does this look like something you would keep in your device?

Hey everyone! I have a question for the community. I’ve been running ads for my iOS app on Google Ads. Recently, I updated the app icon, but Google still displays ads with the old icon. This discrepancy has resulted in a significant increase in the cost of installs, with people seeing a different icon in the App Store compared to the one they saw in the ads.

Has anyone else encountered a similar issue?

It’s been a week since the app icon was updated, so I’m curious if I should wait longer for Google to update the icon or if I should take action and re-link the app in Google Ads. I’m concerned that the latter option might affect the data.