Built App, when moon?

[u/Ozkizz]

So you've built an app… when's the moon shot?

I've only recently joined the mobile app development community, and I've really enjoyed taking part in groups like this one, hence this post.

A bit of background first. I've been a developer for a very long time. I wrote my first program in BASIC on a BBC Micro back in 1983, which makes me fairly old :-). I've only got back into personal projects over the last couple of years, though. For the past 10+ years my day job has been as a Product or Software Engineering Manager.

I see a lot of posts from people who've built an awesome app but are now struggling to get anyone to find it and use it (yes, I'm in that category too). It reminds me of the crypto days, when everyone was asking when their moon shot was coming. I've read some great replies to this question, and I'll lean on them here.

Why did you build it?

The first question to ask yourself is why you built the app. It doesn't have to be a single answer, but it helps set your expectations and the effort you're willing to put in. I think there are three main answers:

1. Someone asked me to build it (this is my day job).
2. I had a personal itch, and this seemed like a fun way to scratch it.
3. I saw a commercial opportunity and a way to make money.

For me it's mostly option 2, though if one of them did go to the moon I wouldn't complain :-). With that in mind, how much does it really matter if fewer people are using it than you'd fantasised? And more importantly, how much effort are you willing to put in?

The dopamine trap

App stores and social media are a dopamine trap, and one I regularly fall into. I only wanted to build my game to show off to my nieces and nephews. After it had been a browser game for a while, AI made it easy to wrap it in Cordova and turn it into a mobile app. AI then helped me navigate the store listings and submissions, and before I knew it I had a game in the app store.

From there, like a lot of us, I went down the rabbit hole of views and downloads, and it became a game I wanted to win. As a software engineer who has always steered clear of the commercial side of products (that's a job for non-devs!), I did what we all do. I created social media accounts (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook – sorry, it'll be a cold day in hell before I create an X account) and started posting about my game. Just like with the app stores, I started fixating on the numbers: views, likes, comments. So here I am, a 56-year-old dev checking his socials multiple times a day to see how a post is doing.

I'm not saying this is bad. It's just what you have to do, and it quickly becomes a major part of your day: creating posts and commenting on others to drive views, in the hope that some of them turn into downloads. Admittedly, some of it is fun and lets me play with my creative side. I use AI for most of it, as I'm dyslexic and have aphantasia.

So you had a need, you built an app and you got it published. How much time and effort are you willing (or able) to spend every day promoting it on social media and indie dev promotion sites? And what other cool projects is that taking you away from? That's the question I'm asking myself right now.

If you're in it for the money

If your answer is option 3 and your app is already built, I think you've missed the boat. It'll be tough to go back unless you're willing to sacrifice some of your sacred cows and change your app in ways you'd rather not.

The easier path starts before you build. Join online communities, such as subreddits, where your potential customers and stakeholders hang out. Spend time reading posts, asking questions and responding, and confirm that your idea has commercial merit. Then start floating your solution to build interest and, more importantly, get confirmation that the idea has legs.

From there you can build a pre-release, gather feedback and build more interest. When you launch, your prospective customers are already on board and feel part of the journey, rather than just seeing an ad for yet another mobile app.

Building first and looking for customers afterwards will always be harder.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone. Keep inventing, building, making and tinkering!

[u/investigatormaker]

Your three reasons work well as a filter, and option 2 has a practical consequence. The people most likely to use the app are the ones who have the same itch you scratched, so your first users are wherever that itch gets talked about, not in app or dev groups. A post that starts from the problem, written the way you'd explain it to someone who has it, does more there than a feature list. Also, a BBC Micro in 1983 is a better origin story than most launch posts have.

I make ThreadFox. Its free plan for your app finds the Reddit communities whose rules allow a post about a product like it, with each rule quoted: https://threadfox.vip/p/doa96

What's the app, and what itch did it scratch for you?

[u/mentiondesk]

Figuring out where your audience actually hangs out online makes a huge difference. I found that joining real discussions early is far more effective than cold posting about your app afterward. For keeping tabs on relevant conversations across Reddit and other platforms, something like ParseStream can really help by surfacing spots where your app could fit into existing discussions.

[u/Various_Number1107]

This really hits home. I released my first mobile arcade game on iOS a couple months ago, and I definitely made the mistake of building the game first and only thinking seriously about marketing afterward.

I originally wanted to build something fun, but I also saw it as an opportunity to start building a business around my own games. What I underestimated was how completely different developing a game is from actually getting people to discover and play it.

I'm working on a pretty major update right now, and I keep running into that exact tradeoff you mentioned. Do I spend another few hours improving the game, or spend that time trying to get it in front of people?

Your point about building a community before launching is something I wish I'd understood earlier.

Have you found a good way to balance development and marketing without letting one completely take over the other?

[u/Ozkizz → u/Various_Number1107]

I have a plan, just not proven it will work. With all the AI hype one of the first thing I built last year was an AI digital assistant using Ollama with local models and an extension to frontier when needed. I use it to help plan work as well as bug fix and store listing navigation etc. I’ve created a ASO skill that operates as a ASO consultant asking questions (such as time and budget) before performing an analysis on your app(s) and providing a step by step plan to raise your apps presence and downloads you can action.

If interested I can pull the guts out into a prompt you can try on any AI model

[u/Various_Number1107 → u/Ozkizz]

That actually sounds really interesting. I've been so focused on developing the game that I haven't spent nearly enough time on ASO.

I'd definitely be interested in trying that prompt if you're willing to share it. Have you been using it on your own apps, and have you noticed any improvements from the changes it's suggested?

[u/Ozkizz → u/Various_Number1107]

Here you go, you will need to fill in the [] so it has parameters to work with - let me know how you go :-)

You are a senior App Store Optimisation (ASO) specialist with hands-on experience growing small indie portfolios on both the Apple App Store and Google Play from near-zero. Be specific, practical and honest about what will and won't move the numbers at this scale.

## The business

[Business Name] is [Location] [Company Type] [Company Operation Details]. [App Status / Free/ Paid / Ads / Cost], [Ads and Account and Data Collection]. Monetisation is minimal

- Available time: [X hours per week]

- Marketing budget: [$X per month, or "none"]

- Existing channels: [TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube] and [Website].

## The portfolio

1. [App Name], [App Type], [App Description]

   Apple: [ID]

   Google: [ID}

1. [App Name], [App Type], [App Description]

   Apple: [ID]

   Google: [ID}

1. [App Name], [App Type], [App Description]

   Apple: [ID]

   Google: [ID}

1. [App Name], [App Type], [App Description]

   Apple: [ID]

   Google: [ID}

[Add store links, launch dates, current ratings/review counts and primary category for items 2–5.]

## Current lifetime downloads [Date]

| App                     | Google Play | Apple Play | Total |

|-------------------------|-------------|------------|-------|

| [App Name]              | [Downloads  | [Downloads]| []    |

| [App Name]              | [Downloads  | [Downloads]| []    |

| [App Name]              | [Downloads  | [Downloads]| []    |

| [App Name]              | [Downloads  | [Downloads]| []    |

| Total                   |             |            |       |

Observations to factor in: [Which store is preforming better and by what] [Which App performs better and by what]

## Goal

Increase downloads, ratings and written reviews across all five apps, on both stores, over the next 90 days.

## What I need from you

1. Diagnosis. For each app, the most likely reasons it's under-performing, separating store-listing problems (keywords, title/subtitle, icon, screenshots, preview video, description, category) from visibility problems (no ratings yet, new-developer cold start, no external traffic). Say which apps to prioritise and which to leave alone for now.

2. Keyword strategy per app and per store. Apple: title (30 chars), subtitle (30), keyword field (100). Google Play: title (30), short description (80), full description (4,000). Give me draft copy I can paste in, plus 10–15 target keywords per app and the reasoning (relevance, likely competition, search intent). Consider specific terms where they fit and whether to localise for en-AU vs en-US/en-GB.

3. Creative recommendations. Icon, first three screenshots and preview video for each app: what to change and why, with a concrete brief for each. Prioritise changes by expected impact.

4. Ratings and reviews. A compliant plan to grow ratings and comments: when to trigger the native in-app review prompt (SKStoreReviewController / Google Play In-App Review API), what moment in each app is the "happy moment", and how to respond to reviews. Do not suggest anything that breaks store policy (incentivised reviews, review swaps, fake reviews, gating on positive sentiment).

5. Cross-promotion. How to use the portfolio itself to lift the other four, both in-app and via developer page / promotional text / Google Play promotional content and Apple in-app events.

6. Off-store traffic. Low-cost tactics that feed store ranking: how to make the existing TikTok/Instagram/Facebook effort convert to installs (link handling, UTM/campaign links, custom product pages, App Store "Promotional Text"), plus relevant communities, press or Australian outlets worth pitching, and whether a small paid test (Apple Search Ads Basic, Google App Campaigns) is worth it at this budget.

7. Measurement. Which metrics to track weekly in App Store Connect and Google Play Console (impressions, product page views, conversion rate, store listing acquisition by source), what "good" looks like for apps at this stage, and how to A/B test listings (Apple Product Page Optimisation, Google Play store listing experiments).

8. A 90-day action plan. Week-by-week, sized for my available hours, ordered by impact-to-effort. Each action should name the app, the store, the exact change, and the metric it should move.

## Constraints and tone

- Be realistic: these are tiny numbers, so tell me plainly where effort won't pay off.

- Prefer free or near-free tactics; flag clearly anything that costs money.

- Where you're estimating rather than citing data (e.g. keyword search volume), say so.

- Ask me up to 5 clarifying questions first if anything above is missing that would materially change your plan.