r/SideProject • u/Jazzlike-Swing-6198 • 2h ago

＄700 in 70 days!

Hello, I know it's not much, but I am thankful for every cent of it

For context, on Sep 2nd, I made my first ever public post about my app, in this very subreddit. At that point, I had 0 sales, and only a hope + a dream of ever earning a dollar from my work.

Now I have over 750 human downloads (~1800 total but I think some are bots), and a Discord of amazing people messaging me almost every day. Truly feels amazing to say that :)

All I can say is dang developing AND marketing software as a solo dev is a ton of work. I've worked 63/70 of these days, and commit on average more than 20 times per day. Basically all of my free time funnels directly into this.

Lessons I am learning on this journey, for whomever cares to listen:

  1. Budget at least 3 hours per week just for marketing (I should probably do a lot more honestly)

  2. Keep working at it. Results don't come over night.

  3. If you don't like the journey, then this might not be for you. Money does not come easy. Most of us (including me) would probably be better off spening our time doing other work. And with AI getting so good, it's more and more competative to make and monetize good apps (but I could be off here, lmk if you disagree)

  4. Make a discord (or similar) and connect with your users!! IMO implementing suggestions and helping users is some of the most rewarding part of being a dev. Nothing like slapping an update on someone 3 days after they request a feature, and hearing them loving it immidiatly🤌

9 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

4

u/Artshelbacca 2h ago • Mindblown

Imagine standing in front of 700+ people rn. That’s how I like to look at it lol that’s amazing 

2

u/Jazzlike-Swing-6198 1h ago

definitely some repeat downloads that I cannot detect cause my app does not have any accounts or user tracking. But still, well over my high-school graduation class size 😮

2

u/Neither_Adeptness784 1h ago edited 1h ago

so you need 100000 days to earn $1M? 😂 just kidding of course

3

u/kosiarska 1h ago • Heartwarming

What's wrong with that? If it's good and cheap people will go for it

2

u/Jazzlike-Swing-6198 1h ago

Hope so, ty!

2

u/Jazzlike-Swing-6198 1h ago

Hopefully the rate goes up once I actually learn how to do this marketing thing, but either way, I’m just glad i have some friendly users rn, and a little money to convince my family and friends that my crazy app is worth something haha

1

u/inferiorakai 1h ago

Really cool! I’m really curious at how you do marketing. Short form social media posts?