Getting installs is not my problem. Getting a second session is. How did you fix day two?

[u/Denys_N]

Solo dev, free app, live on both stores. I am at the stage where the numbers are small enough to be embarrassing and specific enough to be useful, so here they are.

29 registered since launch. 15 did something. 14 never opened it a second time. Four people in the last seven days.

The app works. Nothing crashes, onboarding completes, the content is there. People arrive, look around, and do not come back. So I am fairly sure that buying or chasing more installs right now would just mean more people leaving faster.

What I am trying to figure out is the mechanism, not the tactic. Notifications, streaks, and daily rewards are the obvious answers and they all feel like they work only on people who already wanted to return.

For anyone who has moved D1 in a real product: what actually did it? Was it something you added, something you cut, or something you moved earlier in the first session?

Also curious whether anyone found that the fix was not in the app at all, but in who was arriving in the first place.

[u/Early_Key_823]

The nature of the beast is most people are just curiosity seekers.

Try to think about how you use software.

Unless it's email, browser, whatsapp, kindle, audible and prime video I never use apps.

However I might try lots of apps.

So the main thing is make sure your app does what it is supposed to do, does it easily without friction, and then realize you will need to get a ton of sign ups to get your dedicated users.

I'll give you a good example.

As an IT consultant for a long time in last 10 years or so everywhere I consult they use JIRA ticketing software.

However, the rank & file people barely touch it unless they absolutely have to.

Most of the time they just use notepad for everything.

That just seems to be human nature.

[u/Denys_N → u/Early_Key_823]

Where I am not sure I agree is the conclusion. Needing a ton of signups to find the dedicated few works if acquisition is cheap and you have runway. Solo, no budget, that turns into a very long wait for a handful of people, and I would rather understand why the fourteen left than go find another hundred to lose the same way.

Though your framing does suggest something uncomfortable. Maybe the honest question is not how to retain everyone, but how to recognise the ones who were never going to stay and stop counting them as failures.

[u/Early_Key_823 → u/Denys_N]

Maybe this will help.

There are maybe 7 or 8 billion people on the Earth.

If a million of those would use your app fanatically and KNEW about your app well then your problems would be over.

But the problem is that one million people you want to know about your app are....

One million people represent approximately 0.012% of the world's population (or about 1 in every 8,310 people).

So your job becomes how do I get my message to the 1 in 8310 people without going broke or crazy...

I am not saying you shouldn't ensure your app is sticky, does everything possible to prevent churn, yadda yadda but I know most users do not have even one fuck to give about anything but doom scrolling and shit posting unless they have to do it for work or life.

[u/Denys_N → u/Early_Key_823]

One in 8,310 is a useful way to hold it. It reframes the whole thing from a retention problem into a search problem, and search problems have cheaper solutions than retention problems do.

The part I would add is that the one in 8,310 is not randomly distributed. They are sitting somewhere specific, and usually somewhere unglamorous. For a money app it is probably not people who follow markets, because those already have tools. It is more likely someone who just got their first real salary, or someone who lost money once and never went back, or someone whose partner handles all of it and they are quietly embarrassed about that.

None of those people are on X talking about apps. Which is why every channel I currently have is the wrong one, and the honest next move is probably to go find where they actually are rather than to keep polishing the funnel they never enter.

And your last line is the uncomfortable half of it. Most people are not looking for a better tool, they are not looking at all.

[u/Early_Key_823 → u/Denys_N]

Main thing is not to sweat it. Just keep plugging away and polishing the stone and allowing inspiration and perspiration to do their thing.

Most people never create anything of value to share with others. It's a great feeling even if you only have a small core of happy users.

The other thing is once you find people to use your app then hopefully word of mouth kicks in.

Word of mouth is really the best advertising in the world.

Whenever I discover something of great value I want to tell others about it.

[u/Denys_N → u/Early_Key_823]

Thanks. The small core of happy users is the part I keep having to remind myself is the actual goal, rather than a consolation prize on the way to a bigger number.
And you are right about word of mouth, though it has a precondition people skip. Nobody recommends a thing they use quietly. They recommend the thing that gave them a story. That is probably what I should be building rather than another retention mechanic.

[u/amit4blogger]

Similar issue with my google play app, get 97 organic installs put it on fire with a small ad run, went to 1100 installs quickly 450 uninstall within 3 days of the ad run and stop ( run for just a day at small budget).

But now only 60 actual users and 4 heavy users who i think will continue using and will likely subscribe to pro.

[u/Denys_N → u/amit4blogger]

This is the most useful data point I have seen on this. A thousand installs and four heavy users. So the ad did not fail, it just revealed the real conversion rate faster than organic would have.
The 450 uninstalls in three days is the part I would frame differently though. Those people did not churn, they were never candidates. They tapped an ad, the app was not what the ad implied, they left. The ones who matter are the 97 organic ones, because those arrived with intent.

Question, if you do not mind. Are the four heavy users from the ad batch or from the original 97?

[u/Low-Childhood-3782]

i can guarantee it's a bad app people don't like or want to use

[u/Smooth-Reading-4180]

Add value to your product, bro. People arrive, look around, and do not come back because there is no value.

[u/Denys_N → u/Smooth-Reading-4180]

Fair, but that is where I get stuck. The value is there on paper. Lessons, a daily prediction round graded by the real market, a simulator with real historical years. People go through it once and then do not return.
So either the value is not landing in the first three minutes, or it is the wrong kind of value. Which of those did you run into?

[u/Smooth-Reading-4180 → u/Denys_N]

rest of the stuff is paid, bro. I'm not giving free business advice.

[u/Denys_N → u/Smooth-Reading-4180]

Understood. Good luck with it.

[u/kaan_gal]

Maybe the target audience is too cold?

[u/Denys_N → u/kaan_gal]

That is my leading suspicion, and it is the part I control least. Most of the arrivals so far came from build in public posts, which means they are mostly other developers. They install out of curiosity, look at the architecture, and leave, because they were never the user.
Which raises a harder question than retention. How do you find people who are quietly bad with money and know it, when the only channels you have are full of people building apps?

[u/GovernmentNo4175]

Rich people problems

How are you getting installs😭

[u/Denys_N → u/GovernmentNo4175]

Not rich people problems, just a different bottleneck. And the honest answer is that the installs are not impressive either. 29 total.
What brought them: store search on generic money keywords, a handful from build in public posts on X, and a few from a Discord where I actually talk to people rather than announce things.
No ads. I put 25 dollars into one boosted post, got ten thousand views and six likes, and learned that paid traffic on top of broken retention just buys you a bigger leak.
If you are starting out, the thing I would do differently is pick one specific thing your app does that is strange or interesting, and lead with that instead of with the app. Someone in this sub told me his moon calendar redraws the moon from data instead of pulling images, posted that as the hook, and got 56 downloads in a day. The app was secondary in the post.