As an indie developer for the last 10 years my key learning is writing apps for “under privileged” communities. Firstly, it’s a niche. Secondly, people really value your effort and appreciate giving. This creates a nice feeling.
I have created my major app, Time Nomad [1], out of pure curiosity. Don’t laugh, scientific minds… I wanted to see how astronomy and astrology coexisted for hundreds of years without all that new age nonsense that corrupted the ancient discipline.
So I made it different. It’s more of a toolkit to calculate and grok movements of celestial bodies and find moments of specific alignments. That is pure fun. I have enjoyed maths and computational challenges, while the users surprised me by liking the app’s ability to give quick answers about what (and equally importantly when) is happening in the sky — from an astronomical standpoint. No voodoo language needed, just pure geometry.
Why am I saying all this? Taking an old idea and giving it a new modern spin can win hearts. There are communities of people who are open to support that.
Isn’t a big part of your userbase into new age stuff? If you think of it as nonsense, how do you earnestly try to serve them? Aren’t they asking for features you think are bunk?
deze333 6 days ago [-]
By sticking to truth and reality. There is integrity in showing the numbers (planetary coordinates, segments of time, etc) as they are, they are real phenomenon.
It’s up to the user to devise their own interpretations. I do not do any interpretations, and that’s by choice. Pure calculations.
And what I have discovered is that all “astrologers” are different. Some are into glossy magazine style horoscopes. Others are more interested in a kind of “celestial statistics” — how and when things align, how movements create harmonics, etc. There’s a rich field of mathematical thinking if one wishes for that.
Everybody gets their own piece of cake. I am happy with what I do, they are happy with the toolkit provided. One can’t judge a pocket calculator for how it may be used.
Funky feature requests? Surprisingly not that often. The reason is perhaps the intent behind the app. It doesn’t classify itself as a “crystal ball”, it’s a calculator. So I stick to what is called “classical astrology”, ie something borderline between astronomy, philosophy and mathematics. Pure foundational basics.
diggan 6 days ago [-]
> Isn’t a big part of your userbase into new age stuff? If you think of it as nonsense, how do you earnestly try to serve them? Aren’t they asking for features you think are bunk?
A chiropractor uses maps of human bodies to understand where things are, even though they use the information differently than doctors and surgeons, both groups base their understanding on the same facts.
I'm guessing the same can apply in more areas than medicine too.
crooked-v 6 days ago [-]
> both groups base their understanding on the same facts
Chiropractors base their knowledge on secret messages from a ghost [1].
Don’t generalize all practitioners based on the strangeness of the first one.
crooked-v 6 days ago [-]
The strangeness of the first one is the basis of the field. Literally all of chiropractic practice stems, objectively, from the one guy and his ghost revelations circa 1896 or so.
Henchman21 6 days ago [-]
Chiropractic medicine is quackery. I am happy to acknowledge that some people find it helpful!
But let’s be honest: it isn’t scientific in the least, no matter what modern practitioners have gussied it up with.
deze333 5 days ago [-]
Exactly that. Instead of fighting belief systems, offer something that is useful for different practitioners. There is massive amount knowledge that can be made interactive and broaden our understanding of reality we live in. And there is an aspect of fun and unexpected discoveries once one decoupled themselves from any kind of ideology. Be outside the box.
criddell 6 days ago [-]
Absolutely. So if you made a body map and your user base starts asking for you to add chakras or reflexology areas or acupuncture locations and you think that's all a bunch of woo, how do you respond?
diggan 6 days ago [-]
For reflexology/acupuncture, you could have a section where you highlight typical focus points used in reflexology/acupuncture, without giving any sort of positive acknowledgement for them as treatments.
jakubmazanec 6 days ago [-]
App looks great, but astrology is still nonsense, with our without the new age stuff.
deze333 6 days ago [-]
There are factors of both reality and imagination in pretty much everything we do, including things like LLMs. What is considered cutting edge today may be considered sheer quackery in the future.
My perception is that there is value in sticking to reality. Who am I to judge the users? They are free to interpret numbers as they wish. Just look at the big data. The numbers are real, yet interpretations and conclusions can be anything - the interpreter is inherently biased and constrained by their own field of view, political and employment context. Not that dissimilar from astrology, in essence.
Why astrology in this case? My interest has always been in the analysis of movement of planetary bodies. I like to see and understand how things move out there in space. There is a beauty in that, for me.
I don’t think I’d pass any space company interview, it’s too elitist. So I thought, hmm astrology…. but why not? I’d get to play with celestial mechanics. And the users can use it for what they wish. After all, in the past, astrologers always were astronomers and mathematicians in the first place. Perhaps there’s a mysticism in the sky that allows to be equally scientific and inspired? This is the case where belief isn’t that important. What’s more important is to be moved by what one does.
briandear 6 days ago [-]
The app itself isn’t something that interests me, but wanted to complement your beautiful home page. Nicely done. You’ve executed it very beautifully. I wish more apps were like yours.
deze333 5 days ago [-]
Oh, wow, thank you! I am touched. Since the very beginning I've been using a simple Jekyll template and added some graphics to make it more interesting and appealing. Perhaps the amount of features that the app offers is helping here. Each feature has enough depth to ensure its own slot in the broader narrative.
aleksiy123 6 days ago [-]
How do you find these underserved communities?
deze333 5 days ago [-]
From my perspective. Firstly, know yourself. Try to identify directions of knowledge you have a natural attraction towards. This phase takes time. Use the sense of curiosity as opposed to common entrepreneurial logic. What would you do even if unpaid? Do a few small projects, explore different directions before committing to something specific.
By the time you’ve identified and experimented with what makes you tick you will have already built an idea of what people discuss on forums, etc. There will be already existing solutions and incumbent providers. Don't be intimidated by them. Read what users say and how they express themselves within that domain. Very likely incumbent providers are “old style” burdened by legacy patterns. People use them because there’s no alternatives.
If at this stage you do have a genuine feeling that you can do better - supported by product vision (that's important!) - go for it. But it has to be real for you. You’ll need enough passion to last through the first year of development. If you will survive that year the chances are you will have created something genuine and there’s some real IP behind your effort. Users will recognise that.
ukuina 6 days ago [-]
Great-looking website and app. How did you decide on what becomes an IAP and what is core functionality? Why did you disable family-sharing of IAPs (or is that just an Apple quirk on iOS)?
deze333 6 days ago [-]
It grew organically.
Initially I made the app as an experiment, just wanted to see how planets rotate and align, and what makes people interested in that. That became the foundation.
Then somebody asked “can I have some extra asteroids and minor bodies added?” This became the first add-on I have introduced.
Each time I can think of an interesting feature, I think “is there enough standalone value to classify it as an add-on?”. The app is organically growing using the methodology of having the core and extensions.
Family sharing? I never really looked into that. I had maybe two requests over the years. It’s just a different kind of user base.
thomascountz 6 days ago [-]
A bit off-topic, but I have been searching extensively for exactly your Timelines app.[1] After listening to an episode of Hidden Brain, with guest Cassie Mogilner Holmes who studies the "illusion of time scarcity"[2], I've wanted to reproduce her self-reflections on where she was spending her time.
Edit: After just an hour or so, I'm inspired. Not only am I excited to use your app to track my time, but—as an app developer—I'm inspired by the user experience you've designed. I can't thank you enough for the "export to file" feature.
I would add this advice: 1) start by working on your apps on the side while working another job, 2) while working said job, save and invest. Over time this can provide the cushion necessary to jump to full time indie.
tropianhs 6 days ago [-]
This is excellent advice.
I have done side hustles for a while before jumping full indie, when I had enough runway to make me comfortable.
Some people wait to jump full time once their side income replace their salary. For me, it's a recipe to procrastinate forever
indieofone 6 days ago [-]
My strategy was interest income + indie business income. I went full time indie once my interest and dividend income was a few thousand per month.
auspex 6 days ago [-]
Just be careful of inventions assignments. If you live in the US you probably signed paperwork that says anything you invent or create is property of the company you work for.
If you signed one of these and hack on the side… successful business could be owned by your previous company.
You can always ask that they release the IP which requires the lawyers to officially sign it over to you.
Before you quit your job make sure you own it.
indieofone 6 days ago [-]
I think it would only matter for something that is quite significant. And in that case, you would probably quit long before it mattered.
saagarjha 5 days ago [-]
Careful, you can still be sued by your past employer even after you quit.
indieofone 5 days ago [-]
How can they prove when where and what. Ive never seen this happen and largely think its FUD.
saagarjha 5 days ago [-]
I mean if you have git commits from that period it’s pretty easy to track it
indieofone 4 days ago [-]
commit after hours or weekends
herval 6 days ago [-]
that's not exactly how those work (they can claim an invention if it's done during work hours, with company equipment, in the business area of operation. Might differ from state to state, but that's the gist of those contracts
spacemanspiff01 6 days ago [-]
It varies by state, what you described is California's rules, which are by far the most permissive of moonlighting.
jonas21 6 days ago [-]
Note that it's an "or", not an "and":
i.e. your employer can require you to assign the invention to them if it's done during work hours OR with company equipment OR related to the company's business.
The full text in the California labor code is here:
There’s only a few states (CA and few others) where the employer can’t claim IP developed on your own time and equipment. The other states absolutely can.
indieofone 4 days ago [-]
Most indie developers are not developing IP of interest to anyone other than the indie. Without marketing and continued development the IP is of little value.
Yes if you invent the next google in your spare time you could be in trouble. For this it’s best to get funding. At the lifestyle income level, your employer doesn’t have the time or money to waste on your passive income stream.
Obviously don’t be cavalier about it, but this will just get you fired not sued.
herval 3 days ago [-]
highly depends on your employer and your relationship to them. I've heard of cases of someone getting sued due to _an open source_ they maintained, simply out of pettiness.
indieofone 1 days ago [-]
wow
hermitcrab 6 days ago [-]
I saved up enough money to last a year and then lived off that while I developed my product full time. By the end of that year I was making close to what I made in my old job. 20 years later and I'm still working for myself.
5 days ago [-]
Lukas_Petr 6 days ago [-]
That's a good advice. For me I was doing freelancing on the side for many years, and then naturally as my app was starting to make more money, I'd decrease the amount of freelancing I was doing, and then eventually I stopped freelancing altogether.
dabinat 6 days ago [-]
I’ve had my own software business for 17 years, and a lot of this article read like my own life story.
My advice would be to create a product that YOU need and design it how you would want it to work if it was an app someone else made. Then dog-food the hell out of it.
Also, make sure not to compete directly with enormous companies because you will always lose. If an enormous company creates a feature that could Sherlock your app, find a way to pivot. Always be on your toes.
Finally, recognize the strengths you have that large companies cannot provide. For me, that is support. My customers can instantly get access to the person who wrote the software and don’t have to go through multiple tiers of support to get the correct answer. Several customers have said the support I provide is the main reason they do not use my larger, better-funded competitors.
galaxyLogic 6 days ago [-]
"What if I am not good enough?"
I just heard this quote somewhere: What is success? It's being able to do what you want to be doing.
If you're not able to do that then of course you will need to do something else. But if you are able to do it, then you are "good enough".
Lukas_Petr 6 days ago [-]
Thank you. That's a great quote. Obviously it's such an unclear question, and it stems from something deeper than just the performance of my work. The whole mental health / psychological resilience is a big piece of it, but I didn't want to overshare too much in the article (it's already super long without it).
In general, that's something that I've always tried to do in my other posts too - trying to be vulnerable and share stuff to an extent, but hopefully in a way that helps/inspires people who can relate to feeling that way.
gyomu 7 days ago [-]
OP, just a heads up that none of the "Download on the App Store" links on your main website (http://www.glimsoft.com) resolve.
Lukas_Petr 6 days ago [-]
Thank you so much! I will get that fixed asap. I don't understand how the links that were officially shortened for App Store can stop working, but somehow they did. It's unfortunate that this could've been broken for a very long time now, it's just not something I would think of periodically verifying that it's still working.
MarkSweep 6 days ago [-]
One idea for catching this sort of break in the future is monitoring the source people use to acquire your app. It looks like the App Store might support tracking which website referred people to download your app:
What about marketing? I don’t mean necessarily traditional ads but more how to get the word out if you have a good product?
I’ve personally find it easy to reach “tech enthusiasts” but much harder to penetrate towards normies who would really benefit from the product but don’t read HN, tech blogs etc.
gcheong 6 days ago [-]
You can try doing a press release, for example through PrWeb or similar, that will send your announcement to multiple outlets that might write it up if it fits their audience. It’s kind of a shotgun approach though.
hermitcrab 6 days ago [-]
I've done a few press releases for my products over the last 20 years. Unless you are already very famous or are doing something very innovative, it is almost certainly a complete waste of time and money.
veyh 6 days ago [-]
I've been trying to sneak into some relevant discussions on Twitter lately. Too early to say whether that helps at all but at least my posts haven't (yet?) been deleted as self-promotion like on Reddit.
misfitgentleman 6 days ago [-]
There’s plenty of self-promotion allowed on r/macapps.
ipaddr 6 days ago [-]
Go where the normies are and speak to them in the medium they understand.
1123581321 6 days ago [-]
If you’re working in a domain you know, use your contacts in that industry. If you’ve learned a random domain just to sell software into it, do it in a way that puts you in touch with people.
(If you’ve a mass market retail app, good luck!)
fakedang 6 days ago [-]
Consumer app? Instagram Reels and TikTok. Especially TikTok.
wahnfrieden 6 days ago [-]
Reels are friendlier to shorter form content these days
BlueTemplar 6 days ago [-]
The most important advertising step for smartphone apps is probably to put the app on the App Store / Play Store.
But of course only developer scum do that in this decade.
mfld 6 days ago [-]
Wonderful writing, thanks for sharing! I particularly like how it's staying away from over-generalizing "do this" advice while giving hints how OP overcomes some challenges of being a solo dev (e.g. therapeutic writing). May the luck be on your side :)
grayprog 6 days ago [-]
As some who started similarly as an indie developer (albeit mostly for macOS) back in 2005 and still doing it (on the side now), it's a dream and lifestyle that are very desirable for me since (similarly to the OP) I've learned that people made a living this way in the Mac world.
I left a well-paying engineering day job in 2009 while earning only $500/month on my indie apps in the hope of growing the business. The Mac/iOS developer conferences scene was great at that time ( NSConference, anyone) and I made a lot of connections and dev friends with whom I'm in contact still many years later. The dev community is still pretty good and helping.
Marketing apps has become a real hard problem these days, though, because most of the press doesn't care about apps anymore, unless they are from the big corp, or they just focus on Apple's own news and rumours.
Still, it's very fulfilling to see people who use your apps and recommend them.
jamil7 6 days ago [-]
I’m trying to relaunch my indie app which did have success getting a lot of users. But I failed to properly monetise it and the support burden and stress on top of a full time job drove me to pull it from the store. I’m attempting to relaunch with a proper paid tier. I guess my point is don’t neglect the getting paid part too long or you can also burn yourself out.
braza 6 days ago [-]
Most of the success cases for Indie Hackers comes from B2C or personal apps usage. Does someone knows great public cases related with B2B?
My impression is that in the B2B sales there’s a huge component in terms of being a corporation to give some sort of credibility.
mtlynch 6 days ago [-]
My sense is the opposite. I meet and hear about many more successful B2B founders and a lot more struggling B2C founders.
If you look at who's speaking at conferences or who's appearing on podcasts to talk about their successful business, it's almost always B2B.
Look at the schedule for the last listed Microconf: all B2B.[0] Arvid Kahl's maybe the exception, as he does more B2C stuff now, but he was there presenting about his experience with his B2B SaaS.
Hey, Podscan is still very much B2B, I just had another Enterprise subscriber a few minutes ago :D
I am actively moving further away from B2C, and even though I have a few individual users, the true power of the business shines with agencies, departments and enterprise companies.
hermitcrab 6 days ago [-]
Received wisdom in the indie developer community is that B2B is an easier way to make money than B2C.
Generally, buyers don't know if you are 1 guy in his bedroom or 100 guys in California. In my experience, they also don't care that much as long as they like the product and price (might be different for mission critical software). I am a 1-man band and I have sold software to lots of big and famous companies and organizations.
mnahkies 6 days ago [-]
I've been thinking about this a bit, and am also interested in others views of this.
Increasingly I think the way to increase your chances of success is to pick a problem space that applies to both large and small businesses, and forget about the large businesses for a long time.
Small businesses are generally going to be more open to building with you, taking a risk, accepting that you don't yet have SOC2, etc. Often they are in a similar place maturity wise so they are (more likely to be) understanding
I'd love to hear others views on how to approach this though - most of my ideas for side projects are inspired by friction/frustration I'm encountering in the workplace, and therefore b2b. Even with targeting small businesses I'm still uncertain where the bar is, and how to balance financial risk when looking for product market fit in a bootstrapped/side gig fashion.
I don't yet have anything ready to attempt to sell, but I'm thinking entrepreneur meetups or something might be a good route - assuming I've built something that solves an acute problem experienced early in a companies life might be the best way to go
conception 6 days ago [-]
I think you should incorporate regardless for b2b but I know a couple of one person corporations that deal with fund accounting tools. It’s a bit niche and the finance tools are few and far between.
herval 6 days ago [-]
you probably hear a lot about the B2C ones because they keep blabbing about it (many of the big "indie hackers" are known to lie and pump their numbers). Most B2B businesses a) don't _need_ consumer street cred and b) don't want to attract unnecessary competition. There's tons and tons of very lucrative B2B micro-apps out there - I'd imagine way more than successful B2C.
mdbauman 6 days ago [-]
> Truly understand your motivation
Sad to say I've only recently come to this realization. It applies to pretty much anything, whether it's building a business or exercise or learning to draw. And if your motivation can't sustain you long-term, change your perspective so that you have a motivation that will let you see it through. "Make something cool and get rich" doesn't take you very far once you step back for a moment.
zerop 6 days ago [-]
With the current advancement of AI in code generation, freelancers and Indies are going to have different trajectory than ever before
indigoabstract 6 days ago [-]
I love this, thank you for sharing your story, and congratulations on achieving your dream at 31!
Lukas_Petr 6 days ago [-]
Thank you so much!
smallhands 6 days ago [-]
Congratulations,where can I
Find machine learning communities online
lukasb 6 days ago [-]
He mentions that making a living from an indie app is like winning the lottery - that would make it much more unlikely than having a reasonably successful startup. Why is a successful indie app harder?
ipaddr 6 days ago [-]
Having a successful startup is like winning the lottery too. Getting funded if you are not in a circle of reputation is like winning the lottery. Getting into ycombinator is like winning a lottery then you get to win another.
Any business is like a lottery.
But some have better odds like setting up a plumbing service in a growing underserved town.
lukasb 6 days ago [-]
Well, no, winning a lottery is one in a million. A successful startup - assuming you get funding - is more like one in ten (that's not exact but no more than an order of magnitude off.)
pavlov 6 days ago [-]
There’s also the time and effort that you need to invest.
You can buy a lottery ticket every week and it costs $2 (just guessing — I don’t buy them). With that minimum spending over three years, you get 150 shots. You paid $300, but no time or effort.
A typical startup takes three years, and you pay for it in both real money and opportunity cost.
Let’s say your chance of getting funded is 1:100 (assuming you don’t have an existing network). And then your chances of success are 1:30 (a more realistic figure for first-time founders than one in ten, IMO).
That means the odds are 1:3000 with great personal investment, versus the lottery where in the same timeframe you get to take 150 shots at a 1:1,000,000 chance at no personal cost.
Looking at these numbers, it does feel a lot like lottery.
Of course I’m downplaying the career growth value of a startup. You learn nothing from the lottery, but going through the startup grind offers experience that you can’t get elsewhere.
lukasb 6 days ago [-]
Let's say I grant (though I don't believe it) that a startup is also a lottery ticket. What are the factors that make an indie app a lottery ticket? That's my question. Is it just that, absent the funding gate startups have, that there's a lot of competition?
pavlov 6 days ago [-]
Apps as a platform are at a disadvantage. The bar for entry is roughly as low as creating a website, but for users it’s a higher bar to install an app.
Yet the app doesn’t offer any intrinsic advantage in discovery or marketing over a website. (You’re not going to get any organic traffic from app stores, unless maybe if you have contacts at Apple who can get your app into their promotions — unlikely for an indie dev publishing their first app.)
So if you’re making an app, you need to be sure that users in your niche will see enough benefit that they’ll want to install an app when your competitor is probably just a website.
mnahkies 6 days ago [-]
This is an interesting take, because whilst I agree, generally what I've heard from the market is "we want an app not a web app/pwa"
Whilst I'd rather not have to install <random overly specific app> to go to a sporting event or whatnot, that's the reality, and also generally what I hear businesses want.
Is my perspective just different as a techie or are businesses misreading what consumers want?
fhd2 6 days ago [-]
More risk, more reward - it's usually that simple. That last example is closer to the security of a job than the lottery I'd say :) The likelihood of getting fired from a job is probably not that much lower than a plumbing business not working in an underserved area.
I've built a pretty low risk business to get cash flow going and am starting to tackle more high risk stuff. There's safe strategies to play the lottery in a way where you can afford to lose.
manx 6 days ago [-]
Can anyone recommend good learning material for the non-tech part? I'm good at building stuff, but not on the other parts.
In my experience, building user facing products requires understanding of user interaction and general human affinities. In the indie developer context, the knowledge of making the app “relatable” is often more important than underlying engineering fits. I have shared some ideas in the discussion at the top of this page (the Time Nomad discussion)…
LVB 6 days ago [-]
I'll say, this has been the worst part of my little indie dev adventure.
I knew I'd be uncomfortable with a lot of it, but I also didn't realize how flat out bad I am at it. I've spent so much time fiddling with keywords, refreshing splash pages for app stores, making a good landing page, buying ads, adjusting paywalls, etc. But the uptake has been depressingly low. A few people downloaded the app, but not only have I had no paying customers and no reviews, no one has even tried the sync aspect of the app that I built a backend for! I really misjudged how little attention it would get in the app store, and how rapidly they'd bail from it.
My wife and I use the app. I find that code improvements bring some satisfaction even if there is no external ROI, whereas marketing type efforts are just a drag.
IIRC quite a large percentage of apps in the Mac apps store have 0 downloads. You definitely can't rely on the app store to do your marketing for you.
LVB 6 days ago [-]
I fell victim to the line offered by certain indie devs along the line of, "Sure, it's hard to get a big piece of the pie, but with a BILLION users even a small piece is significant."
I'm seriously considering a simple web app for my next project. Yeah the UX will be worse, but I'll completely bypass trying to appease Apple, and it will get into the world much quicker, mostly likely. If it's a dud, I might as well fail fast.
hermitcrab 6 days ago [-]
If you rely on the Apple app store, you have a single point of failure and have to jump through whatever hoops Apple decides. Which rather calls into question just how "indie" you really are.
BTW it is possible to sell Mac apps and not use the Mac app store (I do). But I sell for Windows as well.
cageface 6 days ago [-]
Have you found the extra work to also sell on windows to have been justified by the sales on that platform?
hermitcrab 6 days ago [-]
Windows is a bigger market. So I think it is more a question of 'is the extra work to sell on Mac justified'.
It is hard to give a precise answer, because:
-I don't know how the sales exactly split between Windows and Mac (my licence covers both), but I have an idea from downloads.
-It is more work to develop cross platform.
-Cross platform development always results in some compromises.
But, on the whole, I am happy that I choose Windows + Mac, rather than just choosing one or the other.
hermitcrab 5 days ago [-]
Should also mention that I am very experienced at cross-platform development.
LVB 5 days ago [-]
What framework did you settle on?
indieofone 5 days ago [-]
I know it to be Qt
hermitcrab 5 days ago [-]
Yes, Qt and C++.
rubymamis 5 days ago [-]
Fellow indie Qt developer here, curious to learn more about your apps.
Looks cools. Note taking/outliners/productivity is a super competitive market, but I guess you know that already.
I'm a bit confused by the pricing. How is a personal license potentially more expensive than a commercial license?
rubymamis 4 days ago [-]
> How is a personal license potentially more expensive than a commercial license?
What do you mean? The personal license is billed at $4 a month paid monthly or $24 paid yearly. The commercial license is $24 per year, per user.
hermitcrab 4 days ago [-]
If you pay for the personal licence monthly, it is more expensive than commercial ($48 per year vs $24 per year). If you pay yearly they are the same price and the features are identical. I was confused.
rubymamis 4 days ago [-]
Yes, it's to incentivize buying the yearly plan. I'm thinking of getting rid of the Commercial license, tho, not much traction there.
hermitcrab 4 days ago [-]
The more complicated and confusing the buying page, the more people are going to hit the back button.
I put "Buying licenses for more than one user? Contact us". Then I can find out a bit more, send them a quote, negotiate discounts etc.
rubymamis 4 days ago [-]
That's very helpful, thanks! Is there anywhere I can keep in touch with you? Discord? X? Email? I got some of my social links in my profile.
That's awesome. Glad to see successful Qt desktop apps in the wild. I'm working on: https://get-notes.com
And yes, that's true. But Qt can differentiate among the web apps that try to integrate into the OS (aka Electron apps).
indieofone 5 days ago [-]
I have done OK on the Mac App Store, but I can tell you that selling two or three copies in 1 day is enough to make you top 5 in the Education Category.
hermitcrab 5 days ago [-]
I'm surprised to hear that, given the size of the market.
Thanks! Clearly a lot of dev work, even sharing scores on the web. Sorry to hear it hasn’t been a success.
ozim 6 days ago [-]
I don’t like part where equation is „do your creative thing but not earn much” or „be a drone but earn easy money”.
That’s not true. To thrive in corporate you still have to be creative to navigate all the BS plus you have to do whatever you have to actually do.
Not to downplay solopreneurs as they have their own challenges but still…
justanotheratom 6 days ago [-]
Thank you for sharing. Can you tell us more about this:
"He told me about a small group of successful indie developers that he was a part of and alluded that maybe once they are looking for more members, I could try applying to join them. Half a year later, I applied and I got in."
bn-l 6 days ago [-]
This is a very generic list that reads like a ChatGPT “advice for ____”
14 days ago [-]
croisillon 6 days ago [-]
@OP: surprised to see glimsoft doesn't have https?
benoau 6 days ago [-]
> Some lease company somewhere is getting data on wherever I go.
Quite frustrating to figure out who too, unless you can find some debug ports or an SD card holding configuration.
I’ll be the jerk here: I’ve stopped reading articles that include the word "lesson" unless they provide tangible impact metrics—like how much money you actually made as an indie dev. I have skimmed the article and to me it is generic. It might sound harsh, but that’s the reality. Hacker News has become nothing more than a launchpad for new apps and services. These posts are often just veiled advertisements, like yet another "Show HN: Timelines.app."
indigoabstract 4 days ago [-]
I think he has been open and honest about his journey. It's much better to look at these articles for inspiration and to know that if others have done it, than so can you, if you want it bad enough. Or at least more than your present situation.
We're all different and each must find their own way. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't help it he would spill out all the details for you, because what works for others will not work for you and vice versa.
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I have created my major app, Time Nomad [1], out of pure curiosity. Don’t laugh, scientific minds… I wanted to see how astronomy and astrology coexisted for hundreds of years without all that new age nonsense that corrupted the ancient discipline.
So I made it different. It’s more of a toolkit to calculate and grok movements of celestial bodies and find moments of specific alignments. That is pure fun. I have enjoyed maths and computational challenges, while the users surprised me by liking the app’s ability to give quick answers about what (and equally importantly when) is happening in the sky — from an astronomical standpoint. No voodoo language needed, just pure geometry.
Why am I saying all this? Taking an old idea and giving it a new modern spin can win hearts. There are communities of people who are open to support that.
[1] https://timenomad.app
It’s up to the user to devise their own interpretations. I do not do any interpretations, and that’s by choice. Pure calculations.
And what I have discovered is that all “astrologers” are different. Some are into glossy magazine style horoscopes. Others are more interested in a kind of “celestial statistics” — how and when things align, how movements create harmonics, etc. There’s a rich field of mathematical thinking if one wishes for that.
Everybody gets their own piece of cake. I am happy with what I do, they are happy with the toolkit provided. One can’t judge a pocket calculator for how it may be used.
Funky feature requests? Surprisingly not that often. The reason is perhaps the intent behind the app. It doesn’t classify itself as a “crystal ball”, it’s a calculator. So I stick to what is called “classical astrology”, ie something borderline between astronomy, philosophy and mathematics. Pure foundational basics.
A chiropractor uses maps of human bodies to understand where things are, even though they use the information differently than doctors and surgeons, both groups base their understanding on the same facts.
I'm guessing the same can apply in more areas than medicine too.
Chiropractors base their knowledge on secret messages from a ghost [1].
[1]: https://nationalpost.com/health/the-first-chiropractor-was-a...
But let’s be honest: it isn’t scientific in the least, no matter what modern practitioners have gussied it up with.
My perception is that there is value in sticking to reality. Who am I to judge the users? They are free to interpret numbers as they wish. Just look at the big data. The numbers are real, yet interpretations and conclusions can be anything - the interpreter is inherently biased and constrained by their own field of view, political and employment context. Not that dissimilar from astrology, in essence.
Why astrology in this case? My interest has always been in the analysis of movement of planetary bodies. I like to see and understand how things move out there in space. There is a beauty in that, for me.
I don’t think I’d pass any space company interview, it’s too elitist. So I thought, hmm astrology…. but why not? I’d get to play with celestial mechanics. And the users can use it for what they wish. After all, in the past, astrologers always were astronomers and mathematicians in the first place. Perhaps there’s a mysticism in the sky that allows to be equally scientific and inspired? This is the case where belief isn’t that important. What’s more important is to be moved by what one does.
By the time you’ve identified and experimented with what makes you tick you will have already built an idea of what people discuss on forums, etc. There will be already existing solutions and incumbent providers. Don't be intimidated by them. Read what users say and how they express themselves within that domain. Very likely incumbent providers are “old style” burdened by legacy patterns. People use them because there’s no alternatives.
If at this stage you do have a genuine feeling that you can do better - supported by product vision (that's important!) - go for it. But it has to be real for you. You’ll need enough passion to last through the first year of development. If you will survive that year the chances are you will have created something genuine and there’s some real IP behind your effort. Users will recognise that.
Initially I made the app as an experiment, just wanted to see how planets rotate and align, and what makes people interested in that. That became the foundation.
Then somebody asked “can I have some extra asteroids and minor bodies added?” This became the first add-on I have introduced.
Each time I can think of an interesting feature, I think “is there enough standalone value to classify it as an add-on?”. The app is organically growing using the methodology of having the core and extensions.
Family sharing? I never really looked into that. I had maybe two requests over the years. It’s just a different kind of user base.
Edit: After just an hour or so, I'm inspired. Not only am I excited to use your app to track my time, but—as an app developer—I'm inspired by the user experience you've designed. I can't thank you enough for the "export to file" feature.
[1]: https://timelines.app/
[2]: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/taking-control-of-your-time/
If you signed one of these and hack on the side… successful business could be owned by your previous company.
You can always ask that they release the IP which requires the lawyers to officially sign it over to you.
Before you quit your job make sure you own it.
i.e. your employer can require you to assign the invention to them if it's done during work hours OR with company equipment OR related to the company's business.
The full text in the California labor code is here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
Yes if you invent the next google in your spare time you could be in trouble. For this it’s best to get funding. At the lifestyle income level, your employer doesn’t have the time or money to waste on your passive income stream.
Obviously don’t be cavalier about it, but this will just get you fired not sued.
My advice would be to create a product that YOU need and design it how you would want it to work if it was an app someone else made. Then dog-food the hell out of it.
Also, make sure not to compete directly with enormous companies because you will always lose. If an enormous company creates a feature that could Sherlock your app, find a way to pivot. Always be on your toes.
Finally, recognize the strengths you have that large companies cannot provide. For me, that is support. My customers can instantly get access to the person who wrote the software and don’t have to go through multiple tiers of support to get the correct answer. Several customers have said the support I provide is the main reason they do not use my larger, better-funded competitors.
I just heard this quote somewhere: What is success? It's being able to do what you want to be doing.
If you're not able to do that then of course you will need to do something else. But if you are able to do it, then you are "good enough".
In general, that's something that I've always tried to do in my other posts too - trying to be vulnerable and share stuff to an extent, but hopefully in a way that helps/inspires people who can relate to feeling that way.
https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/view-app-...
I’ve personally find it easy to reach “tech enthusiasts” but much harder to penetrate towards normies who would really benefit from the product but don’t read HN, tech blogs etc.
(If you’ve a mass market retail app, good luck!)
But of course only developer scum do that in this decade.
I left a well-paying engineering day job in 2009 while earning only $500/month on my indie apps in the hope of growing the business. The Mac/iOS developer conferences scene was great at that time ( NSConference, anyone) and I made a lot of connections and dev friends with whom I'm in contact still many years later. The dev community is still pretty good and helping.
Marketing apps has become a real hard problem these days, though, because most of the press doesn't care about apps anymore, unless they are from the big corp, or they just focus on Apple's own news and rumours.
Still, it's very fulfilling to see people who use your apps and recommend them.
My impression is that in the B2B sales there’s a huge component in terms of being a corporation to give some sort of credibility.
If you look at who's speaking at conferences or who's appearing on podcasts to talk about their successful business, it's almost always B2B.
Look at the schedule for the last listed Microconf: all B2B.[0] Arvid Kahl's maybe the exception, as he does more B2C stuff now, but he was there presenting about his experience with his B2B SaaS.
[0] https://vault.microconf.com/watch/americas-23
I am actively moving further away from B2C, and even though I have a few individual users, the true power of the business shines with agencies, departments and enterprise companies.
Generally, buyers don't know if you are 1 guy in his bedroom or 100 guys in California. In my experience, they also don't care that much as long as they like the product and price (might be different for mission critical software). I am a 1-man band and I have sold software to lots of big and famous companies and organizations.
Increasingly I think the way to increase your chances of success is to pick a problem space that applies to both large and small businesses, and forget about the large businesses for a long time.
Small businesses are generally going to be more open to building with you, taking a risk, accepting that you don't yet have SOC2, etc. Often they are in a similar place maturity wise so they are (more likely to be) understanding
I'd love to hear others views on how to approach this though - most of my ideas for side projects are inspired by friction/frustration I'm encountering in the workplace, and therefore b2b. Even with targeting small businesses I'm still uncertain where the bar is, and how to balance financial risk when looking for product market fit in a bootstrapped/side gig fashion.
I don't yet have anything ready to attempt to sell, but I'm thinking entrepreneur meetups or something might be a good route - assuming I've built something that solves an acute problem experienced early in a companies life might be the best way to go
Sad to say I've only recently come to this realization. It applies to pretty much anything, whether it's building a business or exercise or learning to draw. And if your motivation can't sustain you long-term, change your perspective so that you have a motivation that will let you see it through. "Make something cool and get rich" doesn't take you very far once you step back for a moment.
Any business is like a lottery. But some have better odds like setting up a plumbing service in a growing underserved town.
You can buy a lottery ticket every week and it costs $2 (just guessing — I don’t buy them). With that minimum spending over three years, you get 150 shots. You paid $300, but no time or effort.
A typical startup takes three years, and you pay for it in both real money and opportunity cost.
Let’s say your chance of getting funded is 1:100 (assuming you don’t have an existing network). And then your chances of success are 1:30 (a more realistic figure for first-time founders than one in ten, IMO).
That means the odds are 1:3000 with great personal investment, versus the lottery where in the same timeframe you get to take 150 shots at a 1:1,000,000 chance at no personal cost.
Looking at these numbers, it does feel a lot like lottery.
Of course I’m downplaying the career growth value of a startup. You learn nothing from the lottery, but going through the startup grind offers experience that you can’t get elsewhere.
Yet the app doesn’t offer any intrinsic advantage in discovery or marketing over a website. (You’re not going to get any organic traffic from app stores, unless maybe if you have contacts at Apple who can get your app into their promotions — unlikely for an indie dev publishing their first app.)
So if you’re making an app, you need to be sure that users in your niche will see enough benefit that they’ll want to install an app when your competitor is probably just a website.
Whilst I'd rather not have to install <random overly specific app> to go to a sporting event or whatnot, that's the reality, and also generally what I hear businesses want.
Is my perspective just different as a techie or are businesses misreading what consumers want?
I've built a pretty low risk business to get cash flow going and am starting to tackle more high risk stuff. There's safe strategies to play the lottery in a way where you can afford to lose.
Including a list of books at https://successfulsoftware.net/reading-list/
I knew I'd be uncomfortable with a lot of it, but I also didn't realize how flat out bad I am at it. I've spent so much time fiddling with keywords, refreshing splash pages for app stores, making a good landing page, buying ads, adjusting paywalls, etc. But the uptake has been depressingly low. A few people downloaded the app, but not only have I had no paying customers and no reviews, no one has even tried the sync aspect of the app that I built a backend for! I really misjudged how little attention it would get in the app store, and how rapidly they'd bail from it.
My wife and I use the app. I find that code improvements bring some satisfaction even if there is no external ROI, whereas marketing type efforts are just a drag.
There are now more than 2 million apps in the store: https://42matters.com/ios-apple-app-store-statistics-and-tre...
I'm seriously considering a simple web app for my next project. Yeah the UX will be worse, but I'll completely bypass trying to appease Apple, and it will get into the world much quicker, mostly likely. If it's a dud, I might as well fail fast.
BTW it is possible to sell Mac apps and not use the Mac app store (I do). But I sell for Windows as well.
It is hard to give a precise answer, because:
-I don't know how the sales exactly split between Windows and Mac (my licence covers both), but I have an idea from downloads.
-It is more work to develop cross platform.
-Cross platform development always results in some compromises.
But, on the whole, I am happy that I choose Windows + Mac, rather than just choosing one or the other.
https://www.easydatatransform.com
https://www.hyperplan.com
https://www.perfecttableplan.com
Note that while there still is a market for desktop software, it is shrinking. Many Indie developers now sell web-based products (SaaS).
Looks cools. Note taking/outliners/productivity is a super competitive market, but I guess you know that already.
I'm a bit confused by the pricing. How is a personal license potentially more expensive than a commercial license?
What do you mean? The personal license is billed at $4 a month paid monthly or $24 paid yearly. The commercial license is $24 per year, per user.
I put "Buying licenses for more than one user? Contact us". Then I can find out a bit more, send them a quote, negotiate discounts etc.
My email is at: https://successfulsoftware.net/about/
Also: https://bsky.app/profile/andybrice.bsky.social
And yes, that's true. But Qt can differentiate among the web apps that try to integrate into the OS (aka Electron apps).
That’s not true. To thrive in corporate you still have to be creative to navigate all the BS plus you have to do whatever you have to actually do.
Not to downplay solopreneurs as they have their own challenges but still…
"He told me about a small group of successful indie developers that he was a part of and alluded that maybe once they are looking for more members, I could try applying to join them. Half a year later, I applied and I got in."
Quite frustrating to figure out who too, unless you can find some debug ports or an SD card holding configuration.
We're all different and each must find their own way. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't help it he would spill out all the details for you, because what works for others will not work for you and vice versa.