Hello everyone,
I'm a programmer with 10 years of experience. Earlier this year, I decided to quit my job and start an online business by developing apps. So far, I have created 5 apps and 1 website, but all of them failed except for the latest one, FluentPal.
I began developing FluentPal in early August. In September, I introduced FluentPal on a local forum, and offered free usage codes for people to try. By the end of the month, I earned $2 from a one-month subscription, but the subscriber soon unsubscribed, possibly due to the app's bugs.
In October, I made significant updates to the app. As I'm not skilled in graphics, I sought advice from several designers, particularly a renowned designer and also my close friend, who consulted on the app's UI/UX. I also fixed many bugs. That month, I earned $50.
In November, I submitted the tool to an AI directory and added features like conversation creation, mistakes correction, and an AI teacher. Most importantly, I created a landing page for the app. Currently, most users prefer the unlimited package, and I have customers from Vietnam, India, Thailand, Finland, and other countries.
Lessons learned from app development:
- Thoroughly test the app in various ways to avoid bugs that frustrate users.
- Have a landing page to introduce the app.
- Offer a lifetime subscription option, as about 70% of users prefer paying once over monthly payments.
As of now, after 5 months of development, the app's revenue is $388.
You can connect with me on X: https://twitter.com/davidtranwd
My first (and only visible) app on the Play Store gives a simple fixture list for my football club that is displayed in a home screen widget. I find it useful even though there are apps out there where I can find them. It solves a unique problem to me and a few hundred users agree. I've never made a penny from it (nor do I intend to), it was always just to give me a Play Store presence and to understand the process of uploading (which is a PITA TBF.)
What I learned is your point about testing. No matter how much you idiot proof an app, there will be one idiot that will break it. They also won't use your app the way it's intended. My bad because I had a null pointer that crashed for most of my users, it was totally my fault but as I was using my app the way it was intended, I didn't get the crash.
I'm a window cleaner and I've developed my own software for recording cleans, payments and reschedules work (it even prints receipts!) This is my main side project (although I have loads!) I'm quite proud of it because it works brilliantly and solves my own problem but again you'll never know what idiot will break it. I've just purchased the domain for my landing page and now that is a problem I'll have to solve because the web hosting I am paying for won't cover new domains purchased and now I have an extra problem I never knew about.
Ugg! I get ya about lifetime subscription. I'd prefer a yearly recurring subscription but I once paid for Holdem Manager v2 which was lifetime and 3 years later they brought out Holdem Manager v3 and stopped supporting v2 so that could be an option.
My view for side projects, create value for yourself and your users and don't worry about making money. That will come when the value is recognised by your users.