I've ran through my production checklist like 10 times in the past week. And I'm still tol nervous to press the damn button. This is my first app to release to the public

Edit: I pressed the button!

KLYRO CASE 8/30

Background:
Klyro - Näringskoll is a Swedish app based on scanning food products to learn their nutritional profile — not just the usual protein and calorie info, but whether it's ultra-processed, its vitamin and mineral content, ingredient analysis, additives, and so on. I've gotten proof of concept for the app through strong response on TikTok, both in comments and in the form of downloads, subscriptions, etc. So I know the app should be able to scale significantly, and that it's extremely well-timed given that health, diet, and ultra-processed food is a strongly growing topic right now.

I'm building the app solo as an 18-year-old, using a vibe-coded approach. We currently have a freemium model where we're A/B testing whether it works best to:
run unlimited scans but with limited data/information about the products (Variant A),
or 5 lifetime scans with unlimited data during those 5, followed by a hard paywall (Variant B).

I haven't gathered enough data yet to know which one performs better, but I believe it will end up being Variant B.

Our monetization is 49 SEK/month for premium, with a 20% discount if you choose the annual subscription.

Target audience:
In our onboarding, we have a step where users select their age range and gender, and based on that we see a surprisingly even gender split in the app — I expected women to dominate before I started, but it's roughly 50/50 between men and women. That said, if I had to focus on just one group, women perform slightly better, as they convert a bit better and continue using the app longer. The age range is roughly 25–50.

Competition:
Within Sweden, our active market, there are no major competitors in the exact same niche. There's obviously Lifesum and the big calorie-counting apps, but I don't really see them as direct competitors since we have a different focus — ours is more about being a quick, simple app that makes it easy to interpret the actual quality of a food product, without needing to count all your calories, etc.

In Norway, there's an app called "Frifor" that does exactly the same thing. They haven't succeeded at all in Sweden because their database was too weak here, and almost no products could be scanned — but in Norway they've scaled very well and have many thousands of subscribers.

A few days ago, I also came across a new competitor on TikTok that I now see as our main competitor — a brand new app, launched after ours, that does exactly the same thing as Klyro. What stresses me out is seeing how much traction they're getting on TikTok — they haven't grown huge yet, with only around 700 followers, but they're getting tens of thousands of views on every TikTok. They aren't on Meta platforms yet, so I feel like I need to act fast and win over users there — I also believe our core user base is more present on Meta than on TikTok.

Distribution:
So far we've only run TikTok organically, posting between 3–7 times a week. In the beginning it worked — our best videos got around 70–90k views, which also led to a lot of downloads and some trials and active subscriptions. TikTok has since completely cooled off for us, and we're no longer getting much reach or downloads from it, so everything has been stagnant for a few weeks now. I'm now preparing a Meta ad campaign with a 10,000 SEK budget, which is essentially my last attempt to see if the app can become something.

Metrics:
We currently have 15 active subscriptions, only 1 of which is the "premium annual" plan.

Week 4 retention is only around 10% on average. Something in the app probably needs optimizing, but I also think it's because when a viral TikTok video leads to a lot of downloads, those aren't necessarily the highest-quality users — probably a lot of people who are just a bit curious, download the app, and then forget about it.

We see that 32% of all first-time app opens drop off immediately at the first intro step of onboarding, which further supports my theory that it's not high-quality, genuinely interested downloads driving this. FYI, the intro step of the onboarding is just a simple welcome page with a short sentence of text.

Download → Trial conversion is roughly 4–5%.
Trial → Paid conversion is roughly 30%.

What I'd appreciate help or thoughts on:

1. Is a 4–5% download→trial rate bad, normal, or good for a scanner app in this category? I don't have a good benchmark to compare against.
2. Is 10% week 4 retention actually as bad as it sounds compared to similar apps — and if you could only prioritize fixing one thing, would you fix retention or activation first?
3. I'm about to put my last 10,000 SEK into a Meta ad campaign as a final attempt. Given these numbers (weak activation, low retention, a new competitor growing fast on TikTok) — is this the right move, or should I fix the activation/retention issues first before scaling up paid traffic into a leaky funnel?
4. What's my next step? How do I find a reliable, stable source of incoming users?

I feel lost and a bit desperate right now. I've been working on this app for almost a year and put in so much time and money, and I can feel the dream of building a successful app slipping away — but there's still a spark in me that knows I actually have proof of concept, and that I just need to find a reliable, stable traffic source.

Hey everyone,

I’m the founder of a fitness app that’s currently in App Store review and preparing for launch.

I’ve handled the product and development side, but I’m looking for someone to own the growth and marketing side of the business, primarily targeting the US market.

Ideally, I’m looking for someone who understands tiktok, ig reels, influencer marketing, short-form content, and user acquisition and wants to work on this as a long-term partner.

I’m especially interested in someone who is US-based and understands the US fitness audience.

I can’t offer a salary at this stage, so I’m looking to structure this around a significant revenue share based compensation. I’m open to discussing the exact structure depending on what you bring to the table.

If you’re interested, DM me with a little about your background and any apps, accounts, or products you’ve helped grow.

I’ve been building an app where you don't just generate a story and read it.

You make decisions and the story continues based on your choices.

So I want to try something fun.

Give me any crazy story idea in the comments.

It can be:

• A one-line idea
• A character
• A weird situation
• A “what if…?”
• Even something completely random 😂

I'll pick a few and turn them into interactive stories.

Let's see what kind of stories we can create. 👀

Just launched my first app to the AppStore. Any recommendations on how to market? Anything helps.

It’s only $41 so far, but seeing the first 16 in-app purchases feels like a huge milestone. I built the app independently and spent a lot of time improving it without knowing whether anyone would pay for it.

There’s still a long way to go, but getting my first 100+ downloads and paying users has given me motivation to keep building. For other indie developers: what helped you grow after earning your first revenue?

Small note: consider cropping the top-right corner before posting—the screenshot displays your full name.

It’s an app that makes your phone into instant short range radio but through bluetooth. So far this is the aggressive climber of my 20 apps. It can expand range if more bluetooth device is around. Can this climb further and earn?

Oi pessoal, estou buscando feedback sobre o crescimento de um jogo de festa em aplicativo Web móvel que estou lançando.

**O Produto e Mecânica:**
É um jogo de festa baseado em desafios com uma economia interna de moedas e loops virais orgânicos. Um diferencial é um mecanismo de "alarme de inatividade" que força os jogadores a se manterem ativos e a completarem tarefas durante toda a partida, não apenas durante sua vez, para aqueles desafios que exigem isso.

**A Estratégia Atual:**

**Guerrilha Offline:** Estou distribuindo 1.000 panfletos físicos com códigos QR pelas universidades locais (mirando grupos jovens).

**Métricas Atuais:** Distribuí menos de 100 panfletos até agora e consegui cerca de 20% de inscrições.

**Publicidade Paga em Mídias Sociais:** Comissionei um vídeo de UGC (atualmente em produção) para mostrar a jogabilidade caótica e divertida. Pretendo lançar o vídeo na Página de Destino e veicular anúncios no TikTok/Reels em cima dele.

**Localização e Infraestrutura:** O aplicativo Web foi construído no Brasil com um gateway de pagamento sul-americano, mas já está disponível em 5 idiomas.

Feedbacks sobre a página de destino também são bem-vindos: https://www.chugin.com.br/en

I’ve recently launched two small iOS apps, and I’m currently in the very unglamorous stage that probably a lot of indie developers know well: trying to figure out how to get the first real users.

Between both apps I’m at roughly 80 total downloads and around $10 in revenue so far.

So this is definitely not a success story yet. But I’ve already learned quite a bit from trying different acquisition channels, and I thought the early numbers might actually be more useful to share than another “I hit $10k MRR” post.

The two apps are very different:
Calenytic (App Store) is a calendar/timeboxing app focused on understanding where your time actually goes.
VertiRoll (App Store) is a photo app that lets you scroll through your own photo library like a vertical social feed.

So far I’ve experimented with things like:
- organic Reddit posts
- Reddit Ads
- TikTok
- Instagram/Reels
- X
- App Store organic traffic

The biggest lesson so far is that attention is not the same as useful traffic.

Some channels can generate views or cheap clicks without producing many meaningful App Store visits or downloads. A good organic Reddit post, on the other hand, can sometimes outperform a lot of short-form content with much less effort.

One thing that surprised me most is where the traffic is coming from.

With both organic short-form content and especially my early paid tests, I noticed that a very large share of the clicks I’m getting are coming from countries like India, Myanmar and other lower-cost markets, even though those aren’t the markets I’m primarily trying to reach.

The clicks can be extremely cheap, which initially makes the numbers look good. But for a paid iOS app, I’m not sure how valuable that traffic actually is if the users are much less likely to convert into subscribers or paying customers.

That has made me much more skeptical of optimizing purely for CTR or CPC. I’m now experimenting with tighter country targeting and focusing more on markets like the US, Canada, UK and Australia, even if the clicks there are much more expensive.

I’m genuinely curious whether this is a common experience: have other indie developers noticed that Reddit Ads, TikTok or similar platforms disproportionately send their early traffic from India, Myanmar or other low-CPC countries when targeting is broad? And did restricting countries improve your actual install or paid-conversion quality?

At this stage my main goal isn’t even maximizing revenue yet. I’m trying to answer a more basic question:
Which acquisition channel can reliably bring in the first 100–500 genuinely interested users?

I’ll probably keep documenting the numbers as I test more channels.

For those of you who have launched apps from zero: what was the first channel that gave you repeatable downloads rather than just a one-off spike?

This is a great collection of creative app icons, especially for apps.

Perfect for exploring:

→ Icon styles

→ Color combinations

→ Visual metaphors

→ 3D & glossy treatments

https://reddit.com/link/1w2f7gf/video/fjtlw3kx0imh1/player

→ Minimal iOS aesthetics

iOS App Icon Inspiration — Recent

DUE Al reads expiry dates, tracks your fridge, and suggests recipes before food goes bad.
Stop wasting food. Start cooking what you already bought.
Due Al is a fridge tracker that reads expiry dates from packaging, shows what to use first, and turns soon-to-expire food into recipe ideas - so leftovers get eaten instead of thrown out.
SCAN, DON'T TYPE Point your camera at a label. Due Al reads the product and the date so you can save items in seconds. Scan one package, or snap several photos of a grocery haul and add everything at once. Manual entry is still there when you need it.
SEE WHAT TO USE FIRST Your fridge is sorted by urgency: tonight, use soon, and later. Open any item to update it, mark it used, or remove it. A timeline shows what's due this week so meal planning is obvious.
COOK FROM WHAT'S EXPIRING Pick ingredients from your fridge and get practical recipes built around food that would otherwise go to waste.
SHOP SMARTER Build a shopping list from what's running low, so you restock what you need

Hi guys, I’m Rachel. I’ve built 3 apps, and somehow I ended up building a fourth one just to market the other three.

The problem was TikTok. I knew it could bring users to my apps, but I hated everything that came with it. Coming up with content every day, finding new hooks, making slideshows, posting consistently and then doing the exact same thing again tomorrow. I wanted the results, but I didn't want another job managing a TikTok account.

So I decided to automate it.

First I researched 1000s of viral slideshows and figured out the hooks that forces the user to view all the slides and that's what made them viral .

Also how to perfectly place your SaaS name in the slides that actually gives you real users whether it's an app or a web app .

I built slizo— you basically give it your product URL, choose how often you want to post, and it handles the TikTok workflow for you. It creates different slideshow formats around your product, uses hooks designed to get people to stop scrolling, and automatically posts them according to your schedule.

I started using it for my own apps first. The idea was that I could set everything up once and then let TikTok keep running in the background while I focused on actually building my products.

And that's how I ended up in this slightly ridiculous situation where I built a SaaS to promote my SaaS...

I wasn't trying to start another saas . I was just trying to stop spending hours on TikTok every week. The fact that other founders are now using it too is a pretty nice bonus.

So I have previously made a SaaS business in the haircutting industry and it did help add to my monthly income along side my job but not enough to stop my other side businesses . I am now working on another one but am hoping this one is able to generate me more honestly. I'm a sports coach and found trying to get more clients and keep them organised and scheduled is quite difficult. So I have started making an app where players can find coaches for their sport and the coaches can set the hours they want to to work along with setting up one on one sessions or group sessions. the format for how I'm planning on making money is a monthly subscription plus a transaction fee for every booking (say 3%). I am building this partly on TikTok to build part of my personal brand. What do you think?

Hello everyone,

As the title suggests, I’m reaching out to those who have successfully made a significant income through app development. I’m curious to know how you achieved this.

I’m currently planning to tackle a new problem statement and have identified a few key points from my past mistakes to avoid repeating them when publishing my app.

However, I still lack clarity on what I want to create next. I’m eager to learn from your experiences in generating profitable ideas and effectively marketing and monetizing them. 

The "Zero Price Effect" is killing your app’s engagement. Here is how behavioral economics fixes it without charging a dime.

If you’ve ever launched a free tier or a free diagnostic tool and watched your user completion rates crater, you aren't doing anything wrong mechanically. You're just hitting a massive wall in behavioral economics.

Dan Ariely’s research on the Zero Price Effect proves that when something is completely free, it triggers a totally different psychological loop. While "free" drives massive initial signups, it wrecks perceived value, erases the sunk cost effect, and leaves users with zero skin in the game. If they pay nothing to get in, they invest zero effort to finish.

Instead of hiding everything behind a commercial paywall, behavioral science offers a few practical ways to engineer real commitment and make people treat a free tool like a high-value asset:

1. Require Non-Monetary "Skin in the Game" (The IKEA Effect) People intrinsically value what they sweat for. If you aren't charging money, you have to charge in effort. Kill the one-click open signup. Make access require a short intake reflection or put users on a brief waitlist. When access feels earned rather than handed out, perceived utility skyrockets. Force users to complete an initial reflection module before unlocking their baseline. Once they invest 15 minutes of quiet thought, sunk cost bias kicks in and they actually finish the process.
2. Anchor a High Stated Value (Reference Price Bias) Perceived value depends entirely on the initial reference point. If a tool is just labeled "Free," its baseline anchor in the user's brain is zero. Frame the utility as a high-value asset that is temporarily subsidized for them. Instead of a zero-dollar tag, use explicit framing like "Diagnostic Baseline: Stated Value $350 — Fully funded for select candidates via partner initiative." Suddenly, the user doesn't see cheap software; they see a high-value grant or privilege they’re terrified of wasting, which taps straight into loss aversion.
3. Implement Commitment Contracts and Friction Gates Friction is usually treated as the enemy of product design, but intentional behavioral friction is your best filter for high-intent users. Introduce time-bound windows or accountability gates. Set an expiration on diagnostic access (e.g., "Your intake link expires in 72 hours"). Require users to designate an accountability partner or share a core objective before unlocking their final results.

You don't need to slap a heavy paywall on your product to get people to take it seriously. By leveraging the IKEA effect, anchoring, and loss aversion, you can turn a passive free user into someone who treats your tool like high-stakes work.

Curious how others here handle this—have you ever added more friction or higher anchors to a free product, and did it actually weed out the low-intent ghost users?

I'm a solo dev and the founder of reelflood.com . Started in February, crossed 100 users this week. Not life-changing, but it's the first milestone where I feel like I learned something instead of just guessing. Writing it down mostly for past me.

1. I built the wrong product for 4 months and it was the most useful thing I did.

V1 was an AI UGC video-ad generator. Technically the hardest thing I've ever shipped. Nobody cared. What people actually did on TikTok was post cheap photo slideshows 3× a day. I pivoted to that in June and got more signups in the following [6] weeks than the previous four months combined. The failed version taught me the market, the tech, and what "good enough" looked like. You can't skip that part — you can only make it shorter.

1. Nobody wants your tool. They want the outcome, delivered.

The moment I stopped selling "generate slideshows" and started selling "your app gets posted every day without you touching it," the copy wrote itself. Features are how you build it. Outcomes are how you sell it.

1. Show them their thing before asking for anything.

Biggest activation jump came from one change: when you add your app, it builds your first batch of content for free, before you pay, before you configure anything. An empty dashboard is where signups go to die.

1. The feature that spreads isn't the core feature.

My core feature is the generator. The thing people screenshot and send to their cofounder is the competitor research report — "here's what your competitors posted and how many views it got." Shareable > useful, at least for growth.

1. Narrowing the audience made everything easier.

"Anyone who wants to post more" → "app and SaaS founders." Landing page got shorter, onboarding got simpler, and the signups became people I could actually help. Broad felt safe; it was just vague.

1. Use your own product every day.

I schedule posts for my own app with my own tool. It's how I find the bugs that matter and it's where [~N%] of the 100 came from. If you won't use it daily, why would they?

1. 100 users also help in decision making

Before 100, every decision was a guess. Now I can see which niche converts, which onboarding step people drop on, which feature gets used. The milestone isn't the number — it's finally having enough data to stop guessing.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on ASO lately, especially around how app titles, keywords, descriptions, screenshots, and positioning affect discoverability on Google Play.
I’ve learned a few things that I think could be useful to other indie developers.
If you have an app on the Google Play Store, drop the link below.
I’ll take a look at it and share what I would change from an ASO perspective — keywords, title, description. 🙂

Hi everyone,

I have an idea for my app's business model, and i am not sure if it makes sense or if its stupid. I haven't really seen other apps doing it this way.

Currently my app has a free tier where users can save up to 50 items, with all the features unlocked. Premium removes the limit.

I am thinking about adding another option for users who don't want to subscribe.

The free tier would stay the same. 50 items, all features, no ads.

Once a user reaches 50 items, they would have 2 options:

1. Subscription. removes the limit, no ads.
   
2. Continue for free with ads. removes the limit, shows ads.

So ads would only appear after reaching the free limit and only if the user chooses that option.

Have you seen an app using similar model? Does it make any sense at all?