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Having 8 million people use your app I find pretty amazing, let alone classing >100M as super successful. I build SaaS web apps so for me, having > 100 paying c
by rex_gsd 14y ago
Having 8 million people use your app I find pretty amazing, let alone classing >100M as super successful. I build SaaS web apps so for me, having > 100 paying customers I'd consider a project to be pretty successful.
The first commerical app I built myself was called Track My Ride, http://www.trackmyride.com.au http://www.trackmyride.com.au. It earns me a fair slice of pie each month but nothing to retire on. Track My Ride was focused primarily on the local market that I could direct market to. My second app Rocket Mail Merge http://www.rocketmailmerge.com http://www.rocketmailmerge.com was actually born out of the need for easier invoice creation for my first business. It is targetted at the international market this time, primarily the US. I finished its coding at the end of last month. It's fully functional but I can't release it out of it's 'open beta' due to the abysmal lack of international credit card processing for Australian startups. It has taken so far 6 weeks to get approval from the bank, and that approval is still pending with no ETA in sight. I plan to write a topic on that in due course but not before getting my approval haha. Once I launch it I'll be writing a Show HN on it. It would be great if people found it as useful as I do.
- ronyeh 14y agoYour landing pages are nicely designed. Some small suggestions: on Track My Ride, I found the "Get Protected Today" font not very readable and a bit tacky. Also, I don't understand why "Chat with us" looks like a Christmas present. On my 15" MBP, it actually overlaps with Contact Us. So it seems kind of redundant. You charge $30 for your products, so the scale of "success" will definitely be different. If you can convince 100 true fans to love your product, you'll make enough to survive, and iterate/improve. When I shipped my first apps, charging $0.99, I had a really hard time convincing users to download. The whole first year, I made about $1000. (And I was happy!) I would have been ecstatic if I had ever reached 100K downloads @ 99 cents. In the space of Free Apps, the scale of success is different. I wouldn't be very happy getting 100K free downloads. :-) Now I'm not saying I am not happy with 8 million DLs. It's pretty frickin' awesome, and I had never predicted it. But it's really a psychological trick to reset my bar at 10 million downloads, or 20 million, or even 100 million, to convince myself to keep working hard. :-D Good luck with your bank approvals!
- rex_gsd 14y agoThanks for the feedback. Regarding the presents; Ah the Christmas theme. Just one of the small things that escape you when you're very busy. Have updated that now. I'm still not quite happy with the design of the TMR page. The whole thing needs to be scrapped when time permits and redesigned, fortunately people like the software beneath so it hasn't been the highest priority lately. I just looked up your landing page for Tiny Piano. It's nice and informative but the grey background is a bit striking for the black iphone. The contrast would be better with a lighter color. You can pickup some really nice templates from themeforest for a few $ if you're not a designer at heart. Best of luck cracking 10M downloads! I'll add an extra download to your totals shortly.
- ronyeh 14y agoThanks for your feedback as well! I definitely don't have a graphic design background, so maybe I'll look on themeforest at some point. I just want to keep the site as lightweight as possible though, in case iPhone users visit it.