[rocksalad]

Thank you for the detailed feedback and kind words! It’s great to hear about your positive experience with Qbserve. I appreciate you sharing the features you love—many of them align with what I'm aiming to offer with Taim. I'm working hard to bring these features and more to Taim, with a focus on simplicity and efficiency. Your insights are very helpful, and I hope to add some innovative touches to improve the time tracking experience even further. Thanks again for your support, and stay tuned for more updates!

[ivm]

Hi hi, Qbserve's dev here. Not to be a downer, but time tracking has turned out to be one of the worst possible niches for starting as an indie dev.

The app did great on Show HN (sales were fantastic that week), but then I spent almost a year on marketing and SEO with almost zero results and a mild burnout. Being Mac-only did not help, of course, but there are larger problems:

1. There were so many time trackers even in 2016, and the field is even more crowded nowadays. But at the same time, there are only a few keywords available to rank in search engines. You'll be fighting big corporations like Toggl and Clockify, who have whole marketing departments and recurring revenue from subscriptions.

2. There's so much you can write about time tracking, and honestly, there are already too many productivity articles on the internet. So content marketing doesn't take you far either (and the corporate time trackers do it too, a lot).

3. If you try to run ads, then again the few important keywords are expensive because those corporate products bid for them across all platforms.

4. Desktop software seems to be generally hard to sell because of the long funnel: landing page > download > installation > launch > retention > payment. No wonder web-based SaaS has been the way to go for most.

At some point, the revenue dropped because Zapier removed Qbserve from one of their listing articles, and I just gave up. Qbserve has been bringing in only a few hundred dollars monthly for over five years now. I maintain it to keep it working with browser and OS updates, and add some small UX improvements, but that's pretty much it.

I sincerely wish you luck, maybe you'll find some way around these challenges. But it's tough out there and, just in case, adding more features does not increase sales – I learned it the hard way!

Cheers!

[rocksalad]

Hi there,

Thanks so much for sharing your experience and insights — it's incredibly valuable to hear from someone who's been through this journey. I really appreciate the honesty and the heads-up about the challenges.

1. You're right, the time tracking space is indeed somewhat crowded, and competing with big players like Toggl and Clockify is a huge task. I'm aware of the uphill battle with SEO and marketing, and your experience reinforces the importance of having a solid strategy.

2. Content marketing is definitely tricky, especially with so much already out there. I'm exploring unique angles and user stories to hopefully stand out, but it's clear that traditional methods have their limitations.

3. Advertising costs for competitive keywords are another tough hurdle. I'll be keeping an eye on creative marketing approaches to get the word out without breaking the bank.

4. The long funnel for desktop software is something I've been considering as well. Ensuring a smooth user experience from download to payment is crucial, and I'll be focusing on making that as seamless as possible.

Thank you for maintaining Qbserve and sharing your learnings. I hope to find ways to navigate these challenges and appreciate any advice or tips you might have.

Wishing you all the best as well, and thanks again for the candid advice!

Cheers!

[richardreeze]

This is actually great feedback (even though on the surface it looks like a "your idea won't work" message).

But to see a list of the top challenges from a close competitor is what I think most developers should look for. That way, they can either fix those problems or look for ways around them.

[philipyoungg]

Also not to be a downer, but there are tons of time tracking apps in the market.

It's saturated, and honestly not a big pain point to solve for most people.

Customer profile that make sense and might retain: freelancer, agency that employ freelancer.

General public will find time tracking cool, but they majority won't use it day to day because it doesn't solve a problem.

Or it solve a problem, but resolved in a short period of time.

You can use app.sensortower.com (pretty accurate with some margin of error) to benchmark revenue for similar apps—at least those that released on App Store.

[ivm]

It may work, but some luck is required along with the right market fit. For example, a few years ago I shared similar concerns to the author of Session time tracker[1] when he was starting the app's promotion. Back then I believed he won't make it either, but, as far as I know from his twitter, he managed to reach at least a decent 4-digit revenue. Although his product is subscription-based, so there's no endless acquisition trap like in case of Taim in Qbserve.

[1]: https://www.stayinsession.com