[manx]

Can anyone recommend good learning material for the non-tech part? I'm good at building stuff, but not on the other parts.

[tonyedgecombe]

Andy Brice has some great material at https://successfulsoftware.net/articles/

Including a list of books at https://successfulsoftware.net/reading-list/

[deze333]

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]

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.

[hermitcrab]

The economics of the app store were horrible even in 2010: https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/07/11/iphone-app-store-e...

There are now more than 2 million apps in the store: https://42matters.com/ios-apple-app-store-statistics-and-tre...

[hermitcrab]

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]

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]

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]

Have you found the extra work to also sell on windows to have been justified by the sales on that platform?

[hermitcrab]

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.

[indieofone]

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]

I'm surprised to hear that, given the size of the market.

[indieofone]

I should clarify, top 5 in paid.

[kranner]

What is the app, if you don't mind sharing?

[LVB]

https://scoreconnect.app

[kranner]

Thanks! Clearly a lot of dev work, even sharing scores on the web. Sorry to hear it hasn’t been a success.