Hereā€™s a collection of brief app postmortems Iā€™ve learnt and collected. The data presented will be stale quickly but I hope the lessons learnt will still be useful.

App 1: Workout Tracker

Problem it was solving: Log my workouts
Data: Sep 20 2022 - Feb 17 (16 months)
Impressions: 34.7k
Product Page Views: 3.3k
Conversion Rate: 3.4%
Total Downloads: 822
Proceeds: $36

First app I made and had good general app building learnings.

The biggest learning here is to not increase app scope. The app is way too complicated and has too many views. This is bad for development but also for the user. Apps should be ruthlessly simple. Donā€™t try to compete on feature richness with the market leaders. I think as a ball park you should try to aim for 3 high quality views where the user spends the majority of the time.

Another call out is that the app isnā€™t differentiated enough to have good distribution.

Another good learning is to not support iPad. Itā€™s a major pain to properly support iPad devices. iPhone:iPad:iWatch unit sales ratio hovers at around 200mil:50mil:50mil last I looked, so not much of a benefit for solo developers.

App 2: Timer

Problem it was solving: Timer with previously recorded timers.
Data: Jan 22 2023 - Feb 17 (13 months)
Impressions: 11.3k
Product Page Views: 911
Conversion Rate: 3.53%
Total Downloads: 317
Proceeds: $0 (unmonetised)

Built and released in a weekend. Very good spend of time and realised that you can setup and release apps extremely fast.

I guess it was fun to release an app with such a strong design decision but the fact that it has no clear path for monetisation makes me question this decision.

App 3: Transcriptions

Problem it was solving: Record speech and get transcriptions.
Data: Mar 15 2023 - Feb 17 (10 months)
Impressions: 65.7k
Product Page Views: 6.7k
Conversion Rate: 4.69%
Total Downloads: 2.2k
Proceeds: $546

The first app Iā€™ve built that is actually useful for users. Getting actual users who use the product regularly in their lives is awesome.

Icon branding and screenshots was terrible at the start and therefore had terrible conversions. Another issue is that as the app isnā€™t niched down in naming so it had poor distribution.

App 4: Live Transcriptions

Problem it was solving: Live transcriptions for deaf people.
Data: Jun 19 2023 - Feb 17 (7 months)
Impressions: 47.1k
Product Page Views: 5.3k
Conversion Rate: 5.89%
Total Downloads: 1.9k
Proceeds: $1.04k

The clear learning here is that building the app wasnā€™t difficult at all. The app is extremely simple but solves a clear acute pain and therefore has the best distribution out of any of the apps Iā€™ve created so far. Another good learning is that the friendly branding helps with conversions.

Another thing is that the app needs to provide a good enough experience before people are willing to pay. Theres a tipping point in user experience. Itā€™s only very recently when this app started to pick up and start to generate consistent net monthly revenue.

App 5: Hotkey Transcriptions

Problem it was solving: Quick transcriptions on computer devices.
Data: Dec 11 - Feb 17 (1 month)
Impressions: 9.4k
Product Page Views: 388
Conversion Rate: 1.95%
Total Downloads: 112
Proceeds: $0 (unmonetised)

First mac app. Great to learn that it isnā€™t hard at all.

App has bad screenshots so doesnā€™t have a good conversion rate. Another thing is that mac apps are interesting in the aspect that itā€™s a little more difficult to monetise compared to iOS apps, with the expectation that computer apps should be free.

Another learning is that Apple doesnā€™t allow third party API keys to unlock functionality. This means that to have OpenAI key integration with this app Iā€™ll need to setup a proxy fleet and to changing pricing model to be proportional to usage or of a shorter term e.g weekly. Iā€™d expect the EU Digital Markets Act will unlock a lot of new apps like this one which were previously impossible to have on the app store.

App 6: Weight Tracker

Problem it was solving: Keeping track of weight.
Data: Dec 27 - Feb 17 (1 month)
Impressions: 10.8k
Product Page Views: 517
Conversion Rate: 2.17%
Total Downloads: 222
Proceeds: $49

Good icons and branding creation is great. The gamified mechanisms mean that the app does have higher retention than the other apps. But itā€™s going to take much more effort to iterate on these mechanisms to put this app in a good place. Building habitual apps is difficult.

The app doesnā€™t solve a clear problem and therefore isnā€™t great to distribute.

App 7: Calorie Tracker

Problem it was solving: Keeping track of food eaten.
Data: Feb 5 - Feb 17 (0.5 month)
Impressions: 4k
Product Page Views: 294
Conversion Rate: 6.01%
Total Downloads: 162
Proceeds: $25

Iteratively building upon the previous weight tracker meant that this app could be released in two weekends, which was great. Utilising good 3d assets to create branding assets was also great.

You should solve an acute problem as it makes it easier to sell the product. Donā€™t build products you canā€™t distribute.