In the spirit of "why doesn't anyone ever talk about this?" here are some stats and reflections from our launch week of Rise ("that sourdough app"). Also an egregious sourdough photo.

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For some perspective: Made by Windmill is just me and @daveymcgav, making (mostly) iOS apps full time. Normally it's paid client work that pays the bills but most of that dried up when the pandemic struck so we used our free time to make this app for sourdough bakers.

It took the both of us about 3 months to build.

Rise uses a freemium model: the app is free on the iOS app store and its core functionality is free, but certain features and recipes are only available if you pay.

The user can pay a one-time charge of $30 to unlock everything in the app forever, or pay a $10/year subscription for the same access. For the week of launch we discounted those prices to $20/$5.

Let's cut to the chase: numbers! Adding everything up from the week, we saw:

Downloads: 2000
Yearly subscriptions: 200*
One-time purchases: 110
Total sales: $2,140
Sales conversion rate: 16%
Download conversion rate: 42%

* Subs come w/ a 2 week trial so a) some % of users will still cancel and b) we haven't seen any revenue from these yet.

As you can see from the graph, the majority of downloads occurred on days 1 and 2 then quickly tapered off. Sales graphs look similar.

But thankfully we do continue to see conversions. Yesterday there was $100 in sales, and in a week some of those initial subscriptions will convert over as well.

For marketing, on the morning of launch we each did a Twitter post, a Facebook post, posted announcements in bread-related forums, emailed tech websites, emailed podcasts, announced on Product Hunt, and emailed our web signup list (~175 registrants).

By far, the most successful of these was the Sourdough subreddit which had 700 upvotes and 250 comments! https://www.reddit.com/r/Sourdough/comments/i0676g/i_made_a_sourdough_baking_app/

On reddit we were worried about downvotes from Android users and indeed the top comment on that post is "Please do it for android" with 350 upvotes. But the post itself was 99% upvoted and there was basically zero negativity in the comments, which was a welcome surprise.

Interestingly, the same announcement on the almost identical "Breadit" group, with twice as many members, got almost no attention at all. I think a lot of PR & marketing is just dumb luck.

Of the 6 tech websites we contacted, none ran a story on the launch and I think that's the first time that's happened in any product launch I've done.

But this was our fault— we didn't contact them until the morning of launch and as I should have known, these websites want to run exclusive scoops, not stale product announcements. We should have contacted them at least 2 days before launch.

Both the download conversion rate (ie how many people downloaded the app after seeing the app store page) of 42% and the sales conversion rate (ie how many people began an IAP after installing) of 16% are, based on my experience, really really good.

The high conversions can probably be attributed to two things.

1) "niche-ness": Rise isn't just a baking app, or a bread baking app, it's a baking app for *just one specific kind of bread*. It really doesn't get much more niche than that.

2) We worked REALLY hard on it. We questioned the design at every step of the way and weren't afraid to backtrack, even when it meant re-writing tons of code.

@daveymcgav did an amazing job on the visual design! As compelling as it looks in a marketing screenshot, I think the app itself far exceeds expectations after bakers install it. They're telling us exactly that in feedback.

That reminds me of a lesson I learned with my first indie project, Numerous. With Numerous, we built in a feature set that appealed to anyone and everyone. But how do you market to everyone? It's really hard.

If your product has a narrowly identifiable market, getting in touch with those people is pretty easy.

The raw sales figures won't make anyone rich, or for that matter even begin to replace our regular client-based business. In fact they're not even the highest of the launches that we've done. (Our AR-powered measuring app Cubit did substantially better in its opening week.)

But based on the positive feedback we're getting combined with the subscription-based model, this app should have more "revenue legs" then anything we've done before.

Obviously there was some debate about whether it was OK to be so transparent with this info. Some might think we're bragging, others might think the results pitiful.

I suspect those that are impressed are other indie devs that know how hard it is to realize even a modicum of success in this crowded messy market. And if you're in the other camp, now you know— it's REALLY hard to make a living doing app development at this scale.

That said, I've done 4 indie product launches since leaving my corporate job and I'd say this is the most successful. Thanks for listening

Oh, and for the sake of completeness, you can check out the app here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rise-sourdough-baking/id1515369685