Creating a toolkit to launch faster

I’ve launched 4 apps in the last 3 months, while working 9 to 5:

• 🚀 Wheel Flow took 6 weeks

• 🚀 Nomad Pins took 3 weeks

  • Together with companion nomadpins.app web

• 🚀 Pixelette took 1 week

• 🚀 Dumb Gym took 1 week

These apps aren’t even close to what I originally imagined putting out. Don’t get me wrong, they work just fine, but they’re very very bare-bones. Each packing maybe one or two features tops.

My goal right now is to create a minimal version, launch it, see if anyone cares, and then polish it up later. It’s all about learning, building a process, and keeping things manageable so I can actually finish projects.

If I had a solid 4 hours each day to work on this (spoiler: I don’t), I’d aim to get an MVP or MLP ready in about 40 hours, basically a week of full-time work. The key here is scope: keep it small, build it fast, improve it after launch. And building would be much faster if I have my toolbox of reusable components.

Will these apps make any money? Honestly, I have no idea. I slapped some paywalls in there, but haven’t done any serious optimization. If I find time I’ll revisit and tweak. But that’s a bonus, not the main goal. The main reason I’m doing this is to become a better developer: Learn new APIs, frameworks, tools, and build a portfolio. If I earn a few bucks along the way then that’s great.

Before I jump to my next project, I’ll do a quick review and refine my process. I want to create some frameworks and systems, generalize components, and maybe polish some workflows. Think of it as creating my own little toolkit for future projects.

From idea to validation

• Capturing ideas: I have a massive list of ideas in Apple Notes—some are half-baked (just a sentence or a link), while others are more fleshed out. A bunch will never see the light of day, some aren’t right for the moment, and a few might actually become real apps.

• Keyword research: This is a new thing I started doing since my 2nd app. I still have no idea what I’m doing but mainly use Google Keyword Planner and specific Astro for specific iOS research.

There’s not much I can automate here at the moment, and most value also comes from going through these manually, but I’ll look for opportunities. For example, by checking keywords related to co working spaces in order to make the nomadpins.app site SEO-friendlier, I found a related keyword that would make a new great feature for the app.

MVP: Build the thing

Building the MVP and extracting reusable components seems to actually be the easy part.

The hard part is that last 20% to wrap the project and actually hitting “launch.” As I mentioned, these first few apps aren’t what I initially pictured, but they’re out there now, and I can always iterate later. The important part is making sure the version you launch is functional and severely limits scope—just one or two features max.

There are multiple services that are common in all apps: An onboarding flow, settings options, networking, storage, common architecture when can be used, upgrades, … those can be independent services that are easily reusable across all apps.

As an example, the UpgradesService I created with the first app has been used in the other three, improving it in each iteration (adding subscriptions support, making it more resilient, etc, … )

There are also 3rd party services that have proven useful, like WishtKit, for receiving user feedback regarding which features they’d like to see next.

Monetize

At the time of writing I’ve earned a grand total of $2.99 from my four apps through the App Store 🎉 Still, I’m experimenting with different monetization strategies:

• One-time purchase (apps 1 and 2)

• Subscription (weekly, monthly, yearly) (app 3)

• Mix one-time and/or subscriptions (app 4)

There are great services out there to test different strategies, like RevenueCat, but for the moment this is something I’ll stick with native Apple’s StoreKit API. At some point might try it out thought once the rest of details are ironed out.

Launch

When it’s time to launch, there’s a bunch of tiny details to handle, especially for Apple’s review process:

• Analytics (if any)

• Apple privacy page

• Archiving + uploading to App Store Connect

• 1024x1024 app icon (icon.kitchen is handy)

• iPhone screenshots (and iPad if needed)

• ASO-friendly app name, description, subtitle, keywords, …

• Decide primary and secondary app categories

• Dealing with app review itself

A bunch of these can be automated somehow, for example I can reuse the same analytics framework, or the same template for Apple’s privacy pages.

Growth (a.k.a. Marketing, ugh)

I’m still figuring out how to grow these apps. I’m not a fan of digital marketing, but it’s at least half the battle.

• Social platforms: This is not only doomscrolling, but you need to find and understand relevant content. Like, comment, and follow accounts related to the target audience, drop a link to your app if makes sense, etc, …

• Content creation: Newsletter, posts, videos, guides, … at some point I’d like to create my own promotional content.

• Web counterpart: Each app needs it’s own web counterpart, it could be a super simple landing page, or something more complex, but not everybody will find it through the app store. In this regard I share API between app and web, so I can use the datapoints as needed across both.

It’s all a work in progress, but that’s half the fun, right? Keep building, keep launching, keep learning. Let’s see where this journey goes.