$50,000 revenue in one year

The past year has been a huge one for me, marking the first full year of my indie app business since its start in April of 2022.

It's been an awesome and sometimes challenging journey, with a few losses along the way, but mostly filled with wins. I'm incredibly grateful for the immense support, love, and anythingkindness I've received throughout this journey. Building my apps and sharing my experiences has been more rewarding by this wonderful community around me.

The numbers

Here are the raw numbers (for all my apps on both iOS and Android):

• My apps were downloaded almost 120,000 times. Still can't believe it when I read that number!
• I generated $50,861 revenue with my apps. This includes subscriptions as well as one-time (lifetime) purchases.
• I accumulated $3012 in monthly recurring revenue (produced by monthly and annual subscribers of my apps).
• 3630 people have an active subscription for my apps and pay for them on a regular basis.
• I gathered 1851 reviews/ratings on the App Store and Google Play with an average rating of 4.74 stars.
• I've written over 17 blog articles and shared my journey on X/Twitter with over 7820 followers.
• I created one complete new app and pushed out over 28 hotfixes and content updates.

Crazy business growth

In April 2022, I took a leap, leaving my software engineering job to pursue a dream: building a profitable app business within a year. The journey began with a challenging 2022, a year that tested my endurance and patience with modest revenues and sales. However, 2023 marked a crazy turnaround, transforming my indie hacking adventure into an absolute success.

The beginning of the year started off at a slow pace, with gradual improvements, but everything changed dramatically in May. I recall being at a friend's wedding on a Saturday when my phone started buzzing with an unbelievable number of sales notifications. It was a big moment — this day my app began ranking in the top 10 for key terms in the habit tracking domain and people on the App Store and Google Play were finally able to find my app HabitKit.

Following the spike in May, both downloads and sales continued to climb, and this upward trend hasn't stopped to this day. Interestingly, I haven't had to invest much in marketing, as building the app completely in public and ranking well for relevant keywords seemed to do the trick. However, looking ahead to the next year, I've gathered a big to-do list focused on marketing strategies, with the hope of growing the business even further.

I guess it's safe to say that I've successfully achieved my goal of creating a highly profitable app business. Again, let me express my gratitude and appreciation for all the incredible support I've received over the past 12 months. It's been an awesome journey, and I couldn't have done it without the encouragement and support from my community.

Features I shipped

By the way, here are some cool things I shipped in 2023:

• Translated the app to 10 different languages (thanks to the awesome community) and added the option to start the week on a Sunday.
• Added the option to share your consistency with your friends by generating a cool-looking image in HabitKit.
• I shipped two types of home screen widgets to Android and iOS for HabitKit and made them configurable.
• I added a cool looking charts section and a new pure-black dark mode to HabitKit.
• I created a completely new app (WinDiary) from scratch and coded it top to bottom in only one month.
• Added the option to write daily notes to your mood tracker in WinDiary.
• I added the ability to track multiple completions per day and laid the groundwork for cross-device synchronisation in HabitKit.

Working part time

At the start of the year, when the revenue from my app business wasn't as promising as I had hoped, I faced a crucial decision: Should I continue to focus on building my app business, or should I return to my previous software engineering job, at least part-time, while working on my apps on the side? In the end, I chose the latter. This decision was largely influenced by my initial approach to see this as an experimental journey with a strict one-year timeline. I just wanted to stay true to that mindset.

In April, I returned to my old job as a software engineer, which significantly reduced the amount of time I could dedicate to my app development. Despite this constraint, I managed to create a completely new app, WinDiary, and roll out several updates for HabitKit. However, the impact on my productivity was, and still is, clearly noticeable. Balancing an (almost) full-time job with indie app development has been challenging, but I've continued to make progress, although at a slower pace.

If I found myself in the same situation again, would I choose to return to my old job? I'm not entirely certain, but considering the circumstances at the time — lack of growth and financial instability — it probably was the right decision. My experience in the new (old) job has been enriching; I've learned a great deal and genuinely enjoyed my time there. And let's be honest, having a stable income alongside working on an successful side project is a comforting position to be in.

Luckily, I'm finally in a great position revenue-wise and I made the decision to quit my job to purse indie hacking full-time. I'm starting in February and I'm super excited to this opportunity!