3 months ago, I posted my 3 months progress report here. I am back with a 6-month update. The second quarter was much better than the first, though I am still facing high Day-0 churn (~60% uninstall rate).
The Numbers (Month 3 vs Month 6)
| Metric | Month 3 | Month 6 | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downloads | 500 | 2,210 | + 342% |
| MAU | 180 | 487 | + 170% |
| DAU | 40 | 140 | + 250% |
| Revenue | $0 | $111 | > 999% |
Here is the breakdown of what happened:
What Went Well
- Focused More on Dev: In Month 3, I realized organic ASO was vastly outperforming my manual social media efforts. So instead of spending time on social media promotion, I decided to try and reduce my high Day-0 uninstallation rate. This worked out just fine since my daily download has now tripled from 10/day to 30/day (unfortunately, I didn’t manage to drive down the uninstall rate).
- Discord Server: I noticed some of the apps nowadays provide support on Discord. This felt much superior than email to me. Chatting is faster + if the community is large enough, sometimes users can just help each other. Obviously everyone doesn’t have discord, so I still provide email support. The Discord server is just an alternative feedback platform. It has grown to 12 users now and frankly, I am very happy with the engagement of the community. I am getting bug reports and user feedback more frequently now.
- PlayConsole Review Time: I don’t know what happened, but Play Console now takes around 30 minutes to approve my releases. It used to take 24 hours before. Thanks to the fast review, I can now easily push hot-fix for critical bugs.
- Helpful Users: I am happy to say that I have some power users of the app who don’t hesitate to contact me whenever they see any bugs. Really grateful to them since they manage to catch critical bugs. For example, after just 14 hours of a release, a user reported that my “Stop Service” no longer worked. I fixed it quickly. That day, I had the highest amount of uninstall (36) and if the user didn’t report the issue, it would have taken me multiple days to notice the problem.
- Revenue Validation: I know that my app is useful, but is it useful enough for people to pay? Ultimately, that’s the end goal for me: to make enough money so that I can say goodbye to my 9-5 job. My app is far from complete, so I decided to start with a tip jar first.
- I integrated with RevenueCat and created a “Support Me” screen. Users could buy me coffee/lunch/dinner with various prices. I had 4 users who bought me coffee/lunch. This was a huge milestone. My app finally made some revenue.
- After a month, I finally added a premium feature: Multiple Profile support. I rebranded “Support Me” screen to “Pause+” and started a subscription model. I know that some people hate subscription so I also kept a “Lifetime Purchase” option.
- Anyone who bought me cofffee/lunch/dinner, were upgraded to the “Lifetime” plan.
- Happy to say that I now have: 2 monthly, 1 annual and 6 lifetime subscribers.
- I made a total of $111 so far.
- High Feature Velocity: I managed to add quite a few features to my app:
- Major Features: Import/Export, Scheduling, Accessibility Service, Multiple Profile
- More features: Delay Pause Screen, Multiple Substitute Apps, Quick Switch, Ask Every Time, Breathing Exercise, Auto Close Pause Screen, App Usage Limits
What didn’t go well
- Device Fragmentation: I underestimated how differently OEMs handle background services.
- I wasted weeks trying to debug user reports blindly because I didn’t have the hardware. I eventually had to buy a second-hand Samsung device just to reproduce and fix a specific
UsageStatslag bug. - I don’t log to logcat in production, so it was hard to debug user issues. I solved this by implementing a local file-logging mechanism. Now, when users send feedback, they can tick a checkbox to “Attach Debug Log”. This context was the only way I managed to solve complex background service crashes.
- I implemented few more ideas to make the UsageStats based monitoring service work, but in the end, it didn’t work consistently on certain devices. I added “Accessibility Service” support as an optional alternative. This reduced uninstall rate a bit.
- I wasted weeks trying to debug user reports blindly because I didn’t have the hardware. I eventually had to buy a second-hand Samsung device just to reproduce and fix a specific
- Subscription Shock: My uninstall rate was steady at 50% but spiked to 60% when I introduced the subscription screen. Users see a paywall and immediately get their guard up, even though most features are free. I need to fix this onboarding UX.
- Complex UI – Poor UX: I added “Multi-Profile” support, but it confused users (including existing DAU) so much that uninstalls spiked again. I had to build a specific “spotlight” tutorial just to explain the UI.
Next Steps
- Focus on Development: Add more features. I am a developer, that’s my first instinct.
- Website Blocking, In-App Component Blocking (Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reel, Weekly/Hourly usage cap, Strict Mode: Hide stop button, restrict changing pause settings, prevent app uninstallation – More UX improvements
- Focus on ASO: Improve PlayStore Listing by adding a video, better screen shots and machine translations for few other popular languages.
The whole journey has been humbling. I have come far but I can still see a long road ahead of me. If I can continue to develop my app at this pace for another 18 months, I think it can turn into a great one.
