Software, unlike other products, tends to change and evolve over time: features are added and changed—sometimes removed—and the way an app looks when it first launches can be very different after a few years. Alice, Curtis and Jelly reflect on the changes they’ve made to their apps over time, and how they’ve tried to take their users along for the journey.
As creators, it’s sometimes hard to tell where you end and your product begins. This gets compounded by the fact that customers often confuse you with your work, which can have some significant consequences. Alice, Curtis and Jelly dig deep to determine why it is that they associate their products with their own worth, what the consequences are, and what they do about it.
Introducing your product to new people is difficult, as any app developer can likely tell you, and while there are plenty of typical approaches that everyone tries, they don’t always succeed. Alice, Curtis and Jelly spend time looking at the techniques they’ve used for acquiring users, how they’ve approached it, and what’s worked for them so far.
Failure is an inevitable part of and indie’s journey, but sometimes the looming weight of it is enough to negatively affect the decisions you make. Jelly’s been feeling it a bit of late, so he, Alice and Curtis take a look at what failure looks like for them, and how they deal with it.
There’s a lot of theories out there about how feasible the Android market is for independent apps, and most of it isn’t exactly positive. To help cut through the noise, Russell Ivanovic joins Alice and Curtis to talk about his journey with Pocket Casts, what it’s like walking the line between platforms, and whether it’s even possible to find success with an Android app.
Where do ideas come from? Is every idea worth building into a full-fledged product? Is it better to have many projects, or fewer? Alice, Curtis and Jelly take a long hard look at where their projects were born, the projects they’ve thrown out, and everything in between.
Sometimes it can be really easy to work through a day and then keep it going until late at night, either because we love what we’re doing, or because we’re feeling pressure to succeed. Alice, Curtis and Jelly look at their own tendencies to put in the extra hours, and how it affects their overall balance in the long term.
Every one approaches their day just a little differently. From how you plan your upcoming months (and years) of work, all the way down to managing your day-to-day approach, the way you plan your work is going to affect how you actually do your work. Alice, Curtis and Jelly look at each of their approaches, explain why it works for them, and look at what they’ve learned about how they schedule things over the years.
Even as an indie, you’ll find that you need to make a bunch of decisions around what you do with the money you make: do you reinvest it right back into the business, or do you take the money and run? Alice, Jelly and Curtis look at the individual—and very, very different—approaches they each take, and find that the answer isn’t as easy as just one or the other.
Every app is different, and the approach to marketing that app is different too. From word of mouth, to building communities, our hosts discuss their own experiences with marketing their apps and how it’s changed over time.
Independence is one year old! For the inaugural birthday episode, our intrepid hosts answer your questions. They finally reveal how they optimise for App Store search, the doubts they’ve faced on the road to being an indie, and which of them you want to keep your phone away from prior to finding yourself stranded on a desert island.
There’s nothing scarier than losing control, especially when it comes to the things you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Our three hosts recount some of the times they’ve lost control (or had their hand forced), what they did to recover, and what they managed to learn from the experience.
We all make mistakes, and Curtis is no exception. He recently shipped a bug, which got him thinking about how he, Alice, and Jelly approach the QA aspect of creating and shipping apps, and how to avoid doing so, if at all possible.
Getting from idea to a minimum viable product is difficult, because it’s all about knowing what to ship, and making the right decisions early on. Alice is about to start the journey for the third time, so she asks Curtis and Jelly how their first submissions went, and what they feel like they learned from the process.
As it turns out, Jelly has been thinking a lot about his pricing lately. He really can’t figure it out, so he calls upon Alice and Curtis for answers. What’s the right approach? How do you come up with a sustainable model that works for your market? Is it really alright to experiment with pricing? Our three hosts look at the ins and outs of pricing as an indie, and how to literally value your work.
Avoiding bloat in a long-term project can be difficult, and it could make you wonder whether you should even continue improving a product at all. Curtis is certainly questioning whether he’s reached that point with his app, so he, Alice, and Jelly talk it through to figure out whether spending all of your time on one project is healthy, and when you should just call it a day.
Unfortunately, not every interaction you have as an indie is a positive one. Sometimes our customers run into problems, and their first instinct is to just complain; either via a negative review, an angry email, or a bad mention on social media. Alice, Curtis, and Jelly look at their own experiences and discuss how they deal with the negative stuff, with the hope that there’s something that can be gained from it.
The task list for indies is seemingly never-ending, and requires effort just to stay on top of what needs to be done and when. Our hosts take a look at their systems—or lack thereof—and consider what they need to do to get things done.
There’s a plethora of good things about getting to work from home—the reduced commute time, being able to set your own hours, and the optionality of pants being amongst them—but what about the downsides? Curtis, Alice and Jelly look through the challenges they face with having to work alone and what they do to manage them.
One of the most important assets for any indie is their health: if that fails you, it makes it really difficult to continue with any other part of your work! Our hosts discuss their own approaches to staying fit and healthy, the aspects they struggle with, and what they plan to focus on in the coming year.
As the new year dawns, our hosts look back at the year that was: the ups, the downs, the lessons they learned, and everything in between.
Handing work over to another person is a major step for any business owner, and as indies it can be especially scary. Curtis is potentially looking at doing some outsourcing in the near future, so he, Alice, and Jelly take a look at why offloading work is useful, what the downfalls can be, and whether it’s worth it in the end.
Managing press is an important part of creating products, especially around releases. Alice, Curtis and Jelly discuss speaking with the press, the resources they make available, and what they really need to be doing to improve their respective approaches.
To continue to thrive and grow, every indie needs to spend time learning and staying aware of their industry. Our hosts are no different, and they spend some time going over some of their approaches to learning, to staying on top of their game, and ensuring that they make good decisions.
Making the jump from regular job to independence is not an easy thing. There’s a lot of moving parts that you need to account for! Alice, Curtis and Jelly each recount their experiences of going from full time work to where they are today: what they’ve done right, what they’ve done wrong and the lessons they learned along the way.
No indie is an island; we all have to deal with external influences on our projects, some better than others. From users to Apple and everything in between, our hosts take a look at the things that influence their workflow, how the mitigate the bad ones, and how it’s changed their approach to their work.
Stress comes in many forms, and being an indie comes with a slew of additional sources of potential stress that you might not expect. Our intrepid hosts recount the stresses they’ve experiences during their indie careers, discuss potential ways they manage stress, and pitch possible ideas for avoiding it in the first place.
Getting to know to strangers at conferences and meetups is hard, but an absolutely important part of being an indie; building and developing relationships with others in your community can make a huge difference to your work! Alice, Curtis and Jelly share their own experiences and troubles with networking, building relationships, and breaking the ice.
More often than not, your workspace is a reflection of who you are, and how you get things done. Taking this to heart, our three hosts look at the workspaces they each inhabit during their working hours, and whether those spaces are conducive to actually working.
Customer support is a huge part of any business where you create products. Dealing with problems, handling requests and getting 1-star reviews all comes with the territory, so what is the best way to interact with customers? Alice, Curtis and Jelly examine their own practices to figure out what they’re doing right, and maybe give each other a little help with the process.
