Quickly, Auro is the mobile app I’ve been working on since last July.
For the past 2 months, it’s been a struggle, with no real progression on the number of users and revenue/mrr.
Throughout, I’ve learned and tried a lot, week after week:
Learned that I had to share more, started to do daily videos on YouTube/Tiktok
From that, learned to make more targeted and relevant content
Then, learned to go find people 1 by 1 to try my app
And finally, what led me to the next section, to be more relevant to who I’m talking to (audience).
I think there are two issues as to why Auro is not “working”:
I clearly lost momentum
I don’t have a clear audience/target to talk to, targeting everyone is targeting no one
So what’s the plan for Auro?
One, Two, Three Auro(s)
I thought about stopping working on it and going into my next idea.
Also thought about selling it, to have a little bit of cash flow.
Even if I’m not tied that much to this app, I know the core idea has potential (speech-to-text) and I just have to try to leverage it better.
For this, I found a solution to fix the two problems announced earlier.
First, I should make a shift with Auro that will bring me momentum, and have a more targeted audience. I could target many different audiences, but I didn’t know which one to choose.
I finally decided (with the help of my co-founder, ChatGPT) to select the best 3-4 of them and target them all.
It comes from an advice of Farza a few weeks ago about testing different audiences almost every week and just rebranding the app to follow this purpose.
I’ve tweaked this a little bit and instead, I will make one copy of Auro, per audience.
This could seem like a lot of work, but it will make sense with the next parts of this post.
First, this should give me back some momentum. Second, I don’t want to prevent myself from working on some other ideas I have.
Again this could seem counter-intuitive, why will I work on something new if I still have stuff to do with Auro?
Don’t worry just follow me in my reasoning.
I’m a better dev than a marketer
This may not be a surprise, but I’m a better developer than a marketer.
So I will focus my energy on my strengths.
This allows me a couple of things:
The core feature of Auro is speech-to-text + summarization. Basically, it’s a GPT wrapper plus some good prompt engineering.
I’ve spent a few days learning and trying different prompts engineering techniques. This first helped me to reduce by a good 50% my OpenAI bill.
I’ve done my code in a way that the core features (all of them actually, analytics, data storage, etc…) are independent of the UI of the app.
In other words, I can create clones of Auro, with little UI changes, in around a day or two.
I’ve done this demo for a version specifically for content creators:
https://x.com/_borombo/status/1734295058642354347?s=20
This took me 3-4 days to put together because I had to refactor a little bit the code and the prompt engineering was a bit longer as I was starting from scratch.
I used this version to create the outline of this newsletter:
I’m working on a version specifically for people who journal. I already have a working demo, with 1 day of work.
Ok but what’s the point of having a lot of similar apps?
First, this allows me to target a precise audience, before, Auro was for everyone, to do everything.
Now, there is a version especially for content creators, to help them fasten their content creation. I can go and DM content creators to try my app with a clear value proposition.
I could even go more niche and do it specifically for TikTok creators for example, but for that, I prefer to wait for feedback from potential users.
Second, I’ve tried to study how people that does what I want to achieve are doing.
The mistake I made was to focus on people making web apps/saas, which is slightly different than a mobile apps.
Most of the people who are profitable with mobile apps (that I’ve seen so far) have done a lot of small mobile apps (10/20+) and they only rely on ASO.
ASO stands for App Store Optimization, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of mobile apps.
This is definitely a long-term strategy, but when you know how to use it a little bit, it pays off and just starts to become a number game.
You can have 1-2 apps that generate $5-10K/m, a few of them generating $1-5k/m, another few of them being between $500-1k/m, and of course, a lot below $500/m. But the more apps you have the more revenue you generate.
They do completely no other marketing (and usually don’t talk publicly about their apps, which for this part I don’t understand why as it could just bring a little bit more people) and focus only on shipping fast. They also only work on apps that get users, to improve the experience which leads to more revenue.
Even if I haven’t done huge marketing actions, Auro still gets its average daily/weekly/monthly downloads from people finding the app on the store.
PS: I could also sell some of my apps to generate short-term cash flow. The more I have the more possibility I get.
Side note
Another example is this app, that I’ve made in 2021, in 1 week, when I was learning Flutter. I only published it once, nothing is optimized but for some reason, beginning of this year, I got a HUGE amount of traction, and reached 10k+ downloads.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing in this app: No subscription, no ads, nada. So I could not convert these users into something more valuable, the only thing I have is the email of most of those who created an account, so a couple of thousand emails of people interested in video games.
If someone has an idea of what I can do with that, let me know!
PS: Also for some reason, I lost the keys that allow me to push updates for this app, of course, it’s not funny otherwise.
End of the side note.
So the more (targeted and optimized of course) apps I have on the store, the more people will find out about them and try them and possibly, become customers.
I’m not saying I will only rely on ASO, and not do marketing at all, but this strategy fits my personality, strengths, and goals more.
What is fun for me?
Another tip I got from Farza a few weeks ago:
When you’re lost, ask yourself what your 12 yo you would do aka, what will be fun for you?
For me, what is fun is to build an app from scratch, just having an idea, thinking about the features, designing the interface, and hitting my head to develop it and share it with the world.
To be honest, I don’t really care about making money, having 100K downloads, or creating a big company.
It’s just that food and traveling cost money, so I’ve to earn some somehow.
But at the end of the day, I don’t want to create the next Facebook, and I don’t care if I have 1 app that makes $10k/month or 10 of them making $1K/m (or 20 making $500/m you get it).
As long as I can live from what I love doing and create things that will help people along the way, I will be happy.
This is why I think, creating more apps, faster, will keep my momentum of getting excited about starting something new often enough.
This will also increase my failure rate of course, but I could faster go into the next thing.
I know for each new app, I will learn something that will make the next one better, the process faster and all of this will lead to more revenue.
At least, that’s my hypothesis, I will let you know that in the following months.
What’s Next?
We are mid-December, my first goal is to release 2 clones of Auro this month (the version for Content Creators and the Journaling one).
I have another “clone” in mind and another app idea for which I will probably share a working demo next week on Twitter.
I plan to not spend more than 2 weeks between the moment I validate an idea to work on, and the moment I publish it in the stores.
Also, I want to release at least 1 app per month. It could be a clone of an app I already made or a brand new one, it doesn’t matter, having at least, something new out that will possibly bring me more users/revenue.
Also, I will use social media to market my brand more, than my apps:
Instagram will be used to share my lifestyle and shitpost.
Twitter will be used to build in public and shitpost (again).
Youtube will be used to educate/share what I learn along the way.
This newsletter will be used as a bi/weekly journal and help me organize my thoughts.
I still want to learn how to leverage more Tiktok as it’s the one I’m not sure about how/what type of content to post there. (If you have ideas…)
I think that’s all for today, and already a lot.
Hope you enjoyed this one, I see you next week… or next year
ay good luck with your december goal!
hope you smash it and start the new year on a high note.
can't wait for the next one :)