When my brain tries to steal my focus for a “more important” task I:
- ✍️ write in down
- ☑️ continue with initial task ‘til done
- 📋 check the list & pick next task
The struggle comes if I uncover a task that will affect all current/future projects. That’s a harder sell. Focus theft successful.
I was about to do some web research on best practices for requesting device permissions (camera, mic & storage) from users. But then in dawned on me... I can just delete industry-leading apps from my phone, re-install, and learn. 🤙
Congratulations and best of luck!
That's it for this month's edition. Thank you for reading! If you're thinking of getting started (or a seasoned solopreneur looking to share) and want to chat me, just lmk. I'm no successful expert (yet) but maybe I have solved a problem you have/will have. No sale here, just knowledge share.
📏 Measure, measure, measure:
Day-1, I built-in a super rustic, event-driven tracker into my app. It has payed off its weight in GOLD. Runs on supabase free-tier and is surfacing valuable usage info. e.g. "how many free users play more than 5 times a day", it was 800 users, guess what I did next? 👀😆
📓 I made taxes easy on myself:
A benefit of having a D2C dev studio is that I don't need to invoice anyone. Sure, I made virtually no profit last year 😅 but that doesn't mean I don't file taxes. Having only 1 bank account, 1 credit card, and getting payed only by Apple/Google = filing taxes in < 2hr
💼 UpWork is tricky:
PSA for anyone looking to contract hire for the first time, it is FULL of fake accounts and portfolios. I had 3 failed projects, all with amazing portfolios, until I finally landed a legit designer for my creative. I would recommend spending extra, extra time DYOR before hire
🤖 AI - better but not quite there:
I see a ton of YT videos "one-shotting" full features by letting Cursor agent take the wheel. I don't know if it's not well trained on react-native/expo or what. Works perfect for single files, very good for a handful, not great if whole codebase context is needed
💰 Marketing has felt more of an art than a science:
Even though I try to measure everything, e.g. I set up in-app tracking so I can monitor campaign results, I experiment with my copy/creative and grow campaigns slowly. Effective marketing been as hit-or-miss as rolling dice. If I figure it out ilyk
Solopreneurship Update 🚀 it's been three months since launch, here are today's stats: 7.7K downloads (+110%), 22 subscribers (-12%), $57 MRR (-21%). As is now tradition, here are my 5 reflexions for the month... 🧵
Quick thoughts on @swmansion.com .com results 🤩
- @expo.dev slaying & expo-router growth is obscene
- <30% using InApp Purchases (who else is using @revenuecat.com)
- Brazil putting LATAM on the map 🙌 we should do better!
- OK fine, I'll try Zustand for state management! Too lightweight not to 🤷♂️
A live view of me pushing, merging and approving PRs in my solo-app's repo
aww shucks, I was so pumped for the @revenuecat.com paywalls v2 but its an iOS SDK only (for now)! Looks awesome, hopefully support for RN + Expo coming soon 🤞
Good luck out there and happy hacking! 🤙
🎫 Track the tasks
It isn't just about staying organized. It gives you dopamine hits from completion, reminds you of your progress when you're down, frees your mind to focus, and its a great go-to procrastination activity. All of this ultimately grows your business.
🚶♂️ Take it step-by-step
Solopreneurship can be overwhelming because there are too many things to do and (often) not enough time to do them. Start with one small task. In my experience, one of two things will happen: It either builds momentum or at worst, you've accomplished something for the day.
📡 Set Up Custom Events
Meta Ads let you choose a specific event to "aim" for: "Link clicks" (terrible), "Installs" (so-so), "Subscribe" (confusing) and Custom (best). Integrate custom events in your source code and let Meta profile + serve your ads to the people most likely to trigger them.
🔌 USE the Marketing SDKs
May be obvious for seasoned solopreneurs, but I convinced myself that execution speed was a good excuse to launch marketing campaigns without integrating the SDKs into my app first. BIG mistake. I was flying blind, bad metrics, no idea what % of my audience was converting
📣 Grow Marketing Campaigns Slowly
I made the mistake of dumping too much of my budget into my early campaigns when I had no idea what was going to stick and what wasn't. Facebook tells you if you give it time. I now run ads for $10/day for multiple days before I decide where to concentrate my budget
Solopreneurship Update 🚀 it's been now 2 months since I launched my React Native + Expo app. I'm now at 3,550 downloads (+123%), 25 subscribers (+13%), and $73 (-6%) MRR. For any fellow beginner, here are another 5 nuggets that I picked up during the last 30-ish days... 🧵
Thank you!
Play Store review went a lot quicker, I was expecting to have to get the 20 testers to publish. But it turns out that since I was submitting as a business, I got to skip that requirement. The approval with Google went so quick I didn’t even realize my app was live 😅
I wish you the best of luck and happy building! 💻 🤙
🚀 Enjoy your launch
Sure, launching is just one battle in the war of success, but it is a BIG deal—especially solo. Don't get caught up in the numbers. Celebrate it! It took me a while to savor the moment; hope you reach pride and bliss sooner than I did!
📣 You MUST market it
If you squirm at the thought of marketing, I feel you—but there’s no shortcut. I took a $15 Udemy crash course on Meta ads and it worked better than I expected. It’s definitely an area to improve, but 99% of my stats come from those campaigns.
👏 Launch now, improve and fix later
Your priority is Zero-to-Published. Get your feet wet NOW. Dump fancy features in the backlog, use UI libs, and brute-force where needed. I could’ve launched 2 months sooner—don’t be me.
🚧 Expo won’t fix it all
iOS and Android each have their quirks. Test every native module on both. For instance, ‘expo-sensors’ was different enough to break my UX on one platform. Learn from my near-disaster!
⚡ Expo EAS is a lifesaver
Given my limited time, there was no way I could juggle build cycles without it. But remember—this isn’t the web. Each build costs time and money, so build wisely. I chose pay-per-build for iteration speed, crucial during the first week, post-launch.
🍋 If you can swing it, register that biz
I debated it too! However, the reality is that having a legit business can lift some important entry-barriers in the app stores and ad-providers. Yes, it costs upfront, but IMHO, the juice is worth the squeeze.
Aspiring indie mobile devs 🚀 A month ago I solo-launched my first React Native + Expo app and hit 1,590 downloads, 22 subscribers, and $78 MRR. Nothing to drool over but here are a handful of things I learned along the way, hope it helps... 🧵
one day we'll look back and reminisce about the time when #LLM services had no ads. The "good old days" of #ai is NOW
