Launching on Product Hunt after 9 months of work and $124 MRR
The day has come...
My gamified habit tracker is now live on Product Hunt 🚀
Here is a recap of the last 9 months and how this product reached $124 MRR (~$250 monthly revenue) using engineering-as-marketing:
January 2022:
I got fired a month ago. $10k left in my bank account. I'm bored in my little villa in Bali 🌴
So I code a free habit tracker with a Github-like grid for completion.
February 2022:
I build the app in public on Twitter. I have 30 followers and like my own posts.
But I get valuable feedback. People ask for confetti. I add confetti 🎉
March 2022:
The habit tracker has about 50 users, and only one is active. It's me... The real problem showed up: How to motivate people to get 1% better every day?
I remembered how I spent 14 hours a day playing Word of Warcraft... I decided to gamify the habit tracker.
April 2022:
I rebuild the app and add tons of game-like features: daily quests, random loots, and a leaderboard. The game part is $9/mo with a 7-day free trial.
I launch on Hacker News, just to see. The post is banned (I asked friends to upvote, shame on me 🥲)
I relaunched on Hacker News, just to see. The post goes viral.
11k visitors, 1000 signups, and $270 revenue later, my wife and I open the champagne 🍾
May-August 2022:
I'm a builder, I love adding new features and buying domains. What they tell you NOT to do in startup books.
I cleared levels #1 (users are willing to pay for the game) and #2 (users are ~3x more consistent)
So how do I pass level #3 (marketing)?
Engineering-as-marketing: I build and launch free mini-apps to promote the habit tracker.
- Books Calculator 📚: How many books can you read in a year?
- 50 Hacks 💩: Top 50 productivity hacks chosen by the internet and you
- Buddy Crush 🙌: Crush your habits with friends
- Decision Game 👻: Improve your decision-making skills with a run/catch game
It's fun and easy to get traffic for these mini-apps. All of them got at least 10k visitors when launching (55k in 24h for 50 Hacks 🤯).
September 2022:
90% of users of the gamified habit tracker don't show up after 24 hours. Ouch...
I redesign the onboarding flow to show the value upfront (before creating an account). Try it, it's fun!
The app crosses $1000 in total revenue 🍾 and my Twitter is growing.
My 2 cents:
- Don't think too much
- Every app can be built in 72 hours, don't overengineer it
- Build in public on Twitter, the Indie Hackers community is awesome
I like to live dangerously, so I'm launching my startup on Product Hunt now—24 hours before my birthday 🎂
Thanks for reading until here and best of luck with your projects!
@marclou
Great to see your results! You have done amazing work on your product!
What about customer retention… Keep more focus on it!
We were facing the same issues and not getting more clients instead, they were leaving more, but then we found a product that saves our product's blood veins 😊
Churnfree saved our 24% of Churned customers in the last 30 days!
Every business owner's goal is to scale their business, but in reality, we face many problems, like customer churn, when our users leave our service for multiple reasons.
If you want to keep growing, you can use this tool to reduce your business churn and increase your business growth.
https://churnfree.com/ offering a 14-day free trial. You will be surprised to see how this tool will save your customers.
Thanks for sharing and stopping by James!
I upvoted at the Product Hunt. Cool app. Cool concept. Cool execution. A product with such cool execution deserves success and for it to be upvoted.
You're an angel 😊
Thanks a lot!
Amazing work! How can you manage in 72 hours? Which tech stack are you using? Its been months now and I still cant get my app off the ground.
Front: TailwindsCSS + React + DaisyUI, packed in NextJS
Back: Heroku Dyno w/ Express and MongoDB Atlas for the database
I guess a lot of practice helps. It took me 1 year to make my first app and I didn't even launched it.
You got this!
I have read about your journey on Twitter and it has been nothing less than an inspiring story.
Just wanted to talk about those games.
Did you just make them on the fly or did you have an actual plan on driving traffic using those games?
I'd say both, I built ideas that crossed my mind with the hope they will bring traffic.
Thanks for your kind words, glad it's inspiring.
interesting article Marc. Thanks for the ideas.
Well happy birthday @marclou 🎂✨
I really love how you reacted the things happened on the way...
Good luck man!
It's so kind of you! Thanks a lot 😊
Great stuff! I just created an account. My plan is to practice at least 10 chess puzzles a day and I didn't know scrolling through IH would help me with that.
Awesome, I really hope it helps!
Feedback box at the bottom left is looking for suggestions :)
Have fun!
Keep up the work dude !
Congrats man!
Are you still Bali? I’m also there haha
Yep, I live here!
Shoot me a DM!
https://twitter.com/marc_louvion
Looks like I was already following you haha
"Message failed to send" tho, DMs must be closed, here is my profile: https://twitter.com/nico_jeannen
strange... anyway just dm you!
I love your mindset. Well done 💪
Thanks :)
My first thought was that your superpower is perseverance. But it's super cool that you actively learn from data and improve. Kudos and good luck!
90% no thinking to keep going (perseverance)
10% listening to data so I don't end up at a dead-end lol
Thanks for the support Damian
This is really great. Keep it up. And congrats!
Thank you 🙌
Hey Marc,
Great to see HabitsGarden's progress. All the best for the PH launch.
Thanks buddy :)
Well done, this a great Monday read to inspire & motivate! From being fired to firing the champagne cork - awesome and I wish you continued success, keep us updated & I will upvote you on Product Hunt
You're so kind thank you!
That fired/firing play... 💯
Nice work! Clicking that thing is so addictive!
if you get addicted to doing good things for you, I'm happy 😊
Great post, dropped an upvote on PH.
2x thank you 🙏
Thanks for sharing your story!
Best of luck with your launch on PH. I'll go ahead and shoot my upvote :)
That makes me happy, thanks dear!
This is awesome! I hope you will succeed with your project. It looks amazing and your journey is a great read!
Thank you so much!
Thanks for sharing your journey Marc! 🙌
I totally agree that we don't have to overthink, but instead, we need to make experiments and be actionable as much as we can.
I love your free tools tactic, it brought a lot of traffic and visibility to you and your main product.
Well done! 💪
I remember you supporting me since day 1. Super grateful for that, Luca!
Great post, I've just launched my little app in PH as well 😊 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pills-remind-me
thank you for sharing
congrats, great story
Amazing, thank you for posting!
I am also a developer. For the past few months I think I have been following the book too much. I am not so good at pre-selling or validating, but I like to build. This post gave me the confidence to just build.
Amazing outcomes! Thank you for sharing your experience
I posted my application on the Product Hunt yesterday, it's the Mind Tracker, a mental health tracker. I have 50 upvotes now. So far I have not noticed a strong increase in traffic. On average, 100 people register with me per day. On the day of publication, 200 registered. I wonder what will happen in a week.
I see you published Habits Garden in 11 October. Does traffic continue to grow or does it decline over time?
It definitely declines quickly!
Congrats for your launch
thanks for sharing love it those kind of posts that encouraged me to built my dev company https://criov.com/ ive seen thousands of non tech co founders having great ideas but struggling with the tech part hope can help them built what they have been dreaming off
WELL DONE LUCAR
Best of luck with your startup Zakaria!
Marketing is not lvl 3, it's lvl 0.
This is just my personal experience, with this specific app.
Also, before marketing, there's product-market fit 😉
ugh..
Marketing is NOT distribution -__- and product market fit is an informal term, not an academic one. PMF means " I've figured out all the elements of the business model canvas such that consumers/users are banging down my door."
Guess what... that follows FROM MARKETING RESEARCH (qualitative or quantitative). Marketing is a scientific field and you're doing people a disservice by making shit up.
It's as if someone was talking about The Secret and the "law of attraction" and pretending it was actual physics.