I'm building 12 startups this year and just launched my first one It made $2

Icing Addict - How I launched it

I'm building 12 startups this year and just launched my first one! It made $2.

I’ve been building my new game Icing Addict over the past month and it’s now live! Check out the app itself or more info about how I built it and plan to make money below.

The Launch

Throughout the month I did a few mini releases for friends and family. I was able to test some features, fix some bugs, and gauge its ‘funness’ before launch. I made a bet with my Mom to release certain features at various stages which was a great way to keep me focused on the goal. By the end of April I had finish on time was ready to release!

I heard this site was great for launching so gave it a go. There was a week lead up time before I could post so I made sure to sign up ahead of schedule. Come launch day I gathered some colourful images, wrote a positive post, shared the story leading up to app, and then… nothing.

For a full day the post was dead. What happened? Was it something I said? I couldn’t even find the post on the site. It got 1 upvote the next day but overall died a lonely death.

I had seen other games on there and I reckon my images looked as good as any. From what I’ve read I guess that it ended up in the abyss - a hidden, back alley basement where newcomers are sent to. Oh well.

I enjoy lurking here and there’s a section where people can post their projects. It’s a techy site so I knew I needed a techy pitch. Unfortunately my game doesn’t quite project that image. I decided I would try talk about the technology behind it briefly and get people interested via comments. It got a few likes but had a similar fate to PH. Definitely not the right audience but at least I got my account setup for next time.

Now Reddit was an interesting one. Last year I tried to post some of my open source tools and got my account banned… god knows why. I appealed a bunch of times and thought it got reinstated.

So I made a post in the morning along with Product Hunt. When I checked on them a couple hours later, the Reddit thread was dead too! These are two massive sites and neither of my posts got a single like. I was feeling pretty down. I wanted to chat to people, get some interest, but nothing was happening.

Was my product that bad?

Determined that the account was bad I made another. That afternoon I posted again and had a nap. To my surprise I was getting upvotes! Within 2 hours it had like 30 upvotes and a couple of comments. By the morning it rocketed to almost 400+ with 30 comments baby 🤙 I was happy again.

The overall vibe was very positive and I would consider it a decent enough launch.

Here’s what I did right (I think):

• I made the game look high quality. People said it looked fun, colourful, and they wanted to play it.
• I chose the right audience. I posted to the satisficing subreddit which is full of the icing gifs my game is based on.
• I posted a video. I think a video is more engaging than an image as people spend more time watching it. It also suited the subreddit and demonstrated the product. It got 5k+ views!
• I chatted in the comments. This is something I learnt from the Indie Hackers podcast. It worked great and made the launch fun. I got good feedback, could answer questions, and was able to respond to criticisms. One commenter even called me out on my post being an ad. I responded honestly and people reacted positively. A good experience all round.

The Outcome

It’s been less than a week since launch and this is how it’s going:

• $2 baby!
• 150+ installs! 🙌
• 50 uninstalls… 😥

Welp pretty bad, but it’s a start.

So what now?

I’m actually pretty happy with the launch. I got good feedback to improve the game, people reacted really well to it, and it has users! To me it seems like there’s potential.

But it needs improvements. I want to grow it, retain users better, and convert them into paying customers. This is what I’m going to do:

• Add a ‘zen’ mode. People who like like those icing gifs probably like to create. I’m going to add a mode that allow them to do that separate from the game elements.
• Make is more fun. I’ll try make it more gamey to improve replay-ability. I’ll also add art sharing features to make it easy for people to show off their creations and spread the word.
• Build an audience. I’m going to create daily content to try create a user base on instagram (@icing_addict btw). When they see me use my game I hope they will want to play it.
• Release on iOS. That’s right, I haven’t released on iOS yet. Many commenters were eager to try the game but only had iPhones. I’ll try improve the game and then relaunch for iOS.

What about your 12 startups thing dude?

Oh yeah, I’ll be releasing another game this month too! I think the drawing concept could work for another style of game - snake! That’s right, Squiggle Snake will be a snake-inspired game using my icing drawing algorithm. I think it’ll be fun.

Also I’m in the zone with Flutter right now. I’ve already built the algorithm, the game scope is much smaller, so I reckon I’ve got time alongside the Icing Addict improvements.

Let’s see how it goes!

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2WJ9mDE