Welcome to my indie dev journey.
New here?
Hey, I’m Mikaela 🦄 I’m an independent iOS developer working on making my own apps profitable, and doing some freelance on the side.
Every month, I plan on publishing a journal / retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business. You can read from the beginning here.
I want to develop my own apps full time and make enough money from them so I can live off the proceeds, and not have to get a full time job or do freelance work.
Goal Grades
At the beginning of the month, I’m going to set high level goals, and then rate myself on how I did at the end of the month.
Release Fruitful Beta Test for Deep Dish Swift
- Result: Released! On the last day of the conference
- Grade: B
Done! 🥵 It took me throughout the whole conference, working on it every night, but I shipped the beta test at the very end of the last day of the conference. I had about 40 beta testers sign up!
Freelance
I have 2 freelance clients that I work with. Client A, I’ve had for several years, and is an ongoing project at an hourly rate.
Client A, I had a few sync meeting and discussing the project and only did a few hours of work for the month.
Client B, I’ve subcontracted the work, see last month for more details, and we’re working on converting one time in-app purchases into subscriptions. We ended up taking a break in May due to the client and I both having busy schedules.
Fruitful
I did it! Barely! I shipped version 0.0 build 1 on the very last day of Deep Dish Swift. I had about 40 beta testers, and of course already found some significant bugs.
I pulled an all nighter just to ship the Test Flight. Users were able to make a custom card, create an account using Sign in With Apple, then copy / paste a link to connect with someone else who has the app. (because I didn’t have universal links working).
The backend is a Vapor REST API hosted on Heroku, with a Postgres database.
I hard coded in the backend the conference users were at, but later I want users to manger their own lists of conferences, because I don’t want to have a centrally managed list.
But we did it! The very initial MVP has shipped. Next is wrapping it all up to actually ship the app to the App Store for WWDC24. (Narrator: this also didn’t happen unfortunately).
The app works! Users were able the friend each other and write notes about the person they met! 👏 that’s the basis of the app and the flow works! But of course there were some huge bugs already. Like you can friend yourself, and friend the same person multiple times if you tap the button several times.
So that will need to be fixed, but it works!
Deep Dish Swift
I had an absolutely amazing time at the conference! So many great talks and the environment feels like catching up with old friends and being inspired to ship your app.
Deep Dish Swift is the first conference I’m going to this year! I attended last year, 2023, as a speaker and loved it. This year as an attendee, was just as fun. I particularly love the “indie dev” focus of the conference and hearing from others who have made it and live from the income of their apps. It’s so inspiring and makes me feel like it really is possible to do as just an individual.
Swift Craft
Last minute I decided to go to Swift Craft as a volunteer. They posted they were looking for volunteers and would provide accommodation, which means all I would need to pay for is a flight and food. Flight prices happened to work out and I was off! ✈️
There was one day of workshops, where I attended Jon Reid’s testing workshop, and then two days of talks.
As a volunteer, I would help with check-in, on the first day, and then helping with timing the talks, making sure the speakers knew what room to go to, and anything else that’s needed throughout the conference.
I’d highly recommend anyone volunteer for a conference! Accommodation may not always be provided, but it’s a great experience. You get to see more about how the conference operates and get to talk to the speakers directly. (Which you should do anyways even when not volunteering, they’re all nice and would love to chat with anyone).
I had an amazing time and made new friends ❤️ can’t wait for next year!
Lessons Learned
Not too many significant “lessons learned” this month. The Test Flight was very useful in finding bugs that I wouldn’t have found on my own and seeing what others thought of my app. Deep Dish Swift and Swift Craft were both amazing and I love attending them, learning new things, and meeting others.
Goals for Next Month
Finish Fruitful for WWDC24
It’s simple enough right? Ship the app that I’ve wanted to finish.
See ya in the next one! 👋