The death of single purpose apps

Answering the hard question, would I start again If you haven’t read the first 2 parts, you can find them here and here

Recap

Just a quick recap of my journey so far. I’ve been building iOS privacy tool for photo and video encryption for 4 years now. After 2 years of grinding and losses, I finally hit product market fit with a questionable feature. Converter disguise - the app looked like a Currency converter, but entering a pincode unlocks a photo gallery. It was instant hit, but Apple hated it. After countless conversations the app stayed without an update for the whole year, until recently I’ve updated it, traffic, positions and revenue fall 4 times, yet bugs and support requests increased drastically

Starting over

it feels like I’m starting over, because in many regards I am. All metrics looks bleak, and it’s hard to not be pessimistic about them. Revenue will not cover even basic needs this month. Half of people are deleting app immediately after installing.

For anybody, who’ve been building in AppStore it’s nothing new. The better positions you have, the better all other metrics looks as well. Most easy going users, who are willing to pay don’t spend much time on research and scrolling through AppStore. Once you fall from first page you are left with nitpicks. Users who didn’t really find their specific use case or just trying a lot of things before making decisions. Needless to say, that’s not the easiest audience to ask for a payment, even if it’s one time.

Installs are almost non-existing and what’s worse they are still falling even today, so yes, I still have a code for the app, but I don’t have the app itself, so to say.

Would I build the same thing again?

I’ve asked myself that exact questions many times and the answer was always, no, I would not. Maybe it has something to do with the comfort of my job, or experience working in startups, but mobile indie development doesn’t feel that exiting business wise. It’s dominated by soul sucking companies, like Duolingo, Monopoly GO not to mention TikTok and other social media apps. Every app is fighting for the same installs pushing everything they have to make you addicted, as a result spending more and more for user acquisition. You can easily see how AppStore landscape was changing by looking how public perception of a phone changed over the years. It’s started as the best thing in the world, you can do useful things on the go like mail, banking, paying invoices and chatting with friends. No need to go to the bank or sit in a dark room to send an email iPhone was just a useful tool and everyone loved it! I myself still have an old iPhone 2g from 2007

Fast-forward today, everybody hates their phones. Scrolling is the new smoking. It no longer feels like we own anything, but more like a toxic necessity. Your phone gives you a lot of comfort, but also trying to control you. Each action inside every app is designed to literally change the chemistry of your brain. Most likely we’ll change as human species, due to phone usage. which is wild

That’s a very different picture, isn’t it?

So why would I do it again then?

It’s complicated motivation, which I’m not sure I myself understand good enough. It started as a simple idea, working on something useful on a side, earn a bit of money. Side projects simply help me with burnout. But then I was falling deeply into the rabbit hole of ASO, SEO, organic traffic, AppStore guidelines, app metrics etc etc and you might think it’s just a part of building a startup, but in my experience that’s not. Building startup is just building something people want. It’s very hard and requires both skill and empathy, but most startups are not bureaucratic. You don’t need to comply with any rules if you’re just building utility apps, especially when you are small and don’t have many users. I think the reason is mobile web sucks and people have a healthier relationship with their computers than with their phones, so having distribution to mobile is like controlling traffic routes. It’s tempting to over regulate them for the sake of protection.

Learning all of that made me realise building SafeSpace became a statement, proving a point that building healthy single purpose mobile apps is still possible and can be profitable and hopfeuly result in something bigger. Like we’ll see more of apps like, which are not trying to hook, but rather to help and do nothing else. And unlocking an iPhone won’t feel like lighting a cig.

If i’m correct, the need will only grow and sonner, or rather later I’ll be back on track