After a successful launch (Product of the Day on Product Hunt, feature on Lifehacker.com and $3,000 revenue) I thought it was only a matter of time before I wrote a verbose post on the exact methods I used to launch and market the app.

Launching a digital product is harder than it looks from the outside. With no clear path, there are tens if not hundreds of ways to go about it. This begins with what you make, how to make it, how you launch, and finally how you showcase your product to the world.

I’ve launched hundreds of digital products through my WordPress companies Obox and Layers, but the recent launch of my app Thought Train for Mac, was my first endeavour into the world of apps.

(For those who don’t enjoy long form posts, there’s a TL;DR at the bottom of this post.)

http://thoughttrain.cc/

The idea phase

Creating an app that solves a problem for yourself is a sure way to get it to a useable state. If you really need the app, well you’ll likely make sure your MVP is pretty good.

I had a fairly remedial issue which was having a negative effect on my productivity:

In between Slack, Skype, Email and other distractions, I literally kept forgetting what I was busy with.

I used the default Stickies app, but it’d get lost behind a plethora of other open apps and tabs. So I came up with a novel idea “what if your notes were always on display, in your menubar?”

I boiled my idea down to the following prerequisites:

The app needs to be lightweight.

Sit in the menubar.

Display my notes.

Scroll the notes across the menubar so that it grabs my attention (more on this later).

So, I had an idea that’d solve my own problem, I had a clear view of what it needs to achieve, and so I went onto the next step… how it looks and works.

🎨 The design & mockup phase

By trade I’m a web developer, albeit one who knows what looks good and what looks terrible. Thankfully for me (and for you), the best part about the internet is that there are thousands of examples of apps and programs that you use as inspiration!

The first thing I did was google “Mac Menubar App Sketch” and came across Sketch App Resources, who listed the Asana menubar app.

Perfect! I downloaded the files and got to work using Sketch, creating my own designs by dismantling what they had in their resource and rebuilding it according to what I needed.

Once I got to a design that I thought would be good enough, I mocked it onto a Mac screen with a gif of how it’d work.

The next step is a sticky one: Finding a developer to help turn an idea into reality.

👷 Finding a builder

“Why didn’t you built it yourself tho?”

Right, so I am a developer, and I could have written the app myself using this tutorial by Ray Wenderlich, but I decided against it for the following reasons:

I didn’t have the time to learn a new language

I was inundated with work

I didn’t want to limit the app’s development when I hit inevitable roadblocks

So I had to find a developer, and as far as I saw it, there were two options:

Find one on Fiverr.com, which I think is a great but not my first choice. Leverage my network and find a local (South African) developer.

I chose the latter for a few reasons:

I wanted someone in the SAST Time zone.

I wanted a developer who spoke the same language as me, and I’m not just talking about English, I’m talking about how we describe things and all the nuances of how we converse.

I know that South Africans work well autonomously, meaning I didn’t need a deep spec., I could just share images and let them run with it.

I knew that many of the best developers all lurked in the ZA Tech Slack team, so I posted my request on their iOS development channel.

It was really only minutes later I was on the line with Simon Archer, a talented developer from Cape Town.

We discussed the app idea and how I wanted it to behave, and luckily for me he told me he was willing to do it fairly cheaply, using the app as a way to learn Mac OS menubar dev. The unicorn of a win-win situation.

About a week later we already had the first build ready, I was so excited, I quickly installed it and while it behave just as I’d imagined… It didn’t look great.

That’s okay, so I spent a bit more time with Simon talking about how we can match the app pixel for pixel according to the designs I sent him and how we can make some decisions on how users interact with the app.

This was important. I could have easily just taken what he’d done and sent it to beta users, but I was honest with him (and vice versa.) and with patience, we got to an app which looked just like my designs and behaved really well.

🔐 Getting feedback via beta users

During the build process I’d been gathering an email list of potential beta testers, friends, family and people I knew via Twitter and my work network.

I sent the app around, and gathered feedback on how it functioned.

The over-arching feedback as as follows:

Marc, love the app but hate the scrolling functionality, it’s too aggressive, can’t it just be turned off?

No problem, I came up with a novel solution: the ability to select which notes will display in the menubar, where choosing more than one would make them scroll across the menubar.

After gathering more feedback, and adjusting small bugs and UX decisions, I wanted to broaden the use beyond the beta group.

I had to make a website to present it to the world.

✏️ Making the website

If you think there are 100s of ways to make an app, boy there are 100s of ways to make a website too.

Luckily, I’ve been doing exactly that for almost 15 years, so this was easy for me, but if you’re wondering how to do it yourself, here’s a brief outline:

Using WordPress:

WordPress is great if you know a bit about the internet. It gives you control over your content and allows you to own your files. There are numerous ways to go about creating a WordPress site, but here’s the outline:

Get a domain name, Namecheap is usually where I head to

Get hosting, I recommend using Flywheel or Bluehost

Setup WordPress

Install a theme, (my builder LayersWP is pretty easy to use)

Make a landing page

Upload your zip file

Link your file to a button or signup form on your site

Other Options:

If WordPress scares you, you can also make a site using these tools:

I went through 3 iterations of the site, the first two were really graphical, but looked overly complex.

What I settled on was a design which had one beautiful image, prominent features, was emoji heavy and gave good real estate to the download action.

Once I created the site, I went to Twitter and Facebook and promoted the app to get some more users.

At this stage I had no payment functionality, I was still unsure about if or how people would pay for the app.

⏰ The waiting game

Usually this is where a post would say “F* IT LAUNCH IT, BE FREE!” and tell you how to post to Product Hunt, but… instead of launching right away I waited a long time before I officially “launched” the app, and here’s why:

I wanted to understand the market position.

I wanted to see if I could come up with a pricing model.

It took me a while to understand what the product was good at and what its weak points were.

Most importantly it also took time to decide on the marketing proposition.

If I marketed it as a task management app I’d be going up against the big dogs like Basecamp, Asana, Monday, etc.

If I went after note taking apps, I’d be up against Evernote, Notes, Todoist etc.

So instead, I went after an app that really has one function, the native OS Stickies app.

Just like Thought Train the stickies app does what it says on the tin, and isn’t overly complex, it’s the perfect competitor.

So right then, I knew that I definitely start marketing Thought Train as a way to replace stickies, and support instead of replacing any other task apps.

Before launching for real, it was time to decide on pricing, and this is where it gets interesting.

💰 Pricing Model

Free? $0.99? $2,99? $20? This topic is pretty contentious, how do you really know how much are people willing to pay for your app?

Charge too little and there’s a chance that users will assume it’s too cheap to be good.

Charge too much and you’re dead in the water, users won’t try something new if it’s too expensive.

I finally settled on… pay-what-you-want, meaning the app is free if you want it to be, or you can enter in an amount you’d like to spend on the app.

To do this I used Gumroad, who host your files and take payments on your behalf. On top of it all, they also have an awesome user experience.

This meant minimal setup time, a great simple UX, and no worry about coding any tech around payment the mechanism.

So I got the site, some users have used the product, I found a great marketing message and finally a pricing model.

There was one more thing left, which is Hunting it.

If you don’t ‘Hunt your product or app, have you even really launched?

🚀 Product Hunt Launch time!

So as I said earlier, I put off launching for ages! Finally when I eventually saw an app launch on Product Hunt which had similar functionality to Thought Train, I thought that it’s time to stop stalling and finally hunt this app.

No… more… waiting...

The first thing I did was test my site to make sure everything worked as it should:

Can people pay?

Once they pay, did they get their download?

Does the app (mostly) work most of the time?

Do I have a welcome message for users from Product Hunt?

With those basic answers done, I put my site onto Product Hunt and pressed the trigger at 3pm SAST, which is 9am Eastern in the USA. This actually turned out to be important.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/thought-train

Right, now what? It’s frowned upon to ask for direct upvotes on Product Hunt, but I still used it as a direct channel to market the app to my network.

I did however, direct all traffic straight through Product Hunt instead of linking straight to my site.

The most important aspect were as follows:

I got to 20 upvotes right as America was waking up, this got me high up the “new” list (since it was morning time in the US)

I had some great comments right off the bat

I got a great mention from John O’Nolan on Twitter

Ryan Hoover himself commented on the PH post!

This was the perfect storm and from then on I knew I was onto something great.

~750 upvotes and $500+ later, it was confirmed, my app had traction.

🎒 Lifehacker.com, Dailytekk & Macrumor.com

Straight after my success on Product Hunt the app was featured on Lifehacker.com, this gave me a bunch of great paying traffic, accounting for over $600 in revenue.

The following week I hit Macrumors.com too, steering a tidy $300+

Finally Dailytekk featured Thought Train on their Youtube channel, another $150+

It was really interesting to see how each platform brought different types of users to my site, and how different each audience was in terms of willingness to pay and how much they wanted to pay.

Product Hunt users paid pretty frequently (10%), and paid between $3-$25

Lifehacker.com users paid most frequently (11%+) and paid the most on average, ranging from $1-$50

About 6% of Macrumors.com users paid for the app, and mostly around $0.99 -$2.99

There were other features, a lot of sites from Asia and some from Russia & India, all contributing to the relative success of the app.

🥇Defining success

I think it’s important to define what successful means to you when you launch.

Is it monetary?

Nearing 6,000 downloads and $3000 is obviously great.

Is it confirmation?

All the positive comments that I received about the app via being listed as app of the day on Product Hunt and the Lifehacker.com feature.

The app’s success has allowed me to believe more strongly in my own ability, leading to more confidence and ultimately allowing me to open my mind to other possibilities.

Is it simply just shipping?

Apps or websites, digital products are not tangible, so the experience of shipping is where most of the excitement lies.

The simple act of actually shipping a product and the endorphin rush of pressing launch, all the social media promotion work and writing pieces like this is the best part of building products.

📈 What next?

Where to now? Naturally this question comes up immediately after anything online shows remote promise, but here are my next steps:

Keep pushing updates.

Try and convert as many of the 90% of my users who have not yet paid.

I have a redesign coming soon hopefully.

Once I have that, I’ll get the app onto Setapp or the official App store.

I have an Adwords campaign running which I’m adjusting daily to keep traffic flow.

I’d really like to hear about your own app launches, so leave your comments below.

Remember, you can get Thought Train from the link below, and remember, it’s free if you want it to be :)

https://www.thoughttrain.cc/