What You Can Expect
Running an app business is not as easy as you might think.
In fact, it's pretty hard, especially if you're an indie developer like me who doesn't have a lot of marketing expertise or loads of money to spend on big advertising campaigns.
If you're interested in
Me trying to make my side hustle my main source of income
The ups and downs of building a business on your own
Starting and running an app business
How to find motivation when it all seems impossible
then this blog is for you.
The App I’m Building
Sonuby Weather is a weather forecast app for surfers, skydivers and weather enthusiasts that I have been wanting to build for a long time.
As a former developer of meteoblue for iOS, one of the most popular weather apps, I know a bit about the weather app market and wanted to use this knowledge to build a more advanced weather app.
Since October 2019, Sonuby is my side hustle. To make a living, I work about 20-25 hours a week as a freelance software engineer. I spend another 30-40 hours a week conceptualizing, designing, developing, and marketing Sonuby, which is insanely motivating, but also very exhausting and even frustrating at times.
Since its launch in October 2023, the app has slowly gained some traction and fortunately has paying subscribers as well.
The Problems I’m Facing
Building a great app is one thing. Getting people to use it is another. Not to mention making it pay the bills.
While I'm lucky to already have very dedicated early adopters using Sonuby and giving me helpful feedback, I've realized that I need to invest more time and resources to make the app more successful and eventually make a living from it.
How I Plan to Move Forward
I have decided to temporarily stop working as a freelancer and devote all my time to developing and marketing Sonuby.
This was not an easy decision to make.
My head is spinning because I'm afraid of running out of money and I'm also afraid of wasting all my time and resources on something that might fail.
But I also see an opportunity. An opportunity to realize my dream of building my own product and making a living from it.
If I don't try, I'll never know if I could have made it.
So I'm going to try.
Welcome to my blog, welcome to my life!
Julian
