I skipped last month’s update.

Revenue was down across my apps, I was burnt out, and honestly, I just didn’t have the energy to write. But in hindsight, that was a mistake. The whole point of this blog is to document the entirety of the indie hacker journey, not just the wins, but the dips too. So here’s a catch-up. A mix of frustration, small wins, and slow momentum.

Highlights

🎥 TikTok marketing

In my last post, I mentioned exploring new marketing channels. I had tried the classic apps gone free campaigns. Honestly? Didn’t work.
I expected a bump in downloads and ASO gains post-campaign, but instead, downloads dropped to near zero.

So I pivoted.

I’ve been experimenting with TikTok as a marketing channel. A lot of indie apps have grown by engineering viral moments, so I’m giving it a go. I’ve started slowly in March: understanding the platform, and making my first few attempts. Still early days, but it feels promising.

💸 Superwall integration

I’ve known for a while that my paywalls weren’t great. I built them manually and kept postponing improvements. I had heard about Superwall but procrastinated on trying it out.

In March, I finally integrated Superwall into Orbitime and saw an immediate improvement in conversions. I also created a discount offer for some users, and the response has been better.

💌 A wholesome email

One challenge of building privacy-focused apps is that we rarely know who our users are. We often don’t realise who the real people behind the screen are.

In February, I received the cutest email from a user.

💡 New ideas

Lately, ideas have been bubbling up non-stop. It’s exciting and chaotic at the same time. I want to chase all of them (which is a terrible idea).

Instead, I’m forcing myself to pick just 1–2 projects and go deep. I’ll talk more about them soon, but I’m genuinely excited. 

Learnings

🏷️ Parity Pricing

Changing pricing for each country in App Store Connect is painful. I used PriceTag this month to implement parity pricing across all my apps—and it worked beautifully.

A few extra sales came through in regions I usually overlook. Highly recommend it if you’re selling in multiple markets.

Lowlights

📉 Revenue drop

February’s revenue was a sharp drop from January’s high. A few reasons:

• Most of the January subscriptions for Echo got canceled in February.
  
  

• Orbitime, which contributes a big chunk of revenue, had a slowdown in in-app purchases.
  
  

• And to be honest, I didn’t put in the hours I needed to. But in March, I started showing up again, and the numbers started recovering. 

🐦‍🔥 Burnout

I saw early signs of burnout in February, and I tried to manage it, but it still caught up.

The strange thing is that I love what I do. Work rarely feels like work. But burnout doesn’t always come from working too much. Sometimes it’s the weight of trying 100 things and watching 99 of them fail. That part sucks.

I’m learning to power through it slowly.

And that was March– the good, the bad, the messy.

Until next time!