Three months running 6 apps. Here's what actually happened.
The honest version of a "build in public" post is the one you write when the numbers aren't what you expected. Three months ago I shipped six apps in about six weeks. Momentum, PawFormance, PillPal, HomeGrown, Palette Pro, ContentForge. All live. All working. One paying subscriber across the whole portfolio at month one. Here's what I learned. The apps weren't the problem. Distribution was. I built each app to solve a real problem I had or watched someone have. Momentum came from tracking my own workouts badly. PillPal came from watching my mother manage medications in a way that scared me. HomeGrown came from a garden spreadsheet that was getting embarrassing. The apps work. They do what they say they do. The problem is that almost nobody found them. Six months of Google Analytics data: direct traffic to five of the six apps is essentially zero. The two apps with real traffic — Momentum and HomeGrown — have it because I posted two answers on Quora. Not because of any launch strategy. Because I answered two questions that people were actually searching for. That's the whole lesson: search intent > launch energy. What I tried Show HN posts (2 posts, 0 comments each — posted on a weekend, classic mistake) Directory submissions across BetaList, SaaSHub, AlternativeTo, Uneed (all pending or no visible traffic) Dev.to articles (this one included) — some SEO value, slow build Mastodon presence (strong community engagement, zero app traffic) LinkedIn posts about the build process (engagement but no conversion; wrong audience for the apps) What actually worked Two Quora answers that directly addressed the search query someone was already running One Medium article that ranked for a specific keyword within two weeks That's it. That's the whole list. What month three looks like Momentum: $7.99 MRR, 1 paying subscriber. That's not a mistake — that's one person who found the app and decided it was worth paying for. ContentForge: free tier users, 0 paid. The free tier is active