I'm a solo developer and just crossed 1,000+ downloads on an app I built entirely on my own (Qibla Compass & Prayer Streak a free Qibla direction, prayer times, and Quran reader app for Muslims). No ad spend, no team, just building and shipping features based on what I'd want myself.
Now I'm at the "figure out growth" stage, and curious what's genuinely worked for other solo/indie makers here, especially for niche, non-SaaS products:
- Did ASO (App Store Optimization) actually move your numbers, or was it mostly organic community sharing?
Curious if other founders/makers here are seeing this: a chunk of my own search behavior has quietly moved from typing something into Google to just asking ChatGPT or Perplexity directly, and getting an answer with no click to any website.
For anyone building a product with organic/SEO as a growth channel, has this shown up in your numbers yet? Or is it too early to tell?
Not trying to sell anything, genuinely curious how other builders here are thinking about it (if at all).
There s still a lot of attention on flashy categories: AI agents, creator tools, social apps. At the same time, you keep hearing quiet stories about people building solid, calm businesses around very unsexy problems: invoicing for a niche industry, compliance workflows, scheduling in weird contexts, back-office tools nobody outside the niche has heard of.
I m curious whether your view of what s worth building has changed over the last few years. Would you be excited to build something deeply boring if the demand and willingness to pay were obvious? Or do you still feel pulled towards more visible, consumer-facing or hyped spaces? And for those already in boring niches, how has that choice played out in terms of users, stress and revenue?
I've been noticing something lately. We went from using AI as a tool to letting AI become the default for almost everything: writing, deciding, planning, even reflecting.
Need to write an email? AI. Need to make a decision? Ask AI. Need to understand how you feel about something? Believe it or not, AI.
The problem isn't the technology. The problem is that we're quietly outsourcing the one thing that makes us valuable: our ability to think for ourselves.
Hi there, my name is Kate, I'm a Product Owner (a.k.a mommy) of the fresh-launched asset management tool AssetSpace For almost a year, I'm wearing a visioner's, manager's, owner's, designer's, QA's, marketologist's and a lot of other hats while working on product. Ask me anything!
I have to admit I m a tragedy when it comes to being first at trying new technology or so which means I ve fallen for more scams and shady situations than I d like to count.
(At least I can warn my friends and family before they make the same mistakes, so that's the only advantage.)
I decided to share some best practices I regret not doing sooner:
I was wondering if people have a concrete way of tracking their productivity? Are you using a specific metric - like a number of working hours/task completed? or a tool to show you how productive you are? or is it just your own feeling of accomplishment? Productivity, for me, is very intangible and I would love to know how you know / monitor if you had a productive day or not. Let me know under
What are some tools that have supercharged your productivity that you can't live without anymore? Share your recommendations! Mine are - Superhuman.ai
Notion Jira
Insightly.ai (which I'm currently building for engg leaders)
We still hire mostly off r sum s a one-page document someone wrote about themselves. But a resume can't really show if a person can do the actual work, solve real problems, or handle pressure. Yet it's usually the first and biggest filter.
