I’ve been building and selling software since the early 2000s, starting with classic shareware. In 2011, I moved into the App Store world and built an iOS budget app because I needed a simple way to track my own expenses.

At the time, my plan was to replace a few larger shareware projects with several smaller apps to spread the risk. That didn’t quite work out — one app, MoneyControl, quickly grew so much that it became my main focus.

Fifteen years later, the app is still on the App Store, still actively developed, and still used by people who started with version 1.0. Many apps from that era are long gone.

Looking back, these are some of the things that mattered most:

Starting early helped, but wasn’t enough on its own. Early visibility made a difference, but long-term maintenance and reliability are what kept users.

Focus beat diversification. I wanted many small apps. I ended up with one large, long-lived product. Deep focus turned out to be more sustainable.

Long-term maintenance is most of the work. Adapting to new iOS versions, migrating data safely, handling edge cases, and keeping old data usable mattered more than flashy features.

Discoverability keeps getting harder. Reaching users on the App Store today is much more difficult than it was years ago. Prices are higher than in the old 99-cent days, but visibility hasn’t improved.

I’m a developer first, not a marketer. I work alone, with occasional help from freelancers. No employees, no growth team. The app could probably have grown more with better marketing, but that was never my strength.

You don’t need to get rich to build something sustainable. I didn’t build this for an exit. I’ve been able to make a living from my work for over 20 years, which feels like success to me.

Building things you actually use keeps you honest. Every product I built was something I personally needed. That authenticity mattered more than any roadmap.

This week I released version 10 with a new design and a major technical overhaul. It feels less like a milestone and more like preparing the app for the next phase.

Happy to answer questions about long-term app maintenance, indie development, or keeping a product alive across many iOS generations.

user:	combocosmo
created:	November 16, 2024
karma:	5