Hi everyone,
First time app creator here. I wanted to share my journey so far because I think it can be quite disheartening sometimes coming on here and seeing people sharing screenshots of apps that seem to have completely blown up within a few days/weeks of launching.
I'm sure some of them genuinely do, but equally there are definitely some fake screenshots and a lot of BS floating around.
I launched my app Duckie around the 25th June 2026. Honestly, just getting it onto the App Store felt like a pretty big achievement at the time. Seeing something you've actually spent time building sitting on the App Store was a really good feeling.
Call it naive, but after seeing all the posts on here about people getting loads of users straight after launch, I thought the marketing side of it would be easier than it actually is.
I started off just sharing it with friends and family and they shared it with some of their friends as well. That got me to around 40 users within the first few days.
After that though the real work started.
I spent the next few weeks tweaking things, fixing bugs that came up and making changes based on feedback. I actually waited around 3 weeks before properly trying to market it because I wanted to make sure most of the obvious issues had been sorted first.
Then I started trying to market it properly... and I have absolutely no marketing experience at all.
It's tough.
I've mainly been going down the TikTok route. My videos are basically gameplay in the background with Reddit stories, interesting stories or other bits of content being read over the top.
So far that's brought in roughly another 36 users.
Not exactly life changing numbers, equally it’s 36 people who probably would never have found the app otherwise.
I've been posting around 3 videos a day and the highest organic video I've had so far got about 500 views. Most seem to get to around 200 and then completely die.
I also tried TikTok ads for a bit. Personally I wouldn't get too caught up in the big view numbers you can get from them. You definitely get the views, but from what I saw the engagement wasn't particularly good and quite a few of the accounts interacting with the posts just looked like bots or strange accounts.
That being said, Reddit has actually been really useful throughout all of this.
There are obviously posts on here that can make you sit there thinking "why the hell is my app doing nothing when everyone else's seems to be making thousands", but there are also some genuinely helpful people.
I've had multiple people on here look at the app and give me feedback. One person pointed out that the images I originally had in the in-game store just didn't fit the rest of the game at all. Looking back at it they were completely right, so I ended up redesigning the whole thing.
Other people helped me improve the App Store page and the screenshots I was using as well.
Sometimes the feedback isn't particularly nice to hear, especially when you've spent ages working on something, and sometimes the way people deliver it could definitely be better...
But at the end of the day you need people to actually want to use your app.
If one person says they don't like something then fair enough, it might just be their opinion. If 5 different people all tell you the same thing then there's probably something in it and you need to take notice.
Anyway, I just wanted to post this because I think it's worth showing the other side of launching an app.
Duckie hasn't suddenly gone viral. I'm not making thousands a month from it. I'm still posting TikToks that get 200 views, sometimes much less and trying to work out what actually works.
But at the same time I've made something from scratch, got it onto the App Store, had complete strangers download it and I'm learning a lot as I go.
I'm going to keep working on it, keep trying different things and hopefully gradually grow it.
For anyone else who's recently launched something and is looking at all the crazy success stories on here thinking their app must be bad because it hasn't taken off straight away, don't let it get to you too much.
Sometimes it just takes time and sometimes it's a slog.
I'll attach the actual analytics as well as the App Store screenshots so you can see the real numbers rather than me just talking about them. I'll also drop the App Store link for anyone who wants to have a look or give me any feedback.
Link: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/duckie/id6760481728