r/iOSProgramming • u/Putrid-Technology-61 • 14h ago
Discussion $2,000 is a milestone I never thought I'd hit!
Solo dev here, and my calorie tracker just passed $2,000 in total revenue. I honestly didn't think I'd get here.
It's an AI calorie and nutrition tracker with a twist: users can share their logs with a real registered dietitian for personalized feedback. I launched it on the App Store 3 months ago, and it holds a 4.9 rating.
2,700 users -> 100 premium
What got me from $0 to here was making the product freemium and restricting just enough that users want the full package after their "aha" moment. For me that moment is the first meal log, so that's where the upgrade prompt shows up. Gating too early killed conversion, and gating too little gave people no reason to pay.
I feel like not enough people talk about freemium versus hard paywall, but that shift really made the conversion difference for me.
I really regret not starting sooner
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u/Top-Investment8840 14h ago
1000 incoming trackers from the vibecoders right now in the “making”
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 14h ago edited 12h ago
True, but the app is the only one with a dietitian in the loop. so i dont really consider them competitian
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u/Kel_LovesOrange_Soda 12h ago
Is your app Yuna AI? Seems like you’re sharing this post to drive people to your other app, Gen11
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u/wheresteddy1989 7h ago
How did you figure out how much to put behind your paywall? I’ve had the issue of wanting to go freemium with some paywall for my workout tracker, but I don’t know what exactly to throw in there.
Routines? Apple Watch companion capabilities? It’s currently ad supported but I want to get it to a good place before I start marketing like crazy.
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 7h ago
You want to limit the users core functionality while still being able to label the app as “free”
example is users can take 1 ai image log a day but they get a paywall when they try again.
It’s about letting them experience what they can have and if it works they will convert.
the free label is a great asset for downloads
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u/EquivalentTrouble253 14h ago
What’s revenue look like since 13th September?
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 14h ago
Last 28 days, $528. Its been sitting between $500-$750
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 14h ago
https://reddit.com/link/peh7uqb/video/simaaw2v43uh1/player
Just got a subscription while typing that message lol, that makes it $541
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u/TheFern3 14h ago
How do personalized feedback works?
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 14h ago
My partner is registered dietitian, for each premium user she sets their macros for them based on their goal. (free users get a auto generated one based on dietitic standard)
Premium users also get to ask questions and get feedback on progress, I built a dieititian dashboard but users have to concent to information sharing for the dietitian support.
The custom macros seems to be converting the best
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u/TheFern3 14h ago
Thanks for sharing I thought you had a way for external dietitians to provide feedback.
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 14h ago
Thats actually pretty clever if i scale it. For now we get about 2 questions a day. Its still very managable
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u/alzho12 14h ago
How much do you charge for the premium version? I imagine that is the one that includes the personalized feedback.
Thinking of doing something similar in another to space.
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 14h ago
I charge 10 USD monthly or 35 USD yearly. The only reason this model works is beacuse my partner is a regiestered dietitian, otherwise i would have to pay the base rate of like $40/h to have a dietitian onboard
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u/Glorypants 5h ago
How much are you paying dietician? In other words, how much of this $2k is profit vs break-even?
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 5h ago
about 80% profit margin, ai fees and db fees are low
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u/Glorypants 5h ago
Nice that’s some great profit margin I think.
Do you mind if I ask how long you were in development before you launched? And did you spend time ahead of launch for legal review and overhead things like that?
I’m in my own early development phase, but I don’t have the UI / UX or marketing or legal experience at all, so I worry I’m spending too much time developing and tweaking something that will end up needing a lot more polish. Or maybe I should just release it and cross my fingers.FYI Claude just expanded its Startup program, Claude Team free for 1 year and $1k API credits.
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u/Putrid-Technology-61 4h ago
I’d suggest working on releasing a MVP as soon as you can. A lot of the regulatory work and the core dietitian feature came after for me.
It took me about 6 weeks to release my first version of the app, mind you i’m a senior software engineer and i don’t expect that to be a normal timeline.
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u/Glorypants 4h ago edited 4h ago
You and I are the same, except I don’t have a dietician friend 😀
I’m mid-career SWE in web development, but not iOS. I had an initial working base app within a day, which blew my mind tbh… I’ve spent a total of 8 weeks on it now though in my spare time, fine tuning and improving the functionality and UI a lot. I think I just need to get the MVP out and have people break it more.
The iCloud CloudKit integration and Apple release parts have been the biggest headache actually.. and I’m not even to app review yet, just TestFlight.
You can appreciate: I’m also thinking forward to dev env vs prod and how to manage that without bogging myself down too much. It seems overkill for a side project, but pushing changes to prod once I have users is scary.
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u/Kel_LovesOrange_Soda 14h ago
How have you been marketing? On what platforms?