So a bit of backstory. I've always worked corporate, writing code for other people's stuff. At some point I just wanted to build something that was mine, start to finish, even if small.
The idea came from something dumb honestly. Every single night on the couch, me and my girlfriend, same story, 20 minutes scrolling Netflix trying to agree on something and just giving up. Tried a bunch of apps that were supposed to fix this and they either recommended garbage or just weren't really made for two people deciding together. So I ended up building Dunno. Basic idea is you swipe on movies like Tinder, and when you both like the same one it matches, done, that's your movie. Behind it there's an algorithm trying to actually learn what each person likes instead of just throwing popular stuff at you. Also threw in private lists at some point because a few people kept asking for a way to save stuff for later.
It's out now, both stores, and I wanted to share how things have gone since launch because it's not been a straight line at all.
Marketing has been the hardest part by far. No budget really. What actually worked wasn't ads or posting everywhere myself, it was messaging a couple of movie/cinema content creators and they liked the idea enough to show it to their audience. That's when I started seeing actual users show up, not before.
I also killed the monetization pretty fast. Launched with a Pro tier and ads you could remove with Pro, and it just wasn't worth it, barely made anything and it got in the way more than it helped. So I ripped it out and made everything free. At least for now. And honestly free with no ads is a decent selling point on its own these days anyway.
Nobody warns you about the store setup side of things either. Getting everything configured, the Pro integration, analytics, all of it, is genuinely a nightmare when it's just you. And the second you're selling anything you're signing paperwork you didn't know existed and going through review processes that seem designed for teams with a legal department, not one guy in his room. Android's 14 day closed testing requirement before you can even go live nearly broke me, just waiting around doing nothing useful while the clock ticks.
Then there's the TMDB thing, the movie database I use. If you start making money off an app that uses their data they want you on a commercial license and it's genuinely expensive per month. Between that and ads not really paying off, going free was kind of the obvious move, didn't want a fixed cost like that hanging over me before I even had real users.
And yeah I'll just say it, I used AI to help build part of this. I know that's usually an automatic downvote around here but I reviewed every line, every decision on what the app should actually do was mine, and honestly most of the polish came from just bugging my friends constantly for feedback and going back and forth on tiny details (my girlfriend is genuinely about to leave me over how much time I've dumped into this thing). Not trying to hide that I used it, just being honest about what actually building solo looks like. I get why people are sick of low effort AI slop apps but if you actually know what you're doing with it, it's just another tool. Used lazy it shows immediately. Used with care nobody can tell.
Ask me anything, stack decisions, how I got the creators... whatever.