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Nek_12 | 4 months ago

Fair point on the tiny cohort. You're right - 9 users isn't enough to validate an archetype.

Marketing strategy: None, really. 99% organic from Play/App Store discovery. Spent $1,300 on ads over 3 years, negligible results. No content marketing (tried, spent ~20k$ on an instagram account, gained 50 followers), no SEO, no outreach (apart from irregular reddit shills). Just ship features and hope App Store algorithms pick it up.

Had one viral spike in Poland (June 2025, ~1,600 users) but don't know the source - maybe a YouTuber review, maybe App Store featuring. GA4 misattributed it to paid ads which didn't exist.

Competitors: - Free: Habitica (gamified), Todoist, Google Tasks - Freemium: Productive, Habitify, Strides (3-5 free habits, pay for more) - Paid upfront: Streaks ($5 one-time) - Coaching: Fabulous ($70/year), Noom ($60/month) - Niche: Focus Bear (ADHD), Routinery ($4/mo, routines focused)

The irony: I think I accidentally built something that works for a specific archetype (regular schedules + decision fatigue), but I've been marketing it as a general habit tracker to everyone. Which explains the 4.2% D1 retention - 95% are wrong-fit users.

But I can't niche down based on 9 users who won't even respond to my emails.

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saaaaaam|4 months ago

Again, forgive me if this seems mean but are you writing your responses using AI? There can be many reasons for this, including English not being your first language, dyslexia, neurodiversity and many other things.

That aside (as it isn’t necessarily important) I think you need to find three things that represent the “sweet spot” for your app and try marketing around those.

Sadly I don’t think it’s possible to scale what is effectively a commodity app with plenty of competition without having a strong purpose, and without actively marketing.

I’m not sure todoist is your competitor. I use todoist. I use it because it allows me to create tasks and assign them to people and then it gets out of the way. I pay for the team plan (pro plan?) where I can assign to half a dozen folk.

Fabulous is very interesting - I got sucked in on a deal. Quickly realised it is VERY woo woo and aimed at a certain female focused audience. As a very non woo woo non-female I found the ‘coaching’ very not for me.