Intro: This is a (hopefully) weekly series I'll be writing reflecting on what has worked for me as an indie app dev. Although in the spirit of building in public, I'm keeping this non-technical, instead focusing on the motivation behind features and what’s working when it comes to growing a user base.
Custom Themes Release
The most notable update from last week was the release of custom themes for Boost Blue. I worked on the update for about 2 weeks. The first week was entirely technical, whereas most of the second week was tweaking the custom themes it launched with, and making occasional changes to the app as I learned from adding actual themes to my setup.
This feature was driven by a few factors.
It was one of the highest up voted features in my feedback section.
It provides additional differentiation between Boost and the main Bluesky app/other clients.
I wanted to improve on the theming of Boost, but departing from the Bluesky styled theme risks alienating users who want Boost's features, but like the look of the official app.
It adds another value proposition to the premium plan, which you know, money.
I'm hopeful that it will add some virality to Boost when people share the themes, especially as this release is laying the ground work for allowing users to create their own themes - which I plan to hold a design contest around to promote the app.
Apple Search Ads Learnings
I've tried Apple Search ads twice before for Boost. Historically this has been a really impactful acquisition channel for me. I've used it for several side projects, and at my recommendation, we use it as our sole paid marketing channel at my day job.
But the last two experiments I've run haven't been able to justify continued spend. Both ended up with a CPA of around $6-7, which with my subscription conversion rate would lose me money.
I recently set up another test campaign. The result was looking the same, and then I found out I had them setup completely wrong. When adding keywords to match to, you can choose between "Exact" and "Broad". I assumed that was a string similarity comparison. It's not.
I was digging through the ad group data, checked the matched Search Terms tab, and noticed several terms I explicitly don't want to match on: Reddit, X, Discord and a few others - all matching the term Bluesky. The "Broad" setting matches to similar search terms in relation to meaning. Those terms took up a majority of my budget, with 0 downloads.
The reason this hasn't caused problems in the past is I've never been targeting such a specific audience. With Boost I only want to advertise towards existing Bluesky users. Whereas with my off-roading app, terms similar to "off-road maps" probably would largely still be users I wanted.
After changing all search terms to "Exact", my current CPA is down to $2. Thankfully I never had this setup for more than an experimental $5 a day.
Bluesky Bookclub Month 2
Last month I started a book club from an account I created to pose book questions for #booksky. That went well initially, but response volume was inconsistent, and I was starting to run out of questions to ask. For full disclosure that account was create in part to build an audience I could promote Boost to, before I officially decided to build Boost.
Anyways, the bookclub. The first month went really well, and we're kicking off the second month with Circe by Madeline Miller.
I also posted the book club to Reddit on Tuesday, something that I somehow didn't think to do for the first month.
Indie Dev Log Week
Oh, I started a Weekly Indie Dev Log. As I'm sure you can guess, this is in part to promote my app(s), but also because I thought it would be fun, I want to write more, and I thought documenting what is working for me would be valuable to others and myself.
Thanks for reading! I wrote this earlier in the week with the intent to publish it on Sunday. Unfortunately the weekend got away from me. Rather than trash it, I decided to post it today, with less polishing than I normally would do. I'm planning to post these going forward on Sundays, and further posts will have more effort behind them. Please check out Boost Blue, and feel free to follow me on Bluesky!