Dudley Development

Independent iOS studio. Privacy-first. Some posts drafted with AI, approved by a person. Chart quizzes use synthetic practice charts; education only.

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

Your team was “optimized away.” Your desk is next.
Last Human is out now on iPhone. Dodge the bots, grab a coffee, and punch the time clock across 50 floors of office satire.
Free to play: https://t.co/I1li9pjUM2

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@builtwithrubel D. a profitable exit is a one-time flex, working 4 hours a week is the one you get to brag about every single week

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@greggmunikwa being halfway through a tweet and the app goes "actually here's something new" is a special kind of rude. just let me finish reading

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

every toggle in a settings screen is a decision the team didn't want to make. pick a good default for me and let me change it if you got it wrong

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@everton_dev nice, the need searches are where tiny apps actually win. nobody's bidding on "stop my phone buzzing at 3am"

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

most small apps lose the keyword game by picking the word they would search for. the person with the problem never types your app's category the way you do, they type the annoyance. rank for the annoyance

[Everton Carneiro @everton_dev]

Introducing Sextant: App Store intelligence built by an indie dev, for indie devs.

I've been building iOS apps since 2017, and I've poured everything I've learned about ASO into this tool.

Most indie apps target keywords they'll never rank for. Sextant is a Mac app that maps who ranks for every search around your app, scores each one by fit, popularity and difficulty, and tells you which ones you can actually win.

It's live on Product Hunt today 🚀 (link bellow)

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@DanielSmidstrup B until someone pays you. then suddenly it was always A

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@Dylanszn01 we make apps and honestly same. a flashlight does not need a monthly plan

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@devmelv everyone says it and you nod along. then you ship one into total silence and suddenly it clicks

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@mrsmabuka pinterest didn't need a chatbot, it needed to stop showing me the couch I already saved 40 times

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

the most underrated feature in any app is that it opens fast. nobody ever praises it in a review but everyone quietly deletes the slow one

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@carlmonkft you forgot 5.5: halfway through you get a better idea and start app #2 before #1 has ten users

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

the free tier is basically the ad budget for anyone who can't afford ads. every free user who sticks around is the one telling a friend about you, and a paywall on day one cuts that off before it starts. small apps feel this even harder than saas does

[Quentin @Quentin_Rnv]

We hit $900K MRR by doing the opposite of every SaaS advice you've read.

Here's 5 counter-intuitive hacks that got us there:

1 - Don't chase paying users. Chase free users.

Most SaaS hide everything behind a paywall, so nobody feels the value before paying.
On Trendtrack, our data is free but the day you want to analyze one specific brand, usually your competitor, you have to pay.

Every free user is a lead you own.

You can email them, retarget them, push offers in the app or message them on support.

Give enough value for people to want more. Then charge for the "more".

2 - Add friction to your onboarding.

Everyone tells you to remove steps. I add questions instead: I ask about their goal, their job and where they come from.
If someone wants to analyze trends and works as a creative strategist, we show them the right filters on day one. They get the value in 2 minutes, and every email after that speaks to their goal.

3 - "Too expensive" doesn't exist.

It's our #1 churn reason. So I called the people who left, one by one.
Nobody left because of the price. They left because they never reached their goal.
If you find your dream house, you find a way to get the loan. "Too expensive" just means they didn't get enough value. Just fix the path to their goal.

4 - Launch boring features like they're huge.

A launch is marketing, not a feature. Three things make it big.
You need an angle: one company called a basic contact feature "the Tinder of sales".
You need a motion video, because it always beats a facecam.
And you need distribution: we asked the users who love us to help push it.

5 - Do by hand what everyone automates.

Every week I watch the best creator videos with my small notebook. I write down the hook, the tone, the thumbnail and the exact moment the story starts.
Then I turn it into scripts for our next creators.
No tool can tell you why a video worked, you have to watch it. Before you automate something, do it 100 times by hand.

You know me now, nothing fancy here. It's just logic and a lot of reps.

Let's get in the mud.

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@MoeChoice a parking app asking for your birthday means someone in a meeting said collect everything, we'll figure out why later

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@PrajwalTomar_ the build side got easy fast. getting the first 4K strangers to find it is still the same slow grind, there's just a longer line of apps now

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@aanyakumarii the app i downloaded to split a dinner bill now wants to know my mood and show me reels. i just wanted to divide by four

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

most app redesigns happen because the team got bored, not the users

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@sofi_e82 it can smell free time. the update was ready at 3am and still waited for you to sit down

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

asking for the rating before the paywall is sneaky smart. right after someone tells the app about themselves they're at peak "this gets me", and one screen later you're asking for money and that feeling's gone. you caught the moment they owe you nothing and still feel generous

[Zak @zakisbuilding]

HOW MY APP GOT 50 APP STORE RATINGS IN 4 WEEKS (MY GOAL WAS 10) ⭐

you asked yesterday, here is everything :

where :
- the rating prompt is the LAST screen of my onboarding, right before the paywall
- people just answered questions about themselves and saw a short demo. it's their most excited moment

the screen :
- title "your rating helps us grow"
- 5 stars as decoration only, you can't tap them
- apple's real rating popup opens by itself

the change that helped :
- the popup used to open after 3.5 sec. tap continue before that and you never see it
- oct 6 I moved it to 1 sec
- before : ~5 ratings for 62 people who saw the screen
- after : 45 ratings for ~440 people, about 1 in 10

where I copied it : a pregnancy app with ~50K reviews does the exact same thing before its paywall 👀

apple's rules :
- only apple's popup, no custom stars that collect the rating
- never ask for 5 stars
- apple decides if the popup shows, 3 times a year max per person
- it never shows in testflight

the downside : I tracked 5 of my 1 star ratings. none of them ever subscribed. they rate an onboarding, not the app 🥲

would you keep it before the paywall or move it after the first real use ??

[Dudley Development @DudleyAppDev]

@airwarmedd the money pitch also sets the wrong clock. someone who came for $5k a week judges the app by day 3 revenue, someone who came to build judges it by whether the thing works. same funnel, very different churn curve