From Excel to App Store: How I Took My Budget Management Product for a Spin

Hello, my name is Aleksandr, and I am an iOS developer. So here’s the story about how I’ve been using an Excel spreadsheet for budgeting for years and then I decided to make my own app. March 3rd marked Budget Hound’s 2nd birthday, so let me share my experience of launching it — motivation, difficulties, and results plus a checklist if you want to tackle your pet project too!

How It All Started

In 2017, I began systematically tracking my budget and expenses. I got fed up with not having a clue where my money was going, how much I could realistically spend, and if there would be any left at the end of the month if I kept spending at the same rate. So, I googled and found an interesting and simple approach based on daily budgeting. An Excel spreadsheet to do all the calculations was included with this approach. It turned out that some even sell these ready-made spreadsheets.

I also started looking for apps in the App Store that use a similar mechanic to make budgeting easier. Unfortunately, there were very few such applications and they did not meet my needs. I was also concerned about the UI of the applications, and many popular apps had issues with this. In the end, the ability to customize flexibly won out: I settled on an Excel spreadsheet, configured it to my needs, and used it until 2021.

I’m Taking Matters Into My Own Hands to Create an App

I’ve been working in the iOS development field for 10 years, and the idea of writing my own app had come up from time to time. But I’d always find some excuse not to do it — work, no free time, etc. I’m sure many of you can relate. After a couple of years though, the Excel spreadsheets had me completely bored out of my mind so I finally decided to take the plunge.

I set goals for myself:

1. To create a simple and convenient application — a financial planner — primarily for myself, but which can be used by other people.
2. Use my application as a test platform where I can apply new iOS technologies, test new development practices.
3. Spruce up my resume with my own app in the App Store
4. Learn how to monetize my product and get additional passive income.

Code at Work vs. Build your Own Product

It can definitely be tough to get a product up and running without any deadline or pressures from others. But it’s also a great way to really challenge yourself and learn how to stay disciplined.

The main difference between working on my own pet project and working for a company is that you are the boss. No need to answer to anyone, no hard deadlines — even if you set them yourself. So what if you don’t hit them? No one is going to fire you, and you still have a paycheck from your day job. Plus, the extra income allows making investments in your project: in my case, I need money for hiring a designer and doing some promotion.

In big company apps, the architecture and approaches change slowly and can be limited by the minimum supported iOS version. At the time of writing, the current version is iOS 16. It is considered good practice to support two more versions from the current one, so the version 14 should be the minimum. This means that as a developer, I cannot use features that were added in versions 15 and 16. But with my pet project, I’m free to add features only available in the latest iOS version. Keep up with trends! For me, it is very important to write code and “play around” with it in order to understand it better. If you just read an article, knowledge quickly fades away.

When working in a large team, you cannot do everything yourself and work with everyone. Especially if you are a lead and don’t write much code, then pet projects are just a whim.

In general, this is a great exercise to help you level up your professional game.

Reach the Finish Line (aka Your First Release)

The first launch was a beast. I put in soooo much work to get the first version out, and it felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It definitely took a toll on my motivation.

The application ended up being much bigger than I initially thought. My perfectionism was getting in the way. Sometimes I felt like I would never launch. At times, I feared that nobody would like the application and that I would be the only one using it. Some of my friends said it was complex.

Working on your own project is always tricky. Finding time, staying disciplined and working systematically can be a challenge. Whenever I had a free minute (or an ounce of energy!) I would stay late at work or work through the weekends. I’d either head to a coffee shop or hit up the office — it has an awesome working vibe, and it’s practically empty on weekends, so perfect for concentration. Sometimes I had to say no to hitting up the gym in lieu of working on my project.

There were moments when I could not work for weeks on the app. This usually happened when I had a huge part of the project or if something didn’t work out immediately. But then there were days when, once I finished a certain part and saw the result, or just really wanted to figure out an issue, I was glued to my seat and kept working.

The most important thing is to sit down, start working on your project, and you’re already drawn in. Of course, it’s sometimes hard — 5 days you work at your main job, and then all the weekends fly away for another job, but I tried to find a balance, and the result motivated me to move on.

Behind it all was always inspiration — I really wanted to create something awesome that people would love and get something out of. After a year, I finally released the first version: Budget Hound was in the App Store.

My friends tested the application, the first users and reviews began to appear. I realized that I wanted to develop the project further. The designer I had worked with before dropped out of the project, so I found a new one. We started reworking the application with a fresh look and taking into account my wishes and requests from the first users. I started to allocate even more time for development. I added new features. The first version was free and without subscriptions. In this version, I wanted to lay the foundation of the subscription system and develop it further. So don’t be surprised that there are few pro-features now, there are many ideas in my backlog. The second and current version of the application became available to users after 8 months.

Can I Create a Project on My Own?

No way! Well sure, it’s possible to be a one-person dev team — you can develop, design, test and even market your product. And of course you’ll get plenty of practice wearing all the different hats on your journey. But it is also worth bringing in outside help for best results. I got my designer buddy on board right away, and I’ve been able to call on friends and contacts in the network too. My QA-engineer pal has been helping me when it comes to testing, and a bunch of my friends did me the solid of helping to test the first version of the app.

Next, there were reviews from real users in the App Store. My advice here is to make your users part of your team, even if they don’t realize it.

Having a target audience’s feedback is so important for creating an awesome product. I’m always checking in on their reviews and responding to any issues. If you have any questions or feedback, shoot me an email at support@budgethound.app, and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Recently, one user made a request to add comment display to the transaction feed and even drew up a mockup! I got it done in just 1 day. Everyone is amazed when they receive a response from the developer. It’s such an awesome connection that’s beneficial for everyone involved.

Now that the app is developing further, what drives me the most are the new user reviews: people write in feedback that they had been looking for a convenient app for a long time, tried out a lot of things, and stopped at mine. Immediately, I want to work on improvements and new features.

Expectations vs. Reality

I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of stories about indie devs who thought their project would be a surefire hit right away — everyone would use it. But, with all the apps out there, competition in any given field is fierce these days.

My app is available in all countries. At first, it was downloaded an average of 5 times a day without investment in advertising or promotion. The reality is that to get into the top and receive organic search traffic, you need to invest.

70% of downloads come from the top 3 search results, and if you’re on the 10th place or lower, almost nobody will get to you. Therefore, going back to the beginning of the story, maybe there were some great apps that I just didn’t find, but then this story wouldn’t exist.

While I was studying this issue, I picked up a bit of ASO (App Store Optimization) — plus one skill in the bag. It’s like SEO for websites. In the admin panel of the app page, there is an option to specify keywords by which the application is indexed and shown in search results. Of course, many other data also affects this. But nowadays, even if you compose a very good semantic core, without traffic to it, you won’t get high up, and you have to pay for traffic.

Numbers

Here we go:

• It took one year to develop the first version. Now the store already has the second version, with an updated design.
• DAU: 160–180.
• MAU: 1000.
• On average, the user spends 3–5 minutes in the app and logs in 2–3 times a day.
• I spent $2,700 on design.
• How much have I earned? So far, it’s been little, but I just launched my PRO subscription and the first purchases have come in.

My Personal Scoop

I really sharpened my expertise as a specialist, got to play around with the new iOS features — dark mode, widgets on the home and lock screens, subscriptions in the app, and lots of other cool techy stuff.

I am diving into promotion topics. It’s gotten a bit simpler to wrap my head around the concept of perfectionism and realize that, while I can definitely keep enhancing the product, it’ll never be totally perfect.

I am motivated by the feedback I have got on the app, and by the first purchases. I started to learn SwiftUI and have already been writing screens with it. It’s a huge chunk of new information and an entirely new approach to app development.

I am planning to focus on promotion and sprucing up the app by adding new features — like that subscription mechanism in the new version. As I’m writing this article, I’m also creating graphs to analyze the data across different budgets.

My original aim was to develop an app that would be useful and helpful for myself and others. Well, mission accomplished! I use Budget Hound every day and there is always something that can be tweaked or simplified. It would be awesome to see other people using it too, and hopefully they’ll tell their mates about it.

Checklist for Launching Your Pet Project

1. Take an interesting topic to you, solving a real problem you are facing. Such a topic will be motivating in work, and it will be harder to give up what has been started.
2. At the beginning, whip up an MVP to prevent getting stuck in a long development process and losing your motivation. Having something already out there can make all the difference — it’s like an autosave in a game.
3. It is better to find a designer to make everything look nice, and money to pay for the work.
4. Toss perfectionism out the window.
5. Be prepared that the app won’t take off to the top and just get lost in the store. The next step can be to improve this aspect as well and start using promotion tools.
6. Do a little bit at a time, but regularly. The main thing is discipline.