I have two testers for my app. One of them is my wife

As I’m sipping from my Mojito on the French Riviera, I’ve decided that it’s about time to inform my readers about how I’ve managed to go from a wannabe indie app dev to making enough money to retire on my own yacht and sail into the sunset on the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean.

Radu, snap out of it, your app is barely in TestFlight. Oh shit, right … TestFlight. Well, the hard part is over, right? I’ve got an app.

In the unlikely case that you don’t know what my app Levely is, here’s a short recap. I got tired of leveling up characters in RPGs so I decided to level up my own skills instead. Levely turns your practice time into XP. You can study for midterms, practice guitar or attempt to cast a fireball, the app doesn’t care. It measures your commitment.

Now I just need to release it on the AppStore and wait for the money to land in my bank account.

If only it were that easy. Enough with the fantasies, let’s talk facts. My app is in TestFlight. I’ve got exactly two testers right now: some stranger and my wife.

Apple is blocking me on some compliance issues. I had to legally translate my proof of residence into English. So that meant I had to find an authorized translator, wait for the actual translation and send it back to Apple.

They haven’t replied yet, and my launch will be delayed from the intended September 1st. Shipaton’s deadline is September 30th.

To be honest, things aren’t looking that great, but I’ve got a mission and I won’t give up just because I don’t have testers. The marketing strategy that I’ve presented in the last article, well… it had a hole in it. You did read my last article, didn’t you? The main focus was on helping as many people as possible on subreddits related to my app’s domain. Places where potential users would hang out. So that meant subreddits like r/GetStudying, r/Productivity and similar. That got me exactly 0.

Zero what? Zero everything. No testers, no users, no email signups, nada.

The intent was to get people to signup for my email list on Levely’s landing page. Once signed up I would send them an email announcing my TestFlight release. People would be overjoyed and I would get thousands of happy testers that would all say the app is perfect as it is. The end!

The problem is that not too many people signed up. The exact number is 8. Yes, eight people have signed up for my email list. To be honest, even though the number is small, I’m overjoyed by the fact that people actually believe in this project enough to trust me with their email. If any of you 8 brave adventurers are reading this, know that you have my heartfelt gratitude.

Right now that’s where I’m at with marketing. I need to strike a careful balance between fixing bugs, developing the remaining features, writing articles and promoting on social media, all within the small timeframe when I’m not at work and while my kid is sleeping. Oh, and I need to keep my sanity as well.

My strategy has to change. I can’t afford to wait until I solve my problems with Apple and have the app reviewed by them. I’m forced to promote a TestFlight build. I can’t drive traffic to the App Store page so I will have to double my efforts to get people to try out the Test Flight build and signup to my email list.

I was a bit dramatic when I said Reddit got me nothing. My comments didn’t get me signups, but they did get me a ton of upvotes. I scouted posts that asked for help with study methods, getting more disciplined or achieving different goals and I presented my system of leveling up in real life via focused practice.

People loved that!

However, Reddit is a world of its own, and self promotion is generally discouraged, so I didn’t mention Levely. I was hoping that people would just check out my profile and see that I’m working on this app. Guess what? It didn’t happen… So, commenting got me upvotes, but no signups.

I mistook engagement for actual interest. What I want to do next is to turn the wisdom of my LARPing as a studious mage philosophy into a few posts. Levely will be mentioned at the end as an alternate solution for those people that want an easier way to keep track of their skills and XP. This is on the border of accepted Reddit behavior and a lot of subreddits don’t accept even this form of self-promotion, so I will have to be very picky on the communities where I will share the post.

The other avenue I’m relying on is that you, the human reading this, would like to fill the time until The Elder Scrolls VI release by leveling up some of your own skills.

Here is the TestFlight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/R8FKCYV7 (You’ll need to get the TestFlight app from the App Store first) Or if you just want to be notified on release, sign up with your precious email at https://levely.quest Have fun and share some screenshots of your builds with me. Would love to see what you people want to level up. I’m always available at radu@levely.quest or on X @radu_codes Judge for yourself if this app is better than leveling that hopeless mage of yours.

Testers before publishing: 2 Testers after publishing: TBD (please don’t make me inflate this number)