Four years solo to build an app that gives you no answers. Was paid-only a mistake?
Six years of my career was administering assessments. Every instrument I used handed someone a fixed label. High D, strong I, into the file it goes. Nobody I met was the same person in March as they were in November.
So I spent the next four years, next to a full-time job, building the opposite.
It doesn't tell you anything. You build a profile, it turns that into a map, and from there it asks you one question a day written from your own material. You do the answering.
Everything runs on the device. The model that writes the questions is bundled in the app. No account, no server, no telemetry, nothing leaves the phone. Easiest way to verify is airplane mode: if it keeps working with no connection, nothing was going out.
Two trade-offs I made on purpose, and both cost me.
It's around 800MB on iOS, almost all of that the model. That's the price of not having a server.
It's a one-time purchase, €8.99 / $7.99. No subscription, no ads, no IAP, no free tier.
On the App Store and Google Play, in seven languages.
producthunt.com/products/my-own-compass
That second trade-off is what I'd like your view on. A paid app with no free tier and no reviews yet is about the hardest thing there is to sell. I went paid because a free app has to earn its money some other way, and every other way runs through your data. Has anyone here made paid-only work, or did you end up compromising?
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