Ask HN: How did everyone do with Launch an App Month?

Inspired by patio11 and Bingo Card Creator, I launched Quick Brown Frog:<p><pre><code> http://www.quickbrownfrog.com http://quickbrownfrog.wordpress.com </code></pre> It's at the MVP stage, and while a technical success (I think it's an awesome in-browser app), no one seems to be interested in paying for it. I reduced the price to $10 prior to launch, and I still haven't had a nibble. I burned through about $200 in Adwords/Bing/Facebook ads so far. I guess it's hard to compete with the many free typing tutors out there.<p>Still, I plan to keep plugging at it. I have no aesthetic sensibility whatsoever, so next on my list is to get some badly-needed design help.<p>Many thanks to everyone who provided invaluable feedback during the past month. I really learned a lot and had great fun developing it.

Well, we did not launch but had two major updates to Kaleidoscope and Versions: <a href="http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com</a> <a href="http://www.versionsapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.versionsapp.com</a><p>We're especially happy with our changeset feature for git/svn/bzr/hg: <a href="http://vimeo.com/17363481" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/17363481</a> and would love to hear feedback.

I launched my first Android app, Fanorona, a traditional board game from Madagascar. So far I've made four sales. At 99¢ each, minus Google's 30%, I've made $2.78. But it was fun. (I also listed it with Archos's AppsLib, but I don't expect to see any money there; they don't pay out until you hit $50.)<p><a href="http://fanorona.thibault.org/android/" rel="nofollow">http://fanorona.thibault.org/android/</a>

I think I did really well for the Launch an App Month.<p>I launched <a href="http://sleepyti.me" rel="nofollow">http://sleepyti.me</a> as a "weekend project" at the very beginning of November. It's a simple site designed to help users figure out the best time to go to sleep in order to wake up refreshed.<p>I have been working steadily on improving the user experience thanks to really helpful feedback that I've gotten from HN and reddit users (thanks!). The site is currently "profitable" from the standpoint that the money I'm scrapping together from ads pays for its share of the (cheapest) Linode plan I have.<p>I consider Sleepyti.me to be a success (not bad for a guy who doesn't know web design!), and I'm looking forward to building bigger, better and hopefully more monetizable projects in the future.

Appointment Reminder launches "for real" on Monday. (A cold cost me a few days from the planned schedule.)

I put up a MVP at bzzard.com a couple days ago. The problem that I was trying to solve is that I have a bunch of small websites, and I wanted to see all my sites stats on one page. So, I’m just scratching my own itch.<p>The site is pretty simple to use. Think twitter for your app. Just send a message containing 140 char message, a double, latitude, and longitude. Then login to create a dashboard where you can display gauges, charts, and message streams. You can filter on the message and the double value that was posted. You can also create counts, sums, and averages in the charts and gauges. There’s a messaging system that allows you can set up status logic to send of messages if certain conditions are met. The dashboard and messaging evaluates metrics, updates dashboards, and sends out messages pretty close to real time, 20-30 seconds.<p>The site is up and running. You can check it out by going to bzzard.com and logging in as jerry@bzzard.com and password of jerry. I have page view and application restart messages from bzzard.com displayed. It’s still a bit buggy, and it is sitting on the cheapest godaddy server. But, I’m still pretty surprised at what I was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time.

I launched <a href="http://www.hackerlunch.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.hackerlunch.com</a><p>It basically lets you meetup with other hackers. You post lunch plans and let others join in.<p>Its very buggy (I am not a coder, and I don't think I'll manage to become one) and at this point has a rather ugly interface (ironically I'm a web designer). I worked on this for two days and released it, which is a big deal for me since this is the first time I actually launched something.<p>I haven't received much feedback from the HN community, which is a bit discouraging, but I plan to keep working on this.<p>In the immediate next release, I will make it a bit more stable and improve the interface (new design: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/KOaA8.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/KOaA8.jpg</a>). And after that, if I get any positive feedback, I'll add features like adding more personal (links to you social network profiles), filter by location, etc.<p>If anyone has any feedback on the site, the current version or the future plans, please share.

For everyone who has launched, have a look at this site:<p><pre><code> http://www.44tips.com/b/Eric/Where_to_submit_your_Startup/ </code></pre> Spend a few hours submitting your site to whatever review sites from that list are appropriate for your app.

I put together Markup Converter <a href="http://markupconverter.com/" rel="nofollow">http://markupconverter.com/</a><p>It's a simple web service for converting markup from one format to another. Most of the conversions in the app are done using the Haskell library Pandoc, but I'm also using Discount, Python's Docutils and Ruby's RedCloth. It was also an opportunity to use MongoDB a little more. Right now it just converts snippets to snippets, but I'm in the process of adding additional options, like autolinking URLs when outputting HTML and adding headers and footers for formats like RTF that require them for complete documents.<p>I really liked the November sprint idea and am going to try to launch at least one thing a month this winter, even if only a simple microapp.

Well it was about a year in the making, but we finally launched our product to the public:<p><a href="http://www.gethifi.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.gethifi.com</a><p>Getting it out the doors is a great feeling!

I launched my MVP, Photosherpa. If you take too many photos and don't have time to go through them, you'd like it. You send all your photos to it, you get back only the good ones (so you can put them online right away).<p><pre><code> http://www.photosherpa.com </code></pre> Since I couldn't figure out Paypal integration yet, it is completely free :) Within December I'll try to integrate it with Paypal and Flickr/Facebook (so processed photos could get uploaded with one click).

It is amusing with our app, we launched 'Can I afford it now?' <a href="http://caniafforditnow.com" rel="nofollow">http://caniafforditnow.com</a> and when we showed it to friends, everyone got excited and started telling us how we could monetize it and how they might use it but they never actually went and used it.<p>We think it has potential and it is just a matter of finding motivated users and will push in that direction but we shall see....<p>If you have ideas, please share or email me

I was planning to launch <a href="http://getbizen.com" rel="nofollow">http://getbizen.com</a> in November. In some ways it is a success. The site it up, I can accept new customers, there is a product (a BI dashboard for franchisees).<p>However, I got a little sidetracked because I had fundraising opportunities pop up. I ended up spending more time in the last two weeks of November talking to investors than I did talking to customers. I don't know that I should say that I was "sidetracked" because I am responding to investor inquiries, not seeking out potential investors.<p>My goal was to launch the app and have a paying customer. Instead the app is ready for customers, and I have customer interest, but I did not meet that goal. I was using the HN November push as a way to try and accelerate the execution of a business I had already started working on (in September).<p>I am not going to claim success in Launch an App Month, but it was great for me and I have been killing it all month. Now I am going to do "Close the funding December" so that I can get back to building the business. I am really excited by this opportunity.

I am still working on mine. It'll take a few more weeks before the MVP ready to be launched. I have my landing page up at <a href="http://www.serverfabu.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.serverfabu.com/</a><p>The inspiration for this project came from the feedback I've received for my ASK HN <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1815344" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1815344</a>

Well! Made and shipped Pepbot.<p><pre><code> http://pepbot.com </code></pre> It's a disposable temp email app with the ability to automate the confirmation task that many services require (wait the mail &#62; click the confirmation link &#62; receive account &#62; success).

I rolled out a series of huge updates for my site:<p>- released a JavaScript version of the API<p>- released an ActionScript 2 version of the API (AS2 is an antique I wasn't going to bother with but one of my users back-ported my API for me so I took it from there)<p>- added custom data for leaderboard scores, can't wait to see what my users do with that<p>- added some awesome new reports to help developers make their games more engaging and generally ease them into data-driven development, a lot of casual game developers "launch and forget" which is something I'd like to see phased out<p>- launched the level sharing API for user-created levels<p>- announced pricing, still haven't implemented it yet but that's coming ASAP<p>And I made the whole thing real time ... 8 billion events a month and growing!

launched it. i'm not super comfortable sharing it just yet with the HN crowd just yet because (1) its starting to reach the upper limits of the tiny slice i'm running it on and i'd like to save those resources for users, and (2) its super niche and i only know of 3 HN users who would maybe ever use it.<p>its basically a statistics gathering/analytics app for a sport. 24 hours and about 150 registered users. it currently only has a free version and i'm working on new features for a paid version.<p>i'm stuck on pricing, though. not sure how much people will be willing to bite on any paid version of what i'm offering, even if i added some super awesome features.<p>i use it, though, and thats what counts.

I didn't do so great. My MVP works, but it needs more effort before it's ready for Beta (as a lot will change between now and Beta, but it's about a day or two's work). Minklinks actually works well and makes sharing links a one-click job.<p>In the end my day job got in the way, and while I was up for spending evenings and weekends on it my wife had arranged something on nearly every weekend that I couldn't back out of.<p>I have a large block of time booked off in December, a lot of which I'll be using on Minklinks so it's likely to be a 'launch december' app now. You can still sign up for the Beta at <a href="http://www.minklinks.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.minklinks.com/</a>.

I launched the beta of my app in mid-November, although I must admit I did start mid-October so I'm hoping I still qualify!<p>I decided to build a revenue generating URL shortener. This was one of the first full projects where I basically did everything myself - research, design, development etc, which was a bit frustrating a times. It's ridiculous how unproductive my design days were compared to my development days, but I guess I'm just going against the grain there (I'd be interested to know how many people have 'mastered' both design &#38; development.) That said, I learned quite a lot about the whole process, so definitely a good result.<p>I decided to launch before a lot of the esential functionality was complete (conversions, payments etc) just to get a feel for what people wanted, and most importantly if it was worth persuing the idea further. I'd probably do the same again next time, although I must admit I felt a bit helpless in the first week of launch when bugs were being uncovered/features were being requested and I was still working on the core.<p>I'm now onto marketing my app with my business partner. The market we're trying to is obviously insanely saturated, so it's a little frustrating at times, but I'm super motivated to get this out so lets hope we get some traction sometime soon :)<p>The URL of the app is <a href="http://shrtn.co" rel="nofollow">http://shrtn.co</a>

I managed to amalgamate some similar projects into <a href="http://feedladder.com" rel="nofollow">http://feedladder.com</a> and move it from activerecord to mongomapper. Basically it allows for twitter feeds to have their own submission and voting for their tweets. Best example right now is probably <a href="http://profquotes.feedladder.com" rel="nofollow">http://profquotes.feedladder.com</a>.<p>Haven't gotten around to making workflow to add new ones automatically though, school and work take a toll.

I got <a href="http://wantmyjob.com" rel="nofollow">http://wantmyjob.com</a> in passable shape, and realized some new things I should really have done with it. It's a peer-to-peer job search site -- asks questions about your jobs, recommends other people's jobs to you based on what you say you like.<p>I'm making those upgrades in December, which some of us are continuing into :-)<p>Right now you have to make an account to have a look (that's one of the things I'm fixing in December), but it's pretty neat.

I submitted stk8.co few days ago but it barely got the attention.<p>stk8.co allows you to stack several Links or Text and share them under one shortened url.<p>It embeds a preview of the link for common services like youtube, vimeo, amazon, cnn, scribd, etc...<p>Here are couple of examples:<p><a href="http://stk8.co/gkbbbc" rel="nofollow">http://stk8.co/gkbbbc</a><p><a href="http://stk8.co/sample" rel="nofollow">http://stk8.co/sample</a><p>It also has a bookmarklet for easy stacking. The bookmarklet is transparent, one click is all what it takes to stack a link.

Terrible, although I am smack in the middle of selling my house and moving from the east coast to the west coast, so perhaps this wasn't a great time to try to build and launch an app.<p>I really like the idea of setting a deadline to launch an app though. November wasn't really a workable time period for me personally, but it would definitely be helpful for me to set a deadline and possibly make it public so it would force me to really get something done.

I launched <a href="http://bettermeans.com" rel="nofollow">http://bettermeans.com</a> Over a year of coding though, so it was luck that it launched in November

I launched <a href="http://imendi.com" rel="nofollow">http://imendi.com</a><p>It is basically some web app to learn other languages (Spanish, Portuguese and Czech right now, few will follow soon). Principle is very simple: you assign foreign words to its english equivalent.<p>I build this because I am learning Portuguese right now and it is hard to learn grammar without knowledge of basic words. There are around 300 most common words in the app right now.

I launched fake iphone text - <a href="http://www.fakeiphonetext.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fakeiphonetext.com/</a>

We launched everyAir late Oct, but started really getting users this month after some updates. It is a fast remote desktop app for iOS designed for games and movies. Check it out everyair.net<p>Getting encouraging feedback from users. We are now heads down working on the next version due in a few days.<p>Would love HN feedback, email for free coupon.

I launched one. See all of the groupon deals in your town and others in one simple interface: <a href="http://www.groupongroupie.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.groupongroupie.com/</a> I'm still working on a few kinks in the daily email list. The daily inspirational emails from 21times really helped.

Very early stage launched a site called WannaDo with my buddy davidfraga.<p>It is an easy way to remember the things that you hear about on the go so you can check them out later (Books, Movies, Restaurants, etc). You send an email to things@wanna.do and it'll be sorted and stored for later. Lists are public by default so it can be used as a way to check out the things that your friends are interested in doing (working on proper user accounts so that there is a way to keep things private/actually discover your friends).<p>You can try it out at <a href="http://wanna.do" rel="nofollow">http://wanna.do</a> or by sending an email to things@wanna.do with the list name you'd like to create in the subject line and the item you'd like to add to that list in the body of your email. We'll set up an account for you automoatically a-la-Posterous.

Still working on it. But I started late. It's also my first app push - I'm a "business guy" learning to code.

While I didn't actually launch anything, I did make a lot of progress on two separate apps:<p>One to facilitate collaborative tabletop games (think Settlers of Cataan or Dungeons &#38; Dragons) between remote parties. Built with node.js, redis, jquery, html5, css3, buzzwords.<p>Another smaller, quicker app that spun off the first was a web interface for the OS X `say` command. Sometimes I'm on ubuntu or windows and I wish I had access to make a mac actually speak a sentence. Built using the same stack, same tools, just much smaller in scope.<p>I only pivoted late in the month, the day after thanksgiving, so I'm hoping to launch that after I tidy up the UI and come up with a name. Anyone have any suggestions?

I launched the beta of <a href="http://babble.ly" rel="nofollow">http://babble.ly</a><p>A Twilio powered free disposable link generator for phone numbers. The goal is to enable users to be contacted by phone on the internet, quickly, easily and privately.<p>I'd love feedback!

Well the facebook group is very verbose about that : <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952&#38;ap=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952&#3...</a><p>It's now a monthly launch pad group

We lauched videolla.com in the beginning of month, so most of the month was spend on customer development, support and iterating product. We have some exciting results so far, paying customers, traffic is growing, partnerships, requests for features, etc. So things are going great so far.<p>BTW we are working on some kicking ass API to allow developers use premium licensed content in your apps, sites, games. So thing you can make your Guitar Hero with Lady GaGa music or something like watch Netflix movies with friends and Facetime. How cool is that, huh? Signup on our site if you want to stay in touch :)

Launched an iPhone app for young ones to learn alphabet by popping balloons :)<p><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popn-learn-abc/id400222528?mt=8" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popn-learn-abc/id400222528?mt...</a>

I created "Airy Canary Free" for iPhone and iPod touch: <a href="http://www.fizzbuzzgames.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.fizzbuzzgames.com</a>. It went live in the app store on Nov 29th I believe.

<a href="http://wavylab.com" rel="nofollow">http://wavylab.com</a> &#60; chinese version of pandora. it only plays chinese songs.<p>stats: ~350GB songs streamed in 64KB bitrate. ~13048 hours of songs played.<p>New UI is pending.

Made an app to upload and play your music library online through the browser. Not only that, but enabled one click library sharing between friends with an access link.<p>for example: <a href="http://ymitrimusic.appspot.com/share/5ef46" rel="nofollow">http://ymitrimusic.appspot.com/share/5ef46</a><p>You can login with your google account. The front end is based on the open source sound cloud player, and i've left some of the soundcloud functionality in for streaming.

Not sure if it counts since we have been in our beta for a while so it's not exactly an MVP, but we finally launched Mockingbird 1.0 in November (<a href="http://blog.gomockingbird.com/10-and-real-time-collaboration" rel="nofollow">http://blog.gomockingbird.com/10-and-real-time-collaboration</a>). I had been working on the real-time collaboration stuff for a while - felt good to finally get it out in front of users.

Well... I released a dud - SMSuL8r.com - sms reminders.<p>Then I built <a href="http://castmyclips.com" rel="nofollow">http://castmyclips.com</a>, which is not quite ready for prime time, but is usable. It allows you to take text (copied from web sites) and turn it into audio. then you can listen to the audio &#38; even subscribe to it in iTunes. It was quite fun to build, and I'm actually kind of proud of it.

I'm so close! I should have something up by next week. Got a ton done, though. You know, that whole last 90% thing. I'm totally pumped, though.

Was one long night away from launching www.rankoro.us on the 30th when the power chord for my laptop died. Ordered a new one but we're in the middle of a snow storm in Dublin so it's delayed. With a bit of luck, break in the weather and a solid nights work i should be up in the next few days.<p>Sprint was a great idea and the last two weeks were my most productive in yesrs.

Based on the idea of justbuythisone.com &#62; I did a North American version <a href="http://b.estprice.com" rel="nofollow">http://b.estprice.com</a> as a proof of concept.<p>Sample page: <a href="http://b.estprice.com/laptop/under-1000" rel="nofollow">http://b.estprice.com/laptop/under-1000</a>

Like many others, I didn't hit the launch date for my app: seating plan software for dinner events and weddings (<a href="http://www.tabletwist.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.tabletwist.com</a>). I did make huge amount of progress though, and I'm hoping to launch before 2011!

I didn't launch but I made huge progress to my webgame<p>Looking for advice and suggestions to the alpha release version:<p><a href="http://four2go.gumyum.com" rel="nofollow">http://four2go.gumyum.com</a><p>Feel free to login as foxhop, no authentication needed, and try it out with a buddy.<p>Uses ajax long polling to update the games.

I did alright, I got the technology built and am working on getting customers to use me as the UI.<p><a href="http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/11/customer-1-without-launch.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/11/customer-1-without-lau...</a>

Launched CoderStack:<p><a href="http://www.coderstack.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.coderstack.co.uk/</a>

Didn't launch a new app but did get a major version update out the door (in addition to fixes for everything iOS 4.2 broke): <a href="http://ipadportfolioapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ipadportfolioapp.com/</a>

I'm probably late to the party in this thread. I've launched mine couple days ago, <a href="http://www.previouslook.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.previouslook.com</a> (web page snapshots overtime).

Started working on mine webapp, but unfortunately other things came in the middle so I'm about 5% finished :\ I'm planning on completing it someday as we need it internally anyway. So maybe some day.

We're hoping to launch the new version of our comic creation website <a href="http://chogger.com" rel="nofollow">http://chogger.com</a> before the holiday break. Lots to do in the next 3 weeks!

I launched <a href="http://www.agentshowroom.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.agentshowroom.com/</a> with some help from phoenix24 I found on OfferHN who parsed a PSD to html/css for me.

I got to a working prototype on my phone.. now all that's left is getting an app icon, splash screen, adding some graphics to the UI. But the app itself already works

I released <a href="http://www.searchforphp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.searchforphp.com/</a> and im looking to roll out python java and dotnet versions soon.

I launched CaptionMash, definitely need some usability / UX feedback though. <a href="http://www.captionmash.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.captionmash.com</a>

I made <a href="http://7courses.com" rel="nofollow">http://7courses.com</a> - An online recipe manager that allows you to organize your recipes your way.

Didn't launch, But the idea is well under development. It was a month long project, but with life and a gf sometimes its hard to get things done.<p>It will get done.

Working on a game called Santa Strike. Should have a prototype for HN in the next day or two. Remember Elf Bowling? It's a bit of a tribute :)

Almost, almost ready. Just putting on the final touches and planning on launching in 2 weeks.

Just to follow up: I didn't get close to being done. Looking back, November was an awful month for me to plan on releasing something. Between the two kids and everything they had, a week long vacation, and some big projects at work, not to mention commitments in other areas, I just failed to make the time.<p>I'm not disappointed... much. However, I did get some important stuff done, and after the holidays (which involves another big trip), I'll have some time where I'm not going for weeks at a time that I can put together an app.

<a href="http://contexium.com" rel="nofollow">http://contexium.com</a> -- Call analytics and mining.<p>In customer acquisition mode now.

I didn't reach my goal, but that's because I'm taking a break from most side projects to finish my grad school application, which unfortunately takes precedence due to hard deadlines. :/