Matt Corey - Indie Interviews

Can you tell us more about yourself and what led you to become an indie maker

Sure! I was always that kid who was interested in computers, and could make them do things other than show an ugly spreadsheet. That led to a major in Computer Science, where I found a love of building things, getting sucked into a project, and learned how to pitch my professors on Independent Studies, so I could get credit for making Tetris clones with my roommates, and building email apps (although nobody used the word ‘app’ back then).

Of course, that led into a career as an Enterprise Java programmer, where I built other people’s software, went into technical leadership, and then management, and eventually lost a bit of that spark. Getting back into making things on the weekends helped get that spark back - I’ve long had little projects like budgeting apps that didn’t go anywhere, and went through a phase where I was building HomeKit motion sensors with the ESP-8266, but was getting frustrated that it was all mostly dead ends.

Finally, in 2017, I decided to get more real - I put down the money to create an AppStore account, and built my first app - a To-Do app, of course. Two weeks later, that app was in the App Store, and here we are.

How did you come up with the idea? How do you generate ideas for your apps or projects, and how do you identify the problems or needs your app can address?

Signals for HomeKit has the most interesting story. It was dinner time, and I was trying to get the attention of my son, who was probably 12 years old at the time. After texting and yelling up the stairs for a few minutes in frustration, I opened the Home app, and flashed his lights a few times, and within 20 seconds, he was downstairs - he was wearing headphones and playing a video game, of course.

Most of my ideas are far less interesting - they tend to be problems that I or my family face, and sometimes have a technical aspect to them. Follow the Sun for HomeKit, for example, was built to help avoiding blinding lights in the middle of the night, but couldn’t be built until HomeKit came to macOS, and the automation functionality in Signals for HomeKit (macOS only) is similar.

Meanwhile, Bills to Budget simply models my family’s bill payment and budgeting processes, while Indie App Sales was born out of frustration that it’s difficult to get attention as an Indie App Developer.

How is your day-to-day app development workflow look like?

Rather disorganized at the moment, unfortunately. I tend to get up fairly early, but unless there’s a particular feature or bug I’m excited about, I don’t start work until around 9. My afternoons are typically spent doing consulting work, and then I usually have my laptop with me in the evening, although it often stays closed.

My week-to-week tends to be more interesting - I usually have some kind of milestone or deadline I’m working toward, which puts some level of urgency on my work — Black Friday is that deadline right now for Indie App Sales. I’ll tend to focus on one feature or product during that time, but when that work is complete (or at least, when the deadline passes ...), I usually need to take a step back, do some planning, and think about the next milestones.

I’ll often use this period to ship a few small enhancements to apps. That will be my next two weeks - the week of Black Friday and the following week, I’m planning to back off a bit, make sure things go well with the sales event, and put a rough plan together for the next six months - then it will be back to the grind!

How do you launch and market your app?

I wish I had a clever or insightful answer here, but I don’t! I’ll generally try to build up some excitement on social media, reach out to the usual press sites with varying amounts of success, and of course, I always submit to Apple’s “Tell us about your app or game” page, but have not had any success there to this point.

The trick - and something I’m still trying to figure out - is to figure out where your customers are, and go there. For my HomeKit apps, and I’ve had some success doing paid YouTube sponsorships, and other advertising venues - it’s been a while, but I plan to re-establish that in the near future. For Bills to Budget - well, let’s just say it’s still trying to find its’ audience 😀

What are the future plans for your app?

Signals is in the process of getting a makeover - a little over two years ago, I launched it for macOS, and I brought the ability to run Shortcuts in response to HomeKit events for the first time. This can be a super powerful automation technique, and something that’s surprisingly hard to do — it’s impossible on iOS without jumping through hoops, and even the feature that lets you convert a HomeKit automation to a Shortcut doesn’t allow you to run 3rd party Shortcuts doing this. The problem is, it’s kind of shoe-horned into Signals, so it’s difficult to market that feature specifically, and gets confusing when people purchase the iOS app without realizing that it’s a Mac-only feature.

So I’ll be splitting these into two separate apps, which will let them both breath a bit, and will let me build A LOT of new automation features. I’m going to build in some ability to fine tune the product with A/B tests - I’d really love to be able to easily test different Calls to Action, different onboarding experiences, etc, so I’m looking into RevenueCat’s new Paywall feature, for example. Once that’s ready, I’m going to spend a fair amount of time and energy promoting it, experimenting, and hopefully building the audience 🤞

Do you have any interesting lessons learned or tips for other indie makers?

Tip number one is to just start. I spent a long time ‘playing around’ with tech, which was fine, but my goal was really always to build my own sellable products. It took far too long for me to do something serious. So if this is something that’s in the back of your mind, just take that first step - make it small, make it fast, and don’t expect to make money, but focus on learning. Then ramp it up and keep going!

Tip number two is to find a support network - if iOS is your main platform, there’s an incredible community of Indie Developers on Mastodon, and a growing community on Threads. Seek them out - especially those who talk about their business and have some success - follow them, participate in the conversation, and you will learn a ton.

Looking back, are there any decisions or actions you regret not taking before or during the development and launch of your apps? Is there anything you would have done differently?

I’ve already mentioned that it took too long for me to start, and while this isn’t really a regret, one thing I struggle with is getting my head out of Xcode and growing my business. Every successful Indie Developer will tell you that the key to growing your business is to close Xcode, and while I know this is true, it’s still a challenge.

What do I do once I’ve closed Xcode? How do I avoid getting bored? One of the reasons I’ve picked up consulting hours (other than, you know, paying bills) is to get some better exposure into a business that does this really well, and to learn the things that they do — I’ve got some ideas, and I’m excited to see what happens next!

Are there any other products that you are particularly proud of? Could you share some details about them

Indie App Sales is something I’m really proud of! This was an idea I had over the summer after shutting down Xcode for a day (see my previous answer), and trying to come up with a way to boost my sales. A YouTuber who I’ve advertised with had just sent me (and his other advertisers) an email asking if I had any sales for Amazon’s Prime Day — it clearly wasn’t really an email meant for me, so I closed it… but then I thought “wait, why not?”.

Black Friday is always an incredible time for sales. November can easily bring in 3x my normal revenue, with December being 2x, even though my prices are reduced - there’s a reason that retailers do this every year! But how would I actually get the press? Well, I’m pretty sure I know almost all of the other Indie HomeKit Developers, and I have a bunch of contacts with HomeKit YouTubers, Bloggers, etc - I figured if I could get a few of us together, I’ll bet I could get some coverage. If I’m lucky, I could even get some non-HomeKit apps in there, and get even broader press coverage, but my goal was initially to focus on HomeKit, as I was pretty confident I could get some focused coverage.

Well, it blew up pretty quickly - in a span of 2.5 weeks, I had a listing with over 100 apps, we got coverage from several HomeKit outlets, and broader coverage on MacStories and 9to5 Mac! All done with a simple GitHub page (because I only had 2 weeks!), and a bit of hustle.

So of course, we’re doing it again for Black Friday! Indie App Sales, Black Friday edition has 194 apps submitted, and is still growing quickly - it’s likely to be twice as big as the July event! This time, it has a proper backend system, so the submission and review process is easier, and it’s more palatable to the consumer. Still plenty of work to run it, but I’m planning to hold another even in the Spring, and have plenty more automation ideas.

Are there any indie makers or creators whose work you admire and follow closely?

I’ve created a lot of friendships over the years - the HomeKit Indie dev community is very friendly, and I have plenty of others I talk to just about every week.

I really try to find and follow folks who are good at not only the development side, but the business side - folks like Curtis Herbert (the "Slopes Guy”), Emmanuel Crouvisier (CardPointers) and Ryan Ashcraft (FoodNoms) all have great apps, and all talk about their business, the ups and down, and how they grow it.

Thanks for reading til the end. Hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did. Below are some useful links mentioned throughout the interview

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