Building in Public: ASO Results After 5 Weeks
The follow-up to my ASO experiment. Real results, real numbers, and lessons learned from optimizing App Store keywords for two indie apps.
It's been more than a month since I published the first part of this ASO challenge, and I owe you an update.
The delay wasn't laziness. I had to focus on a project I've been dreaming about for a long time: tusai.app. Now that I'm in maintenance mode for that too, I can finally share the results.
TL;DR
Capishi: The keywords I selected worked. I ranked 4th place for "interview buddy" (popularity score: 24), and my downloads more than doubled. Still limited volume, but in a competitive category like interview prep, I'll take it.
Me-Log: We had fundamental errors in keyword selection, resulting in no success at all. I managed to reach position 19 for "emotion log", a keyword with a popularity score of 5, which means essentially nothing. Downloads dropped from 10 in December to just 6.
Lessons Learned
1. Target niche categories where competition is low
If you're not planning to burn budget on marketing, don't compete with apps backed by venture capital. Find the corners of the App Store where indie devs can still win.
2. Focus on one thing at a time
With Me-Log, I made the classic mistake of chasing low-competition keywords across too many directions. I spread myself too thin, and the results showed it.
The Timeline
Day 3: First Signs of Life
Capishi started ranking for "interview buddy" and climbed all the way to 9th place.
Me-Log also started appearing in rankings, but only for low-popularity keywords. This actually hurt downloads because I wasn't visible for anything people actually searched for.
Day 18: Capishi Climbs Higher
Capishi moved up to 5th place for "interview buddy." New downloads started coming in.
Me-Log was doing so badly at this point that I stopped actively tracking it. It's still a nice app though. I use it daily to rate my days and track my mood.
Day 19: Peak Performance
One day later, Capishi hit its peak: 4th place for "interview buddy."
This is the sweet spot every indie dev hopes for. Top 5 rankings mean actual visibility in search results.
Week 5: The Decline Begins
Five weeks after the original post, Capishi had dropped to 6th place.
At this point, I should have uploaded a new version to refresh the metadata. But as a solo developer with SwiftAI Boilerplate Pro as my main product, I had new sales and support requests to handle. Limited time, hard choices.
Here's what the download numbers looked like after 5 weeks:
What's Next
Since I'm now ranking higher with Capishi, I realized I need more reviews to convert these rankings into more downloads.
So I'm building an Ask for Review module for SwiftAI Boilerplate Pro. Once it's ready, I'll use it in Capishi and my other apps.
This is the beautiful thing about building products that solve your own problems. Every improvement to the boilerplate makes all my apps better.
Final Thoughts
ASO takes time and effort. But with the right keywords and realistic expectations, even solo devs can see meaningful improvements.
The key takeaways:
- Pick your battles. Don't compete for keywords you can't win.
- Be patient. Rankings take time to stabilize.
- Keep shipping. Fresh updates help maintain rankings.
- Focus. One well-optimized app beats two half-optimized ones.
Thanks for reading. If you have questions about ASO or want to share your own results, feel free to reach out.
Happy coding!