Indie Watch - Issue #31: Chorsee by Ben Noland 🧼🧹

Today, we're looking at Chorsee by Ben Noland.

Chorsee is an iPhone and iPad app that helps families streamline chores and allowance tracking.

Chores can be assigned to either a single person or multiple people.

With Chorsee, you can create profiles for each family member and easily keep track of how much they've earned. You can use built in avatars or photos and setup each device based on profiles so the right person gets the reminders.

Not only can you setup reminders for important tasks, but it's also easy to create chores with different recurring schedules (daily, weekly, as needed etc) and rotate them between family members.

Rewards can be done as allowance or points (or you can choose no rewards).

With Chorsee's virtual piggy bank, you can easily monitor how much each person has earned and view a detailed earnings history. You can also make custom transactions for adding bonuses or deducting expenses.

And, with the Chore Chart, you'll be able to easily see the household status for the week at a glance.

If you want to learn more, check out the Chorsee website.

Available for iOS and iPadOS

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Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Ben Noland (@bennoland)

Sure! I’m 40 years old, and was born and raised in Idaho. I studied Computer Science at a local university and then was a full stack Java developer for about 10 years at a local company. While working there I built and launched a web app called Coding Hire.

I left my full time job in 2015 to pursue the indie life. At first my sole focus was Coding Hire, but I became bored with the business and decided to make a transition to iOS apps.

I’ve built and launched 5 apps. The first 4 were “learning experiences” and I'm no longer working on them.

How did you come up with the idea?

I have a long list of ideas and am always looking for new ones. My first couple apps were just ideas I thought were cool and were scratching my own itch.

Unfortunately, that didn't work out too well in terms of growth. Now I try to validate my ideas before building them by checking the ASO [App Store Optimization] trends to see if there’s enough demand to build a business.

My wife actually suggested the idea of house chores and maintenance. When I checked the ASO and looked at the competition, I felt like there was room for a viable business in the family chore tracking niche.

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How did you market the app as an indie developer?

I’ve primarily focused on ASO with a bit of ASA [Apple Search Ads].

In the past, I’ve tried other methods of generating attention, but found them to be very hit or miss and unsustainable. The thing I like about ASO is people are already searching for the app and I’m just helping them find it.

Good ASO provides a steady stream of new users.

Apple Search Ads (ASA) were very important in the beginning to get enough downloads so I could gather feedback, improve the product, and start to build some ratings and reviews. It also gives a lot of insights into what people are actually searching for and what keywords you should be targeting with ASO.

I will say that running ads requires a fairly well-tuned onboarding / paywall / activation flow. If you can’t communicate your value and convince users to pay, then ads won’t work.

What’s your app design and development workflow like?

Sometimes I’ll use a pencil and paper to draw out a few ideas, but I’m usually pretty quick to jump into code. SwiftUI Previews are great for rapid prototyping.

I tend to draw a lot of inspiration from other apps. I love to study what other indie developers have done and how they handle different types of screens. It’s amazing how much I’ve improved over the last couple years just by studying how beautiful apps do things.

I use a daily text file to track all my tasks, todos, and ideas. I used to use a bunch of different apps, but over the years I’ve found simpler is better.

Any advice on monetizing your app and improving conversions?

Track everything.

The first few months of a new app I like to build out a weekly spreadsheet where I track all my key metrics. Building it by hand helps you get to know your numbers really well so you can see which areas may need more attention.

One metric I really like is Revenue Per Install. There are lots of steps along the way, but Revenue Per Install rolls it all together and gives you an idea about how much each user is worth.

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If you missed last week's issue, you can read it here:

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