A few days ago, someone asked on Women Make: “ How do you manage your health in addition to your projects? ”. We had a talk about this topic and I shared how I recently changed my habits for the better. I thought that I could write a quick article about it, about my own experience.
After a down period and years of overwork, I started to put in place changes in my life a few months ago. In this article, I’m sharing what are these new habits. I’m not a doctor, I’m not giving specific advice. The only thing I can assure is that I’m going much better.
Admit there is something wrong
Last February, a bad event happened to Vincent and me on social media. We faced many aggressive people on Twitter after someone wrote an angry thread about Threader. We took a hit, it affected both of us a lot. Our morale was down and we were exhausted.
The positive consequence is that the impact it had on us made us stop, think, and talk. The truth is it was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” (fun fact: the equivalent in French would be: “the drop that makes the vase overflow”). After years of overwork and unhealthy work/life balance, we decided to quit our laptops and have a break.
For 2 weeks, we almost didn’t touch our computers, only the minimum. You might think it’s a regular holiday, but for two persons like us who almost didn’t take any vacation in several years, this was a lot to us. That was a first accomplishment: letting go.
We rested. And we talked. We did almost nothing, and it was so good! We went out to visit the place we were currently living in. We realized that we had to make some changes. I think we knew it from some time but kept denying it. The main reason was “We will relax and take a break when our products are enough profitable”. Which is dumb. Because you never rest, end up burned out and can’t finish the race.
Anyway, this grueling event was the trigger for a reflection on our lives. We started a work of deconstruction of our bad habits.
Time for a change
The first step was to admit we couldn’t go on like this. The next one was to put in place new rules and healthier habits. So here’s what I’ve put in place and practiced for the last 6 months.
Social media
This decision was linked to what happened and that I described above. We cut pretty much all social media for several weeks. I was only checking our business-related accounts once every one or two days to be sure everything was going well and answer our customers.
In particular, Twitter is a great tool, but it can also be harmful. I could write a full article on this topic. With time, I started to get back to it little by little. I still don’t check my personal account that often. Some people may think that it’s not great for business (“You need to build an audience”, etc.). But that’s what I needed and I’m good with it.
Regular breaks
Sounds obvious but it was hard for me and it still is 6 months later. “20 more minutes” turns into “1 hour” so easily. I’m still using this app from Akshay Kadam, Away From Keyboard, which reminds me every hour how much time I spent in front of my computer. It doesn’t mean I always respect the one-break-every-hour-rule, but at least I know for how long I haven’t been moving my butt from the chair.
Read
Reading has helped me to think of something else rather than work all the time. It’s a great way for me to take a break and let my brain wander. I also made a change in my kind of reads. I used to read mostly business-related books, which is good to learn, but it felt like I wasn’t resting, rather still working. I switched to a lot of fictions and novels, which I love! For me, it has also been a way to be more creative.
I’m glad that I reconnected with books because I love reading but I kind of “forgot” about it. In March I bought many books and started to read again. To put that in perspective, I read more in a month than in 2018! I know, crazy. And it felt so good!
📚 2019 is the year I read again.
At least my recent burnout would have been helpful for this. I still suck at meditation but reading is a great way for me to relax. 🧘♀️
So far I read more in 1.5 months than in a year! (I know, I haven’t been reading a lot in 2018…) pic.twitter.com/AGY2yiwMSg
We were always talking about trying this and that, but rarely doing it. We decided to buy skateboards since we were talking about it for some time. And it was so much fun! Until I injured my knee… The point is: we have the right to enjoy life and do fun stuff. There are not only work plans but also life plans. Hobbies are a part of it.
Now we go out more often, discover the cities we’re living in, go to the park, have a beer, get breakfast outside, visit monuments near our place, etc. I don’t want to wake up too late, realizing most of my life is done already when I should have taken advantage of it when I was younger.
Sport
Everyone is aware that sport is good for both physical and mental health, I’m not revealing anything new. I got back to sport a few weeks ago after months of inactivity due to my knee injury. I can already see the difference. I feel more tonic, and happier after I ran. I particularly enjoy going after I wake up so I can start the day fresh.
Sleep
I didn’t realize my sleep was so bad. I was having trouble getting asleep, I was waking up many times during the night. I accumulated a debt of sleep for years. When we did our break last February, we took two decisions. 1) remove all screens from our bedroom, and 2) delete our morning clock alarms. The first one allowed to partially fix our sleep. I was impressed by how much impact it had, and I still do. The second allowed to pay off our sleep debt.
For the first weeks, we were waking up almost at noon! I was feeling a bit shameful about it, but the thing is we needed it. With time we woke up earlier and earlier until reaching what I would call a regular hour. Now I know not everyone has the luxury to do that, but it was beneficial to both of us.
I’m currently reading an amazing book about this topic, Why We Sleep: Unlocking The Power Of Sleep And Dreams. I really recommend it. I learned a lot.
Listen to me
I use to ignore my feelings and body signals. When I was tired or anxious, I was adopting the “ignore it and it will pass” method, which I don’t recommend. I’m being more attentive to the signs. When I have a headache or feel tired or anxious, I take a break. I acknowledge that my body is trying to talk to me, that I should listen to it and understand where it comes from.
Sometimes I just need a break. Sometimes I know I need to call it a day. And that’s okay. If I keep forcing I will feel even worse after and get a headache for 2 days. It isn’t worth it and I can start fresh the next day.
Reenlist for 6 months and more
I don’t have any secret sauce and I still have much more work to do. I made huge improvements and I’m happy to see my progress over time. I might add more new healthy habits in my life, though my current goal is to stick to it for 6 more months. I know how easy it can be to plunge back and get back to my bad habits. I know, I sound a lot like an Alcoholics Anonymous member, I’m pretty sure there are some similarities.
Overall I feel in much better shape, both physically and mentally. I sleep better. My global level of anxiety has reduced quite a lot. I’m not less productive. I work less but I don’t progress more slowly. Most importantly, I enjoy life more.
I recently realized it’s been a year already. A year Vincent and I left Paris. A year we became nomads. A year we started our indie journey. I thought it was probably a good time to write a summary of the past year.
Sometimes I feel like I did not accomplish much. So I thought of going over the past year to see what we have achieved. It actually restored my energy and was an opportunity to define what’s coming next.
October 2017, bye bye Paris
October is the month we decided to leave Paris. We were tired of the Parisian startup ecosystem: it just didn’t fit us. The city was too expensive for us and we were not fully taking advantage of it. We also definitely needed some fresh air. We changed both our professional and personal lifestyles by becoming nomads and indie makers.
Neither our families nor our friends understood our decision, but we knew it was what we wanted to do. Since we had a car, we decided to start a Tour de France and discover the beautiful regions of our country.
November 2017, new life beginning
We chose Brittany as our first destination and ended up in Dinard. It’s a region we wanted to see and it wasn’t far from Normandy where we were going to visit our families for Christmas anyway. So far, it’s still one of our favorite destinations among all.
The region is absolutely beautiful; I could make an entire album of their empty beaches in Autumn. There are a lot of places to visit in this area. And kouign amann of course, which is a local pastry mainly consisting of butter and sugar.
Product Hunt was organizing a remote hackathon during November and we decided to take part. It was an opportunity to build something in a month, and we needed the breath of fresh air after spending a year working on a single app. We already had ideas we wanted to work on. The first one was Threader (named Feathure at the time), an iOS app offering a selection of Twitter threads and displaying them nicely in a single view; and Emoji Search bar, an iOS custom emoji keyboard with a search bar to easily find the emoji you’re looking for.
It was probably not a good idea to start two projects at the same time because we hadn’t finish any of them at the end of the month. But at least we had two prototypes, people interested in our products and we did talk publicly about what we were building. In a word: improving.
December 2017, sad Christmas
This was honestly a really tough month. One of our dogs died. We were really close to her. It was devastating to us and we weren’t able to work properly for several weeks. We also came back to visit our families for Christmas and without going into details, it didn’t go well. Yeah, it was definitely a shitty month.
January 2018, back to work
New year, new place. We spent the month in Noirmoutier. Although it is a popular beach resort, it was totally empty at this time of the year. It was really cool to have all the beaches to ourselves. The place is beautiful.
It was also time to get back to our projects. We had built two prototypes during November and wanted to work on them in order to launch. However, we were not satisfied with Emoji Search Bar so we made a v2. We had no idea a keyboard could be that difficult to build. That’s when we understood how good was the work Apple had done on their keyboard. There are many things we don’t see and which are hard to reproduce. It’s easy to create a bad user experience. It wasn’t smooth enough, so we worked more on it. Regarding Threader, we were on the right tracks and hoping to launch the next month.
That month was a mentally challenging too since I lost both my grandfathers within a week. I was coming back from the funeral of the first one when the second one passed away. On top of them passing away, I had to come back and forth between places to attend both funerals and be with my family.
February 2018, Threader’s launch
Vincent and I wanted to try the countryside to see if we’d like it. We cleverly picked the coldest month of the year to spend four weeks in the middle of nowhere in an old and rustic house. It was f***ing freezing! As it turned out, that was definitely too much countryside for us. We were too isolated, it was too cold and the Internet was really bad, which really didn’t help since that’s when we launched Threader.
Our app was validated and published a few days after submitting to the App Store. We officially launched it right after on Twitter. We didn’t have many followers, so it was not explosive (0 RTs and 6 likes on my launch tweet to be exact). However, Chris Messina had already noticed us before, and he offered to hunt us on Product Hunt. The inventor of the hashtag, hunting our Twitter client! It was one of our first moment of glory. It’s obviously what we could call a vanity metric, but still… We were excited! It was also our first launch on Product Hunt.
We received something like 150 upvotes but got feedback and users who are still using the app today. We also got featured in the “New Apps We Love” on the App Store which got us 2,700+ downloads. That was more than a decent launch to us!
February is also the month I wrote my first article, a tutorial to submit your app to the App Store. We bought AppStoreMakers.com with the idea of making it a platform for developers publishing apps on Apple, but we didn’t do much more about it. We might make it rise from the dead someday.
March 2018, discovering the maker community
We joined wip.chat, an online community for makers, and discovered Telegram at the same time. That’s probably the month I spent the most time on it too, so I haven’t always been at the top of my productivity. It was pretty addictive. Thankfully I recovered. 😉
When starting your entrepreneurial journey, you can’t necessarily rely on your family and friends because they don’t understand what you do. Sometimes I really feel like an alien to them. So finding a community of makers, doing the same things we do and supporting us was greatly helpful. We felt less lonely.
We spent the month in Gironde, near the Bassin d’Arcachon. Way warmer and more comfortable than our previous destination, which was a relief. This is definitely a place to visit if you’re an oysters lover. The Bassin d’Arcachon is bordered with small cities and fishing villages. It’s near the ocean, which we were missing at our previous destination.
During this month we mainly fixed bugs, implemented new features and answered the generous feedback we received from our users. We also replied to the bad ratings we received on the App Store. Users often fail to realize there are actual people behind an app. It’s even harsher in our case: we are two indie developers, not a full department of engineers from a big company. Anyway, we replied to each one of them on the App Store and contacted the people we could find on social networks.
Compilation of our best reviews on the App Store
With a lot of patience, we managed to turn several 1-star reviews into a 3, 4 or 5-star review. Our rating on the App Store affects our ranking, so it was important for us to improve it. Today we have a global rating of 4.3/5 and we want to keep increasing it. We also decided to release Threader in the UK.
Regarding Emoji Search Bar we were still unsatisfied and started to leave it aside.
April 2018, the birth of Women Make
We got back to Normandy and spent a few months on the coast, a place we know well and appreciate. After joining a community of makers, I quickly realized I was struggling to find other women in this industry. This is when I created Women Make, originally named WIP Women, since I started it on wip.chat. As an introvert, it was a real challenge for me to gather women and create a place for us. Vincent was very encouraging, which was a huge support.
The most incredible event of the month was when we got featured as an “App of the Day” in the US and the UK! We couldn’t believe two indie developers had been chosen by Apple among so many apps. We immediately released Threader worldwide hoping to be featured everywhere but it was too late. Anyway, we were still so happy. We got countless downloads and stayed in the top 10 of our category for a few days. If you want to try your luck, I wrote a guide to help you get featured on the App Store.
May, one app in a month
Mid-April, we started working on a new app. Our goal was to prove to ourselves we could shorten our “build and launch” phase again by a bit more and make our first sales. We decided to develop a Mac menu bar app. Although we had never done this before, it seemed feasible in a month and I had experience with iOS, which was definitely helpful for MacOS.
We launched IP Man on Product Hunt as well as on Reddit and Hacker News, which was a first time for us. It was honestly scary and comments could be pretty harsh, but we learned to be less sensitive to this with time. We also got featured on the App Store again! While we are still featured in the “Apps For Developers” section, we don’t sell many anymore.
We made about 220+ sales the first month, and then it slowly went down. To this day, we have made a total of 420+ sales, which represents $1.56k turnover. Minus Apple’s cut (30%) we made about $1.1k. We pushed updates along with new features after the launch, so it actually represents more than a month of work in the end.
Threader only had a landing page at the time. Vincent worked to make the threads readable on the website too, which was going to help us get more traffic and make our iOS app more visible.
June, one app in two weeks
After IP Man, we thought we should launch more apps and decided to develop another Mac menu bar app. We basically reproduced the same process, but faster: app development, find a name, create a logo, prepare all the assets (images, screenshots, demo video, descriptions, etc.), make a landing page and… launch. It took us one week this time.
It went well but we got a bit disappointed. We didn’t get featured on the App Store this time and sold a total of 75 units, meaning $264 in sales, which was $184 after Apple’s cut. Not a success. I think it showed us we shouldn’t expect it to work every time. Launching fast can be fun and give you the confidence that you can actually do it, but it’s not necessarily a good long-term strategy. It got us thinking. We had sold our first apps, but we needed to strategize better to eventually make a living out of this.
In the meantime, we enjoyed a nice place for a few weeks, still in Normandy, and it reconciled us with the countryside. We had amazing weather and tried to take advantage of it, which we often forget to do. We took care of a lovely dog and four hens, enjoyed their eggs we collected every morning, learned how to catch them and put them in their house before the night, walked in the meadow with horses running around us, appreciated the fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden and met amazing people.
July, laptop issues
We didn’t progress as much as we would have liked this month. Did I mention we were still traveling with 2 iMacs? We bought laptops but had to send them back before getting new ones. We spent about two weeks without our computers, which was inconvenient for work.
In the meantime, Women Make was growing. I was still spending quite some time animating, moderating, putting women at the forefront and bringing more people into it. I also started a newsletter, which was new to me. The feedback was great, which motivated me to keep working on it. I also realized I had spent a lot of time on this project and, although it’s for a great cause, I should find a way to monetize it, or at least compensate my hard work.
A mistake we made during these last few months is that we neglected Threader. And it cost us. We were about to realize this.
August, an attempt at making IP Man viable and a common blog
We spent the month near Lyon. The city is really nice. We kept a house and took care of two cats. Although there was a pool to cool down, the heat was unbearable and made it really hard to stay focused and be productive. Fortunately, this heat didn’t last the whole month.
As I already mentioned earlier, we tried to better leverage IP Man, our first paid app. We knew there were customers since we had sold a certain amount of copies. So the MVP was validated. We now needed to make it viable and improve the sales in the long term.
Vincent created a new website to make it look more professional than a simple landing page: he made it look nicer, described the features, added testimonials, etc. We had coupons for Google and Facebook so we decided to try AdWords and Facebook campaigns. It was a total fail. We experimented with A/B testing, tried different phrasings, images, settings, etc. until our coupons ran out. But none of them worked.
On the Women Make front, I launched a patreon. It was time to offer people a way to support the work I had been doing since its creation. There are different tiers and I was so thrilled to see Pieter Levels become my first Top supporter!
August is also the month where Vincent wrote his first article ever and inaugurated our blog twomakers.io with it. Since we’re working together, we created it as a way to write about our common entrepreneurial journey. With this first post, Vincent really opened his heart and shared intimate thoughts. The good surprise is that it made it to the front page of Hacker News! As always there were harsh comments. Since it was pretty personal it was harder to take than when you talk about a product you made. But he also got a lot of very nice comments and encouragements.
Unfortunately, we initially forgot to put a link to the signup form at the bottom of his article and added it after the wave of traffic. This blog post got us 9,200+ visitors and the first 70 subscribers to our mailing list.
Threader celebrated its 6-month anniversary. As I said, we realized we didn’t take care of it as much as we should have. Statistics were slowly going down, I wasn’t pushing as many updates as I used to and Vincent had not improved the site much either. We realized it was time to wake up before it was too late and decided to make it our focus again.
September, Threader back in the game
Our original plan was to head to Spain and then Portugal but our host cancelled. Since we were near the Italian border, we decided to get there. I mean, the food is great, you know? That was enough to convince us.
We spent the month on the Adriatic coast, near Pescara. The city is pleasant: not too big, with enough enjoyable places to visit, and near the sea. We had quite a few nice breakfasts there, drank too much coffee although we had quit, and discovered an Italian speciality, the maritozzi, which consists of a sort of sweet bun filled with whipped cream. I recommend the Cremeria Bresciana if you ever go to Pescara.
We got back working on Threader. Vincent created the bot that allows users to compile a thread from Twitter. It was a good way to bring traffic. On my side, I started implementing in-app purchases and Premium features in our iOS app so we could finally generate some revenue from Threader.
We also spent more time animating the Twitter account, finding new users, pushing our best content on different platforms, sharing updates with our users through email campaigns, etc. Traffic was growing, we were getting more attention and we saw well-known people subscribing to our app, including Twitter employees. Threader also made the front page of Hacker News several times. Threader was back in the game!
Women Make was growing too. Thanks to an opportunity offered by Ben Tossell, I decided to organize a 30-Day Challenge with the community. The goal was to build and launch something during October. I was planning to participate myself and was afraid about not being able to animate the event, work on my own project during it, and keep progressing on Threader at the same time. It was definitely a challenge!
October, the Women Make challenge and our first sales with Threader
October was a food-y month: we ate the best pasta, ravioli and pizza of our Italian trip. We spent the month near Viterbo, between Rome and Florence. We experienced what it’s like to live in an Italian village, which was certainly interesting, although a bit too lonely for us. It was great we got to meet our Airbnb host and his daughter who were both really nice. We also had an amazing time in Rome where we just ate and walked non-stop for three days.
Like I said, the Women Make 30-Day Challenge was a… challenge. October was really busy. I decided to work on a podcast interviewing women entrepreneurs while taking care of the community and managing the challenge and its participants. The podcast in itself was quite scary for me. I detailed this experience a bit more in this post.
It was definitely a good way to celebrate the 6-month anniversary of Women Make. 110+ participants joined and dozens of projects were launched at the end of the month. I was truly impressed by the result.
At the beginning of the month, we also launched Premium on Threader iOS. We were so excited to actually sell subscriptions! We were also anxious about the technical aspect, since it was the first time we were doing this. Unfortunately, we had a few bugs, but the users have been cool about it and we fixed them very quickly.
Some of Threader’s links made the front page of Hacker News, we were #1 and #2 at the same time! It was crazy! This got us about 27,000 visitors on the first day, and we reached 550+ people at the same time on the site. However, we noticed that despite the traffic spike, not that many people ended up subscribing to Threader iOS. We knew we had to bring more features to the site, and this became our next goal.
The 12 next months: the year of profitability
Threader got its first Premium users and the traffic is growing. We released an iPad version and we are working towards adding the iOS features to the site. It will allow us to have more paying customers.
Women Make got its first financial supporters and gained a lot in visibility. I can see women are more and more visible in the maker space so that’s a huge win. I’d like to improve the site so it can be used as a tool and an extension of our Telegram group.
We have so many ideas to implement in both of these projects. Whilst we may not be the fastest shippers in the world, but we know our strength is our long-term vision and the care we put in our products. We both think those are the most important aspects.
Whether it’s Threader or Women Make, we could have taken shortcuts to generate more traffic, get more users, make more money faster. But we really have a long-term plan, and we want to build something durable with strong foundations.
Today our #1 goal is to grow the income of these projects. If we want to make a living from our products, we need to generate more cash. 2018 was about turning our back on our previous lives, getting a fresh start, starting our indie journey, developing and launching products, creating an audience, making our first sales, generating our first recurring revenue, and finding our place as entrepreneurs. 2019 will be the year allowing us to rely solely on this source of income.
On the mental side of things, we also have improvements to make regarding our work/life balance. Photos may be misleading, we actually worked way too much and didn’t take the time to appreciate every place we’ve been to. I think it’s even more challenging when you’re working as a couple. Sometimes it’s hard to draw a line between your personal and professional lives. We also moved a lot and are planning to stay longer in each place, so it’s less tiring.
I don’t know if this article will be useful to other people but I’d be glad if it is. A thousand thanks if you’re supporting one of our products: it’s a big deal to us. I wish you a happy new year and to complete your goals in 2019, whether they’re related to work and entrepreneurship or not.
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Thanks to Clo and Anne-Laure for proof-reading this long article.
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During the Women Make 30 Day Challenge last October, I decided to work on a podcast. I’m revealing the first guest and episode today. Women Make recently celebrated its 6-month anniversary so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go over its history and what led me to launch the Women Make podcast.
Create a place for us
I created this community because I want women to have a place to find support in the maker community. Entrepreneurship already has its hurdles to overcome but it is even more difficult as a woman (and every minority in general).
The impact society has on how we perceive ourselves and what we think we are capable of is incredibly important. I know some women need to know everything is possible and to gain more self-confidence. We live in a world where it can be difficult for us to be taken seriously.
This community was created to help women believe in themselves and know they can be entrepreneurs too. Sometimes they just need a little push. Women Make exists so the ones who already took the plunge can rely on other peers living the same journey. It is a place to find the support you need as a woman maker.
Put women at the forefront
My goal with Women Make is to put women at the forefront. Tech and entrepreneurship in general is male-dominated. If we want to be seen as much as men, we need to make some noise and take more space!
I started this community because I was struggling to get in touch with women makers, but also because I wanted to see more of them in the spotlight. Although things are improving, it is still so much easier to find men role models than women ones.
I have been working towards this goal of shining a light on women makers by sharing updates about women on our Twitter account, by helping our members launching on Product Hunt, by pushing them to write and share their progress publicly, by creating a publication for us on Medium, and by organizing the 30 Day Women Make Challenge. And today, I’m kicking it up a notch by launching a podcast interviewing women makers.
Overcoming my fears
Starting a podcast was actually something pretty scary for me. I’m more of the shy kind type, I don’t think I’m the best at speaking as English is not my native language. I had lots of reasons not to do it. But I thought that all these challenges were probably a good reason to actually do it.
So I got to work. I had no idea how to make a podcast so I did my research. I know fear can be paralyzing so I publicly shared my progress in a Twitter thread to make myself accountable. I was slowly but surely getting there. But obviously that was not the hardest part for me.
I was very nervous before the first interview. My hands were sweaty and my voice not as strong and confident as I wish but surprisingly (or not?) it went super well!
And now here we are! I can proudly share with all of you the work I’ve been doing. Of course it’s not “done” since I’ll be running other interviews but I’m super happy I managed to achieve something I was not sure I was capable of.
Launching the podcast!
Today I’m excited to share with you the first episode of the Women Make podcast. My very first guest is Kate Kendall, founder and CEO of CloudPeeps and The Fetch. I’d like to thank her for accepting my invitation but also because she’s been super nice and made herself available very quickly. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
⭐️ Leave 5 stars on iTunes to help the podcast being more visible (if you liked it)
✅ Subscribe on any podcast platform to get notified when the next episode is out
💬 Send me your feedback and guest suggestions on Twitter (my DMs are open)
Last announcement: as a certain number of the members asked me to, I made stickers & shirts for Women Make and I thought this was a good opportunity to reveal them today! Buy 4 stickers and get 25% off!
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Thank you Anne-Laure for proof reading this article.
October was intense. Indeed, it was the month of the Women Make 30 Day Challenge. And it was freaking awesome!
The 30 Day Challenge: 30 days to build and launch
After 110+ participants joined the challenge, we all started working on October 1st with one goal in mind: build and launch something in 30 days.
It has been really inspiring and motivating since day one. Everyone was discussing their ideas, sharing their todo lists and templates, offering their help… That’s exactly the kind of atmosphere I wanted for this challenge: punchy and friendly at the same time.
When someone was having a hard time or was doubting themselves, the community was here to cheer them up. Our common energy was strong and powerful! Since then, it’s been such a delight to see all the members posting updates and sharing their progress publicly.
A podcast for Women Make
Although I’m the organizer of the 30 Day Challenge –and trust me it had its part of work too– I also participated in the challenge myself. I built Women Make because I wanted to create a place for women to find support in the maker community. But I also have a broader goal which is to put women in the forefront.
There are many talented women in the startup scene we don’t hear about, especially in the traditional media. I want to give them a voice. I want their peers to know they are not alone. And I want them to share their advice to succeed in this industry. This is why I decided to start a podcast.
This has been a totally new experience for me. I really did something I wouldn’t have imagine I could have done even a few months ago. I’m so glad I made it! My first guest is still a surprise… but you can signup here to get notified when I will publish the episode, probably next week.
A common launch
Projects listed on womenmake.com
Today is time to reveal our work to the world and I’m so excited about it! I’m so glad that we built our projects alongside, together, by helping and supporting each other. This challenge was also the opportunity to meet new talented women, as many members joined the community last month.
Thanks to all the participants who took part in this adventure. I couldn’t have dreamed of better peers. One thing is sure: you can be proud of what you have achieved these 30 days!
Now is time for you to check all these awesome projects built during the 30 Day Challenge: Games, books, apps, online schools, job boards, blogs, podcasts… Be amazed by the diversity of our work!
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💬 If you haven’t yet, you should join us on Telegram!
Since this challenge was a success, I’ll probably organize a second edition. I know some people couldn’t make it this month so this will also be the opportunity for them to take part next time.
I’d like to thank newCo which hosted the challenge, all the participants who took a part in it and Anne-Laure for correcting this article among other things.
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Women Make is free but you can support my hard work via Patreon.
I’m a Swift developer and indie maker. I have made several apps, and they’ve got featured on the App Store every time. Threader, a Twitter client that curates good threads and displays them on a single page, even became featured as App of the Day.
Here is some advice from my experience that might help Apple consider your app for promotion as well.
Note: Although this advice applies to all app categories, the game category is a bit more specific. I won’t cover the game app category in particular in this post.
How to get featured in the “New Apps We Love” section
Threader featured in “New Apps We Love”
A clean app
Of course, the first thing to consider is how to make a bug free app with a clean design. Think design, UX, and wording among other things. Don’t forget to test it (different devices, different OS, different people…).
Make things homogenous: use the same set of fonts and colors everywhere. Avoid text when you can. Don’t reinvent the wheel, especially if you’re not a designer. Use the standard iOS items: buttons, navigation bar, and so on.
It’s not always possible, but it can be useful to see people use your app. If you see that they’re not using it as expected or don’t manage to perform certain actions, then you might need to review your UX.
Use Apple’s APIs
Apple promotes their own products. They’ll be more inclined to feature an app that uses the latest Swift version and uses their own APIs. In 2017 they released ARKit and made a special category on the App Store to promote the apps using it.
Extensions
Although I don’t have solid proof of this, Apple likes when you take advantage of all their platforms. Think of iMessage, share & action extensions, and so on.
For example, Threader has an action extension. It allows you to open a thread directly from Twitter and read it on a single page, just like on the app. It’s an extension of the main app. It’s useful and allows certain actions outside of it, without opening it.
Threader’s action extension to read a thread directly from Twitter
Great visuals
All the information about your app is important and plays a role in getting featured. You can (re)read my previous article explaining how to submit an app. There’s some useful info in there (like the “Prepare for submission” and “App previews & screenshots” sections). The most important thing is your visuals. Make something clean, simple to understand, and with fewer words…
Apple likes frequent updates. Users like frequent updates. This doesn’t mean you need to create a new feature every day. But fix bugs, get feedback from your users, and push updates regularly.
Frequent updates are also recommended if you want to stay featured longer and stay on the top of the App Store. I push an update every two days or so when I’m featured. About once a week when I’m not.
iOS only
If your app is only available on iOS (meaning no Android version), I recommend you mention it. I suspect Apple likes exclusivity.
Ratings
Apple introduced a way to reply to users’ reviews on iTunes Connect. It’s useful to thank the good ones, but also to understand what went wrong for the bad ones and reply to those as well.
Reply to users’ reviews
Localizations
Translate your app into different languages. Especially if your app is available in several countries. Apple will appreciate that you took the time to do it.
It’s an annoying task, and localization is pretty hard to update. That’s why you should do it in the latest possible phase of your app development. I hope Apple will improve this one day, since it’s really painful.
Keywords & search results
ASO (App Store Optimization) is the process of improving the visibility of a mobile app […] in an app store. — Wikipedia
That’s why you need to choose your keywords carefully. I use App Annie sometimes to check the quality of my app’s keywords.
Finally, the most important step: Fill out the form
There’s actually a form to fill out to contact the App Store Editorial Team to get promoted.
Important to note: “please let us know 6–8 weeks in advance”. So think about it way before you submit your app. Especially for iOS where the market is way more crowded than the macOS market, for example.
If you get featured, then Apple might consider making your app the App of the Day or featuring it in the App/Game tab. If that’s the case, you’ll receive an email. You’ll have to produce several pieces of artwork/visuals and submit them via iTunes Connect.
A few pieces of advice from my one-time-being-App-of-the-Day experience:
Be creative and look at the other Apps of the Day to give you an idea of what they look like.
Consider releasing your app worldwide if that’s not already your plan. If you’re featured as App of the Day, you will get featured in all the countries where your app is available.
Promotional Artwork section on iTunes Connect
Just so you know, even if you submit your artwork, it doesn’t mean Apple is going to feature you. I know. You worked hard on this. And it might lead to nothing.
Also, after you’ve submitted your artwork, you probably won’t get any news from Apple about the status of your app. You just wait. And that’s it.
Let’s take my example: our apps have been considered two times for promotion. Both times we provided the artwork and waited for weeks. Both times we didn’t get any news. We didn’t get any replies to our emails. One app did not get featured. The other has been App of the Day. Without notice.
Remember that the iOS App Store is very crowded. A lot of apps go out every single day. For example, I published IP Man (a Mac menu bar app to easily copy/paste your IP) to the Mac App Store. Even though I didn’t respect the deadline of ‘6–8 in advance’ (I know I didn’t respect my own guidelines), they featured it. And I can tell you it helps a lot with sales.
The Mac App Store is a good place to sell apps. There are way fewer apps available, so there is less competition. That’s likely why IP Man got featured.
IP Man featured in “New Apps We Love” on the Mac App Store
Who are your competitors
Another piece of advice I can give you is to look at your competitors who got featured, and other featured apps in general. I’m not saying all apps look the same, but there is definitely a pattern. Sell your app the Apple way. Use their vocabulary and their design style.
Note, though: You don’t have to say everywhere that your app is “insanely great”.
What you can do: on the App Store, go on the central bottom ‘Apps’ tab. Scroll until you find ‘Top Categories’ and click on ‘See All’. Now you see all the categories. Select the ones your app is in and navigate through the top apps: these are you competitors.
Check your competitors on the App Store
You can also check the Today tab and see the last week’s Apps of the Day. This gives you at least 6 examples.
The Today tab on the App Store
You don’t actually know if/when you’ll get featured
Apple doesn’t notify you. So like us, you’ll just notice a pick up of new users. You’ll check where they came from, not understanding what is happening. Then check the App Store to see if you are featured. And celebrate.
Useful links to become an App-Store-Feature Master
I highly recommend you read Making the Most of Your Product Page. It explains how to fill out your app information and also gives you an overview of how it looks on the App Store. You even have more links for some of the sections.
In general, follow Apple’s guidelines. I think it’s the most important.
I’m on Twitter if you want to see if my next apps will be featured or not 🍏📱 You can also subscribe to our newsletter and get notified the next time we publish an article here.
I am excited and scared, this is my first ever blog post. But I am happy to be sharing what I’m working on and writing about something I truly care about: the beginning of Women Make and what let me to create this community.
Who am I?
I am a French indie developer and maker who has worked in the tech industry for a few years now. This field can be tough when you are a woman but I never felt like it was my place to do something about it. I admired those who are involved in making a change, there is so much work to do. That’s why I often feel overwhelmed, because it requires significant effort to make very little impact. I never participated in these debates in the past, except over conversations with friends at diners.
This is me with Flip ️💕
Although there are existing communities, I never felt that I could identify with them as most of them appeared to be a group of working girls talking politics and making appearances at fancy events — which I do believe they should be doing, I just couldn’t identify myself with these groups.
Over the last few years, I have spent most of my time coding and recently (last few weeks) have started to talk with more people (mostly online). I used to live in Paris, however, after I discovered Pieter Levels a few months ago he made me understand that I didn’t have to feel guilty about not wanting to connect with the toxic Parisian startup ecosystem. I left my apartment and became a digital nomad. Now I build my products in public and have since met a community of makers through Twitter and wip.chat. I now feel less alone and more confident in the what I am doing. All these changes have seemed for the best and have made me feel better. I am still anxious but that’s probably part of the job — but I am feeling more aligned with myself than before.
Why Women Make?
Since I’ve been connecting with other indie makers like me, I soon realized that I was only talking with men — which I’m kinda used to as I went to an engineering school and although they had a pretty decent quota of women, I still mainly talked with men.
I came to the realization: “That’s my fault. I don’t talk to women because I don’t reach out to them.” When I started to look for them it was actually a real struggle. Where the women makers at? It’s already difficult to find interesting/relevant people to follow on Twitter, but now I was trying to limit my search to women which made it even more difficult.
The group on Telegram
That’s when the idea of creating a group on Telegram came to me. I searched for women who had an account on wip.chat and contacted them directly. I also tweeted the link and made it public to keep it open to everyone. It was exciting to see people coming up on the group — even when it was just curiosity. We do have a certain % of men in the group. They are active and supporting the growing women maker community by inviting their female friends! I was happy because I managed to do what was important to me: gather some women makers so that we could feel less alone, chat together and support each other.
After I made the group, I quickly realized that there was so much more that could be done with this community. Pretty quickly I wanted to create a website that listed the members. Any new person coming to the site would know there are plenty of other women makers across the world she can talk to and get support from if necessary.
So, what’s next?
I see there being 3 main challenges on this project:
Attracting more women makers (and other underrepresented demographics in general) on the group.
Make this future website a useful platform for us.
Keep a good ratio of men to women as this group is open for everyone to join.
I’m really excited to work on this and make something useful that could be helpful for people. I’m really glad that I’ve met all these awesome people building amazing things. Our small community has already helped me a lot on this project (thanks Jess, Una, Toni, Manasvini, Abhinaya, Katelyn, Aleksandra and all the others 💖).
It was hard to write this 1st article. But I did it and I hope to start writing more and keep you updated along the way.
You can subscribe here if you want to get notified when the website is out.
You can join us and spread the word to your women friends. You can contact me on Twitter if you have suggestions about this article or the project, or just want to talk to me 🙂
❤️ Lastly, I’d also like to thank Vincent who’s helping me on this project, as well as Jess and Tigran for the re-reading.
If you want to help me to develop this community, you can support me via my Patreon.
I wrote this article because when I started to develop on iOS this tutorial would have been a great help. The process to publish an app to the App Store can be confusing at first. But like everything else, once you know how it works it’s much clearer and you don’t spend time on it anymore.
I assume you already have a developer account and an app to submit. This article is written for iOS apps, working on Xcode 9.
They are 2 main steps for an App Store submission:
You need to create your app on iTunes Connect where you’ll need to enter some information (displayed on the App Store or needed for the review team).
Upload the actual file, using Xcode in our case.
It’s not that complicated but it can feel a bit messy the first time. Here’s a guide to help you through the procedure.
1) Create your app on iTunes Connect
Go to iTunes Connect and login with your developer account. Select « My Apps » then click on the « + » sign on the upper left and choose « New app ».
Login on iTunes ConnectSelect “My Apps”Click on “+” then “New App”
A. General information
You need to enter some information about your app.
Information of your new app
Platform: simply the platform of your app.
Name: simply the name of your app. It might be already taken. In this case, you can add a short sentence to make it different. Ex: If ‘Many’ is already taken, try ‘Many — Share videos with your friends’ instead.
Primary language: that’s the main language of your app. If you translated it into several languages, you’ll be able to add these later don’t worry.
Bundle ID: you can find it in Xcode in your target general info
SKU: a unique ID. It won’t be public so it’s up to you to choose it. Personally, I often put my bundle ID.
Your app’s bundle ID
B. Choose your categories
Now that you are on the ‘App Information’ tab of your app, you’ll find the information you just entered and some new ones you need to fill. One important thing is the ‘Category’ field.
The category field
In my opinion, you need to choose it according to these 2 factors:
Obviously the category of your app.
The competition. If you app could fill in 3 categories, you may choose the 2 where there is less competition.
💡 Tip: On the App Store, go on the central bottom ‘Apps’ tab. Scroll until ‘Top Categories’ and click on ‘See All’. Now you see all the categories. Select each category you’re interested in and navigate through the top apps: these are you competitors.
Check your competitors
💡 Tip: Actually, choosing a second category is optional but one more category is potentially one more chance to be featured.
Don’t forget to regularly click ‘Save’ on the upper right corner.
C. Pricing and Availability
On the left, click on the ‘Pricing and Availability’ tab. Here you can enter the price of your app (free or paid). There is nothing much to say.
Pricing and Availability of your app
D. Prepare for submission
On the left, click on ‘Prepare for submission’. This is the biggest part actually.
App previews & screenshots
As you can see, there are a lot of sizes but you don’t have to give them all. Click on ‘View All Sizes in Media Manager’. As you can see, 5.8” is optional, 4.7”, 4” and 3.5” can use 5.5” Display. Drag and drop 1242 x 2208 px screenshots (or 2208 x 1242 px in landscape) in the 5.5” Display section. You can upload up to 5 screenshots.
App Previews and ScreenshotsMedia manager
💡 Tip: Do upload 5 screenshots. This is important. It is your window display on the App Store and a communication support. The first one is the most important because when scrolling on the App Store, users can see your app title, subtitle, logo and first screenshot, so do it well.
What you put on it is up to you but I’d recommend clear images and little text. It needs to be easy to read and simply understandable. If it’s too complicated people will give up. Give them a reason to see more and download your app.
You can also add up to 3 previews, which are short videos (15 to 30 seconds). Use them to present your app. Don’t try to show how everything works, just the main functionalities. Just like before, the aim is to give the users a reason to download your app.
Like the screenshots, the required resolution is for the 5,5″ Display, others are optional. Your file can’t exceed 500MB. See all the specifications here.
Promotional Text and Description
This is what users will see on the App Store. The promotional text will appear above the description. Unlike other fields, the promotional text can be modified without submitting an update.
Keywords
Keywords are very important. They are linked to the search results in the App Store so you need to choose them carefully so people can find you (or you competitors apps). We’ll make a separate article on the App Store Optimization.
💡 Tip: To maximize the number of keywords, separate them with coma but without spaces (ex: social network,video,messaging,messenger).
Support url
Don’t forget to fill an url where users can get information and contact you (this could be the contact section of your website for example).
General App Information
Scroll down to the ‘General App Information’ section.
General App Information section
You need an app icon with 1024 x 1024 px dimensions. You don’t need to upload it if you use Xcode 9 or later since it’s done automatically when you upload a build.
Enter the same version as your Xcode project.
Click on ‘Edit’ next to ‘Rating’ and enter the appropriate categories then click ‘Done’.
Enter your company information (name, address, phone, mail, etc).
App Review Information
Scroll down to the ‘App Review Information’ section. This is meant for the review team who approves your app (or not).
App Review Information
If we need to signup to use your application, you need to provide some credentials for the reviewer (so he doesn’t have to create an account). Fill the contact information with the information of the person in charge. This is the person the reviewer will reach if needed. Don’t hesitate to write some notes or add an attachment if you think it’s necessary.
Version release
Scroll down to the ‘Version release’ section. Select the way you want to release your app once it is validated. You can publish it as soon as possible by selecting ‘Automatically release this version’. You might want to select ‘Manually release this version’ if you need to do something before the release (like making an announcement, publish an article or something else). If you are very well organized, that you have a specific release date and plenty of time before then, select the 3rd option and enter your date.
Version Release section
💡 Tip: Keep in mind that the submission process usually takes a few days (sometimes less, sometimes more). Also, you won’t necessary be validated; unfortunately you can also be rejected. Then you’ll need to submit a new build. You can’t be sure you’ll be able to release your app in 3 days for example. You need to take it into account in your planning, and so in the ‘Version release’ mode you select.
Don’t forget to click ‘Save’ on the upper right corner.
Verify that there is no issue highlighted in red (a screenshot missing or an empty field for example).
2) Submit a build with Xcode
The last step to submit an app is to actually upload the app.
A. Create the archive
Go to Xcode and select the General Info panel of your target. Enter the version and the build of your app.
Version and build of your app
Run your app on a real device (not on a simulator). Once it’s done, go to the ‘Product’ menu then click on ‘Archive’. This can take a few minutes (you can see the progression bar in Xcode, just like when you build an app).
Archive your app
B. Upload the file
To access the archive, go to the ‘Window’ menu then click on ‘Organizer’. When the operation is done, you’ll see the archive in the window appear here. Select it then click on ‘Validate…’. Select your team then click ‘Choose’ then ‘Validate’.
Open the OrganizerValidate your app
If some errors are displayed, you need to resolve them before going further. Then repeat the previous step. If everything goes well, select your app archive again and this time click on ‘Upload to the App Store…’. Just like before, choose your team then click ‘Upload’. You might need to resolve some errors again. If everything goes well, your archive has been uploaded.
Upload to App Store
💡 Tip: The upload can be pretty long. And sometimes it’s not working. When Xcode displays an error, the problem can come from you but it can also come from Apple servers… In this case you can’t do anything but repeat the upload until it works. A good internet connection is a plus 😉
Now you need to wait. This can take some time before your build is actually visible on iTunes Connect.
C. Submit the build
Once it is, go back to iTunes Connect in the ‘Prepare for Submission’ menu. Scroll to the ‘Build’ section. Click on ‘Select a build’ and now you should see the one you just uploaded. Select it and click ‘Done’.
Build sectionSelect the build to submit
Click ‘Save’ on the upper right corner. Then click on ‘Submit for Review’. You’ll be asked a few questions. Click ‘Submit’.
💡 Tip: As said before, it might take some time before Apple has actually complete the processing of your build. So if you don’t see your build available on iTunesConnect, don’t worry and wait for a bit. You should receive an email to notify you when you the build is ready to submit.
D. Waiting For Review
You are FINALLY done. Your app is now in the ‘Waiting For Review’ stage. You will receive 2 emails:
one when the team will start to review it, then your app will switch to the the ‘In Review’ state
one when they are done, then your app will switch to the ‘Approved’ state
If your app is validated you have nothing to do except release your app if you selected the manual mode. You’ll switch to the ‘Processing for App Store’ state and then the ‘Ready for Sale’ state.
If you are rejected, you’ll receive a message in the Resolution Center (you’ll have a notification you can click on in iTunes Connect). In most cases, you’ll have to make some corrections on your app and submit a new build. Sometimes you just need to give more information and answer to an Apple employee so they can continue the submission process. Sometimes it’s more complicated… If you get rejected for a strange reason, don’t hesitate to tell us so we can share it with everyone. This can be useful to other people.
💡 Tip: When your app is released, it might take a few minutes before it’s actually visible on the App Store. And if you list your app link (on your website for example), don’t forget to update it.
