Dana Whitfield has built Tidepool alone since 2021. It is a habit tracker with a small wave that fills as you drink water, a widget most of its reviews mention by name, and a Pro subscription at $25.99 a year. It pays her rent in Portland, which is the only measure she says she cares about.
For the first two years she ran it the way most solo developers do: App Store Connect in a pinned tab, opened with the first coffee, then again mid-morning, then after lunch. “Six times a day, and I never learned anything on visits two through six,” she says.
One email, read once
She connected Ascent in March with a read-only key and set the email for 7:00 AM Pacific. Downloads, proceeds and new reviews arrive compared with the same weekday a week earlier. She reads it at the kitchen table and does not open the dashboard unless something in it is strange.
In April something was. The weekly trial cohort showed that 34% of trials were ending without the upgrade screen ever being opened.
A reminder on the wrong day
Tidepool offers a seven-day trial. The reminder that walks people to the paywall was scheduled for day eight, a leftover from when the trial had been two weeks long. A third of her trials were expiring quietly the night before the app asked them to stay.
She moved the reminder to day five and shipped it that Friday. Over the next six weekly cohorts, trial-to-paid rose from 33.5% to 41.2%, which is 23% more paying subscribers from the same number of trials. Nothing about the paywall, the price or the app itself changed.
What mornings look like now
September’s proceeds were $6,218.40, up 8.1% on August. Dana replies to reviews from the same inbox the email links to, usually before nine, and closes the laptop until noon.
“The number I watch is not downloads any more,” she says. “It is whether I opened App Store Connect this week. Mostly I have not.”
I used to open App Store Connect six times a day. Now I read one email with my coffee and close the laptop until noon.
Dana Whitfield
Solo developer, Tidepool
