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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

It's not really all about luck, it's simply that people are usually not very passionate about calculators. You'll have to find the those who are and that's marketing. You should try exploring math and engineering forums and other places where people who are into calculators spend time.

You can also improve your App Store Optimisation, write to the editors of the AppStore or publications that can be relevant for a calculator app.

"I wrote some code and made living of it" is only possible if other people are taking care of the rest of the business.

I also wouldn't be too focused on the aspects like "no tracking, no permission, no ads". These are popular topic around tech circles but they are not product but features of a product. Good to have them of course but they don't replace a great product.

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I don't even expect people to be passionate about it. I don't care that it goes viral or not. I just feel that my product was superior than the terrible calculators on the market, and it was free, no permissions required, and small.

Maybe I'm biased or the calculator market has changed, but I don't think calculators should have pop-ups and its a shame that all the top calculators on the app store are spammy and terrible.

The value prop is huge. If I can't get this visible or downloaded, I doubt I'd be able to get any traction on my monetized app ideas.

Welcome to the real world - being good at something or making something good is only half the battle. Marketing is the other half.

But note thats yours is not the only high quality free calculator out there, it may come across as harsh but I think you need to reevaluate the value / importance of your calculator and also keep this in mind for future projects.

I write this as somebody who has also written a completely free (with source code on GitHub) IOS calculator, currently with 10,000+ active users. It took some time to get the users, but it was a great learning experience regardless.

These days I write articles and do not get as much exposure as I would like, marketing is an issue in every aspect of life ;)

Half? Are you joking? Entire industries are nothing but marketing. Practically anything that's an established out-of-patent commodity product is just built down to a price and then wrapped up in marketing.

It's depressing, and I'm slightly exaggerating to make a point, but really, so much is just marketing, completely detached even from the separate company that designs and makes the thing.

Even my Marantz microphone shows up as 'Blue Snowball'.

>Entire industries are nothing but marketing

Marketing is not a dirty word, it means connecting the product with its consumers. There is of course an industry revolving about that practice.

I'm using industry perhaps a bit too broadly, but still within its standard remit as 'a vertical'. Marketing (as engineering) is not an industry, it's an occupation within many.

What I mean by 'entire industries are nothing but marketing' is less hyperbolically something more like 'entire product categories' or 'entire companies'.

So much is possible to be completely 'farmed out' today that a given $company's $product can easily be presented as something unique through marketing/'connecting the product with its consumers' without any other activity from $company with regard to that $product, and of course that can happen from several or all companies 'making' $product, or be the sole way $company operates in 'making' all of the products that it 'does'.

I was being polite, I agree with you sometimes its much more than 50% :)

You can feel however you want, what matter for downloads is how other people feel about it.

To make people feel anything about your product you will have to find ways to bring it in front of people and intrigue them. That's a billion dollars industry. Ad placements, collaborations, creative writing, graphic design, branding...

These don't come for free, you can make it yourself or pay someone to make it for you.

You say that your value prop is huge but I failed to see the value, it looks like the stock calculator in iPhone and the description doesn't tell me anything because the stock app is already ad free etc.

There's no stock calculator app on iPad. That was the reason I made the app.

I keep forgetting that but the core value prop of "here is one" is valid only if there are no other calculators instead of yours.

You'll need to do more than that. It's not a conspiracy against your or there's no some shady unfair stuff going on. You'll need to make great product(which you say you did) AND get it into the hands of those who would care about your product(which is called marketing).

You know what I do when I need a calculator? Type it into Spotlight. So I am not your market but I am sure there are people who need a proper calculator and you will need to find ways to make them aware of the existence of your app.

It’s obvious that you’re trying to avoid shameless self promotion here, so I’ll be the guy who asks:

What’s the App Store url for your app?

Why would anyone download a calculator in the first place? Doesn’t the phone already have one?

iPad doesn't have one because Jobs thought it would look ugly with the numbers stretched out. So now we're stuck with these monstrosities instead, with pop-ups to boot

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F1EtkiGY0DkyafpRzU...

The calculator on iOS is awful.

Especially when the OS includes an app that performs the same function just fine. With no tracking, no permissions, no ads.

You do need to differentiate, why is your app better than the alternatives?

edit ah, apparently iPad does not have the calculator app.

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