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Get the waitlist page, analytics, feedback board, email sequence, store listing, and landing page all in place before launch, and soak up every drop of Apple's new-app traffic boost
the creator says all of his productivity apps are profitable (4 Apps 100% Profitable); the vehicle is the productivity app Ellie
Apple's launch-traffic boost for a new app comes exactly once — a weak store listing and sloppy screenshots mean you're burning free traffic for nothing.
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
Chris Raroque is an indie developer best known for the productivity app Ellie. He doesn't talk about how much any particular app earned — instead he lays out, in full, the pre-launch checklist he's refined over and over: the fixed process he runs before shipping every new app. The starting point isn't a marketing trick, it's a platform fact most people ignore: Apple gives every brand-new app an extra boost of organic traffic for roughly the first two weeks. That exposure is free and the platform hands it to you, but only once. His argument is blunt: since that traffic is coming regardless, the only thing you control is whether you catch it. A bad store listing, blurry screenshots, an unprepared landing page — that's pouring traffic into a bucket with no bottom, and there's no second chance, ever. So he standardizes every pre-launch action: waitlist page, analytics, feedback board, email sequence, store listing, landing page — all of it in place, nothing skipped. This isn't a business, it's an execution checklist. It doesn't solve "which app to build"; it solves "how not to blow a great opening hand once the app is built." For anyone about to ship an iOS app, ticking through it avoids the most common — and most expensive — mistake there is.
The first users are collected before the product exists. The move is a bare waitlist page — one screenshot and an email field, built in Framer with FormSpark in about ten minutes — put up while the app is still being written, so the list fills during the build rather than after it.
The quick-reference card — acquisition channels, replication playbook, and risk map — is members-only.
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The first paying user in a consumer productivity app usually comes off the beta list rather than out of the store, because those people already asked to be told when it shipped. That is another argument for building the waitlist first — it converts at a rate cold App Store traffic never will.
Once the two-week boost fades, the App Store stops pushing and starts ranking, and that is where the flywheel actually lives. Retention feeds ratings, ratings and keyword relevance feed organic search position, and organic search delivers installs that cost nothing — but only for an app people keep opening.
The quiet stretch here comes before launch rather than after it, and the checklist exists to make it readable.
The rest of this breakdown — 10 more sections — is in the Unicorn Club, with every section of all 1,335 ideas: first customers, first dollar, the flywheel, and the silent stretch.
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