How Damjan took his home inventory app to $1,000 per month

Meet Damjan Dabo.

Damjan is a full-time iOS indie developer. He is a 28-year-old Croatian living in Munich, Germany for the past four years. His career started working on the Philips NutriU app (now rebranded to HomeID). Damjan also has work experience from projects for Porsche and BMW.

This story is going to focus on his own project called Itemlist. A home inventory app.

The story told by Damjan Dabo

Two years ago, I launched an app so bad I was embarrassed to talk about it. Today, that same app is growing every day. Here’s how it happened.

The humble beginnings

I started building Itemlist in 2022. It was initially called Golden Squirrel. I released the MVP (Minimum Viable Product in November 2022.

I wasn’t proud of the result. But I got useful feedback since the launch.

The app was part of Indie App Santa and Apps Gone Free promotional campaign in January 2023. These initiatives offer paid apps for free or at a significant discount daily, often promoting the work of indie developers.

I offered a free lifetime subscription which was available for two days. More than 10k people redeemed the offer. Following I got tons of feedback helping me prioritize what to build next.

The app improved from a poor MVP to a useful product in about six months. But one thing was missing: revenue. The app was stuck below $100 monthly without any growth.

Rebranding to Itemlist

Since the launch, I felt something was off regarding the branding. The app’s name, Golden Squirrel, didn’t reveal anything about what the app does. Some people told me they thought it was a video game. I knew I needed to change something.

For months, I couldn’t think of a good name. I brainstormed various names with ChatGPT. I asked it to give me ideas for names that contain two words combined. ChatGPT gave me some cool ideas, but none of them sounded right.

I thought about my favorite brand with this combination, Wunderlist (RIP 😢). Then it struck me, Itemlist! It was perfect! It says what the app is, it’s short enough, it’s easy to spell. It was just what I was looking for.

I outsourced the app icon design to the talented designer Yannick Lung. He did a great job (see below). The icon stands out and it tells what the app is. You can learn more about the rebranding in this blog post.

The impact of rebranding

I published the rebranded app update at the end of August 2023. In the first month after, revenue finally surpassed $100. Users finally took my app seriously.

Since the rebranding, the app has experienced consistent revenue growth. Even usage by Indie App Santa users spiked.

SEO initiatives

After rebranding, I began focusing on SEO, even though I had no prior experience. It was a great opportunity to learn.

I wrote dozens of blog posts about home organization. However, I eventually got bored with it.

So when I got the opportunity to have the app listed on the Setapp Mobile marketplace, I stopped writing blog posts and shifted my focus to improving the app for the Setapp Mobile launch.

Setapp Mobile is on iOS for the EU only, where the original Setapp is worldwide for macOS. Consumers pay a monthly subscription and get access to hundreds of high-quality apps without paywalls and ads.

Even though I no longer write blog posts for Itemlist, traffic from Google is slowly increasing.

Where I am now

I continue to improve the app and work on App Store Optimization (ASO). Most of the downloads come organically from the App Store.

Recently, I added translations for German, French, Dutch, Slovak, Brazilian Portuguese, Croatian, and Traditional Chinese. Additionally, I’m focusing on enhancing the user’s initial experience after installing the app.

The app has over 18,000 total downloads and between 800 and 1,000 monthly active users. Each month, it records around 400 new downloads. July 2024 was the most successful month so far (excluding Black Friday), with nearly $1,000 in revenue.

I’m also putting more effort into building my personal branding by posting more on X, LinkedIn and my blog.

Damjan is also working on his second app, Herba, a plante growth diary.

If you want to follow his journey, make sure to subscribe his blog’s newsletter.