About Life Ticker App

The reality is that we all have a lot of ideas, but the real challenge is taking action. We often dream or talk about our ideas—whether for an app, a business, or a project—but rarely do we take concrete steps toward making them a reality.

I'm sure you've had an idea before but never acted on it. I know I have. I’ve had countless ideas—some that seemed brilliant, others that felt downright stupid. I lived with them in my head, but I never took action. Then, time passed, and I started seeing my ideas turned into real products by someone else. That familiar feeling of "Oh, I had this idea!" would hit me. Or sometimes, my friends and I would reminisce, saying, "Remember when we talked about this? Now someone else has built it."

Taking Action

At some point, I realized that I needed to stop just thinking and start doing. My first step was creating a simple Progressive Web App (PWA) to track my household expenses for personal use. That was my first taste of turning an idea into reality.

Then, I started thinking on a broader scale: What could I build that would be useful to others? What kind of app would people find valuable? That's when I came up with the idea of a motivational app.

At first, I didn’t do any deep research. I had been using a mobile app called HabitKit for personal habit tracking, and I thought, "Why not build something similar?" My initial thought was to create a simple clone. But as I developed the idea, I realized I had my own unique vision for it. That’s how LifeTicker was born—an app designed to highlight the value of time. Since I'm not a designer, I took some UI inspiration from HabitKit, but I made sure to implement my own unique approach.

The Journey of My First App

Fueled by inspiration from indie hackers and success stories, I was confident that I could deploy my first version in just one month. But reality hit me hard.

I have a full-time job, meaning I can only work on my indie projects on weekends. In total, that gave me about eight full days of work per month. But, of course, life doesn't work that way. Family, kids, chores, and other responsibilities took priority. In the end, my first app journey took three and a half months instead of one.

I chose Flutter to develop the app for both iOS and Android. Initially, I planned to release it on both platforms, but due to limitations in my country, I could only register a developer account with in-app purchases on the App Store. Unfortunately, Google Play does not allow developers from my country to enable in-app purchases, so I had to focus on iOS first.

I started working on my MVP and had a basic version ready in just two days. But it looked dull and uninspiring, so I spent more time refining the design. Then, I added monetization features to support the project. Finally, by January 2025, I had completed the MVP and began the deployment process for the App Store.

However, I made several mistakes with the in-app purchase implementation because I was in a rush to launch. This led to multiple rejections and delays. It took two weeks to get the app approved by Apple.

The Release

Finally, after months of work, I released LifeTicker on the App Store. It’s a surreal feeling to see your idea come to life as a real product. If you’re curious, you can check out the result of my efforts here: LifeTicker.

This is just the beginning of my indie hacker journey. The process was challenging, but the lessons I learned were invaluable. If you’re sitting on an idea, my advice is simple: start now. The best time to act was yesterday; the second-best time is today.