I finally launched a product of my own
While I’m looking for my next professional adventure I challenged myself to launch a product using the latest technologies. I’ve been focusing on mobile product management for quite some times now. I’ve always built mobile products for other companies, but never took serious time to build one for myself and I’ve always wanted to have my own product out there.
It was challenging but here is the result: https://football-live-score.com/
It’s an app to look at live Football results and it has a unique feature that allows you to broadcast live football events to your best communities on Slack, Discord, Twitter or Telegram.
It’s available on Android, iOS, MacOS and as a WebApp and was built with Flutter and Firebase.
There’s a lot I can do to improve it but I’m already happy I managed to release such a big service
all by myself on 4 platforms in roughly 2 months.
I launched it at the beginning of November and I haven’t made any marketing at all besides a post on linkedin and twitter and this one. I’m happy to hear a couple of advice on how to push it with limited resources if you have some.
Here are a few numbers about this launch:
Installs so far:
- Android: 1000 installs
- iOS: 1500 (935 on iPhone, 512 on macOS, 47 on iPad)
- Web: very little trafic .235 users. I just fixed SEO indexing of the landing.
Admob revenues so far:
- 33 euros
Chat integrations setup:
- only a couple of users have setup a chat integration so far. (I’ve added twitter integration from a user request).
The initial product was just aiming to provide a webapp to setup and receive live events on chat apps. But I got a bit ambitious and build a full app to browse football results, which was a lot more work than initially thought and it diluted the initial value proposition and makes the whole proposal not as clear as 2 separate products. I’ve updated the app to make it more visible but it’s still not the conversion I was hoping for on this unique feature.
On the other side being present on stores as a mobile apps has allowed more users to come for free to my service and generate ads revenues which was not expected. So overall it was beneficial.
Since the launch I’ve updated the app with may fixes and with a proper onboarding to make the user activates notifications as early as possible. It hasn’t been as effective as I hope but it needs to be refined even more. My next steps will be to bring more value in the app. For that I’ll add twitter and youtube channels of the main leagues, teams and players right in the app. And then I’ll definitely need to put more efforts on ASO. On the chat integration feature, I’ll wait for more users feedbacks.
I just wanted to share this as I’m SO happy that even if I’m getting older, I finally pushed something out there for myself. I just wanted to spread that happiness.
For sure it’s not perfect but it’s there and a few people are using it. That makes me happy and brings me energy to make a few more updates in the future to see where I can bring it even when I’ll get back to a full time job to do.
Best,
Guilhem
Good luck with your product, I know it will be a success soon
Thanks a lot @axcerdev!
I'm a football fan and I love what you're doing. I wish you good luck going forwards, and I know you will get it, because your product looks clean and professional.
Thanks you so much for your nice feedback @Tyokunbo ! This is really encouraging for me.
I think the app is great and I never knew something like this would be so popular since I'm not a football fan.
For marketing, I think you should have posted about it more on PH and here, but as they say, the best time to start was earlier, the second best time to start is now.
You might also have some luck going to football forums or discussions and leaving valuable comments, then dropping the ad at the very end.
I do have some advice for your site as well:
The text in some parts is too small. "Fully feature football apps" and "who do you want to monitor" are all examples of text that is too small and hard to read.
Make the call to action buttons bigger. They're a nice red color, and it really stands out, but with their size, it feels easy to miss for some.
A short video to show how the app works. I find this is excellent for engagement on the apps store and on websites. Ideally, this should be less than 1 min long.
Small suggestion, I know Americans call it "soccer", but I think there is less room for misinterpretation if you also did the same. "Football" has a double meaning in the US and Canada, but "soccer" does not have a double meaning anywhere. So I think it would benefit marketing to a large degree if you called it "soccer".
I'd love to see expansions in the future for other sports too. I know you've already named it "football live score", but I'd imagine tracking other sports is not a herculean task.
Speaking of websites, I'm building a startup as well, but it's an AI API that allows users to run AI models on the cloud with an API. The website isn't up yet, but if you have the time and interest, I'd love if you could critique it when it comes out.
I post about it fairly often on twitter so you can follow me there: https://twitter.com/TheRealEtch
Good luck with your product!
Hey Richard ! Thanks you so much for your valuable feedbacks and idea. I'll definitely use some of your advice on the landing and the store.
Concerning other sports, I'm seriously considering it and I have made some research about it. I'm condifent I can do sth. However I'd like to see this one grow a bit before spending time and money on another app right away.
I'll be happy to have a look at your site when it's ready.
Thanks!
You could do one for cricket, since it's the second most popular sport.
Yep, good point!
nice bro, all the best, I also have a indie football app, really nice to know some one has same interested!
Thanks @haidt18 ! All the best for your app too.
thanks
Hey how would you rate the website builder Unicorn you used for this project. I am also thinking of using it. Is it worth it?
I like very much the template system. It is very easy to use and you still keep some possibility to customize. Not as much as webflow for sure but it is easier to use than webflow. One feature I liked is the export to host the site on firebase. It does the job but they could easily do a better job. ( Pages are downloaded one by one. Sitemap not changed properly to the correct domain, one header to fix in the pages exported for SEO). But it's all a matter of balance between ease of use, quality of websites it generates and prices. Overall I liked it. A few fixes/improvements on the export would make it a perfect fit for my needs.
thanks I'll use them for my product.
Hi @guiguito, I read about your app in the email newsletter last week and immediately left you a tweet asking to DM. I have a simple XD design centered on football gamification I had worked on last year and I think it may help improve user acquisition and retention for your app being that it is currently focused on football.
It's a really awesome product. If possible you could DM your email and I could share the XD file and the thought behind it for your consideration.
Hey I can't see your tweet or find you on twitter. Reach out to me. I'm @theguiguito on twitter. cya
Hi thanks for getting back, check out the link below for where I replied on twitter and my account.
Hi Andy, thanks a lot for your message and sorry for my late reply.
I'll reach out to you in DM.
My handle is @Andyisdoing
Great post and app @guiguito! I look forward to shipping something out by myself for once. I fail into the trap of trying to do something perfectly and end up doing nothing.. your post is an inspiration to 'just do it'. Thx and good luck!
Glad you liked it. It keeps being a struggle for me as well. But sometimes you make it!
Cool web app man, keep going!
Did you also use flutter for the landing page?
Thanks !! No the landing page is built using https://unicornplatform.com/ and hosted on firebase. Btw, I really enjoyed unicornplatform because I could host the website somewhere else and because It's IMO a really good balance between ease of use and customizability.
Cool I haven't heard of it. I'll check it out
Awesome project man! How was the experience with flutter web? Will you use it again in your other projects? Will you prefer it over react?
I have an app built in flutter and was thinking of making it available on web. That's why I am asking.
Hi there. I do note have a web front background therefore I'm not really a good juste. My guess is that you will Always have a better full web experience using real "web native" solutions. For me being able to do a webapp for a reasonable cost us a blessing. Thereare a couple of tradeoffs, but overall I think the pros outweighs the cons. Obviously you need to make a bit of code specific to thé web needs, but you still keep 95% of your code in common with the other platforms and all the core libraries work flawlessly. For sure I'll use it again. In fact I already do.
Thanks I will give flutter web a try.
👍
Looks, great. I thought the web support is not ready in Flutter. Need to think about it implementing my web/mobile clients :)
Thanks a lot. It's not perfect at all. But for some light usage it' pretty damn convincing.
The simplicity is the most important thing in such apps. Sometimes, I check scores, but the site I use I find very cluttered :).
Simplicity was necessary to keep it doable in a decent Time, but I hard to look at the competition to get Idea on how to manage such amount of data.
Great desing...
Thanks a lot ! I try to find the right balance between clean design and ability to ship fast.
All the best for your product! I just took a look at the website and have to say, it looks really professional!
Thanks for your feedback josh. It's really encouraging.
what would you do with other sports, sssniperwolf merch store https://sssniperwolfmerch.co/ offers every thing
Pretty cool, would you ever do other sports? What platforms have you launched on marketing wise?
Hi Jake thanks for your comment. I'm considering doing other sports because I can reuse a lot of code. However other sports are smaller markets and I'm going to be very busy on my personal side in the next few months. So I'm not sure I'll do it. In term of marketing I haven't done anything at all yet.
I think a Product Hunt launch would be very beneficial. If you ever make one for the NHL let me know!
Thanks for your recommendation! I'll look into it! And sure I'll make a new post if I make one for other sports. In fact I will most probably launch another kind of product before the end of the year. I'll share this new one as well.
Awesome I'll keep an eye out! Let me know if you need any help or ideas for a launch, I'd be happy to help!!
It looks amazing! I, too, am a football fan; I've been playing since I was ten, and I've been looking for a cool app idea in this field for months. Sounds Good to see this.
Thanks you so much for your kind feedback. I'm glad you like it.
Looks very cool! I'm also a football fan and I've been looking for a cool idea for an app in this field for months. How do you handle the rights for the logos of the clubs, leagues, etc.?
Maybe we can exchange ideas in general, find your approach super exciting!
Hi Christian, Thanks for your feedback. You're right I haven't managed the rights for logos and I ideally I will. For now I applied the principle of apoligizing instead of asking permission. I had a look around I doubt all similar apps do things properly and I use the logos only in an informative way. It might fall into the fair use case. And tbh I'm not sure how I can get the rights for hundreds of leagues and thousands of teams. But for sure I need to be careful and consider getting the rights at some point.
Thanks for the fast respond. I've also read about the "fair use case" and I think you're safe with that. May I ask which API you use for all the data?
Sure. I used https://apifootball.com/. I had a good price with a blackfriday deal. However I faced stability issues on their side but things have improved. There is a lot of data, but now that I have implemented everything I wish they were a little more data. That said really good API can be very expensive. So that does the job and it would require tremendous amount of work to change to another api provider.
Happy to have a chat anyday to share ideas.
This looks like a promising product. Will you be launching live scores for other games as well?
Hi there! Thanks for your feedback. I might ship other sports. But it's quite some work and I'm going to be very busy the ext few months.
All the best with the product! many football fans out there wanting it.
Many thanks Sam9!
Hey, where you are getting the data from? I was reviewing few sports API but I'm not sure which one to choose and how good are they
Hey there, I'm using https://apifootball.com/ . It was affordable when I looked at it. It's ok but has a few stabilities issues. But It's improving.
Your product looks great more power to you
Thanks Rohit31 !!
congratulations ! I am not a football fan but i can see its appeal.
Thanks a lot PDYC !
Looks great, good timing with the world cup :) I personally use the BBC for football score/reporting, what makes your project better/different? It doesn't need to be different, just being nosey really. One thing I'd love is to be able to follow 4-5 teams and have a dashboard that just always shows me games and stats about them.
That, and transfer news/gossip. Like a little dashbaord just for the teams and leagues I care about
Hey Blunicorn,
Thanks for your message. The unique selling point is the feature built for community manager to get live football events on their community chat platform. But I admit this feature is diluted in the whole app. There are 2 reasons why I've done full apps: get some visibility from the app stores and see If I can take 0.5% of the market of football score apps as It's a big one.
Concerning the favourites dashboard, you are totally right I should do somehting like that. In fact you can already pick your favourites and have quickly access their page. The main tab calendar is automatically adapted to put on top your favourites. However your comment make me realize I should go much further on the favourites tab. Thanks !
Concerning gossips and news, the main difficulty here is reliable source of data. I use an affordable api on football data but this one doesn't provide this data and the good ones are expensive and hard to cross with my data. That's why I'm going to fallback to youtube channels and official twitter accounts that I'll crowdsource myself and with my userbase.
CYBER GENIE saved me from being blackmailed, I had a one-night stand with a random lady who took naked pictures of me while sleeping, she threatened to send it to my partner and my clients unless I pay her $ 15,000.00 or else. I pleaded with her severally but she stood her ground. I surfed how to track a phone on google and while surfing through the web, I came across [ [email protected]] WhaatsApp (+1) 252-512-0391).the hacker and he bugged her phone and email. Plenty of other naked men pictures were there and she's been blackmailing them. I learned to be faithful to my wife the hard way. CYBER GENIE saved my career and marriage.
This comment was deleted 5 months ago.
Hi Ted, Well I purchased it from https://apifootball.com but their terms and conditions are minimal to be honest. So I guessa nything can happen.