A lot has changed since I last wrote about Value Study, my little app for artists, back in 2022. I’ve broken one of my five intentions, and I don’t regret it. The app is now used regularly worldwide, in multiple languages, across Android and iOS, with a handful of users on macOS too. What started as a small idea to help improve my own art has grown into a tool recommended by art teachers and used by people far beyond what I ever expected. That will forever humble me.

Free → Affordable

My original plan was for the app to be free. It was one of the five intentions I laid out in that 2022 article. Part of that came from worrying people would think I was a fraud if I charged for it, especially as I’m no art expert. It’s still important to me that the app remains affordable to anyone who wants to use it. But as an income stream, that means relying on reaching many people rather than charging a lot to a small group of loyal customers.

Looking back, I’m glad I framed these ideas as intentions rather than rigid core values. Intentions allow room to adapt. They make it easier to acknowledge when something needs to change. So I’ve updated that intention from free to affordable. That small shift gave me permission, mostly to myself, to be paid for my effort without it feeling like greed.

As we approach the New Year and head into 2026, my focus is on quality above all else. We live in a world where apps can be built in days rather than months using AI. I’ve been working on Value Study since 2020, and I’ve spent countless hours trying to make it the best it can be. I still believe people want to support independent developers, especially those who are hands-on and care deeply about what they’re making. In practical terms, this means I’ll soon be releasing version 1.0 of Value Study for Android.

Value Study for Android

The Android version has been in early access for much of this year. It was highly requested, along with Grid mode, which I also released this year. While the app has been available for a while, this release feels symbolic. It marks Value Study for Android as “stable”. That doesn’t mean finished or bug-free, but it does mean it’s broadly on par with iOS in terms of features and overall quality. It also reflects a shift in usage. For a long time Android represented only a tiny fraction of users, but things are now far more evenly split.

Android has been hard. I knew it would be, but I still underestimated it. There’s a reason many developers avoid it. It’s not that iOS is better, both platforms are excellent these days. And it’s not just fragmentation, though that certainly doesn’t help when there are so many devices and configurations to account for.

The real difficulty is mindset. Maybe it’s because Google gives so much away for free, or because Android phones can be significantly cheaper. But even among flagship Android users, there’s a strong resistance to paying for apps. It’s not just that fewer people buy the app. Reviews are often far more critical without being constructive. Seeing one-star reviews that simply say “it costs money, don’t download” is disheartening, especially when the app is clearly labelled as paid and costs very little.

That said, the purchasing data revealed something interesting. Value Study offers two options: a lifetime purchase for under $10, or a yearly subscription of around $2. On iOS, the split is fairly even. Most people who download the app pay, and it’s roughly fifty–fifty between lifetime and yearly. On Android, it’s very different. Only a small percentage of users convert to paid, but among those who do, lifetime purchases dominate. iOS users seem far more comfortable with subscriptions than Android users, which is the opposite of what I expected.

Tooling & workflow

Another challenge with Android is maintaining multiple codebases. I made a conscious decision to keep everything native: iOS in Swift and Android in Kotlin. I could have gone cross-platform, but I didn’t want to. The trade-off is keeping features in sync and tracking bugs across two separate implementations.

This is one area where AI has helped. I can point Claude Code at both codebases and work on one while syncing changes to the other. It’s not magic and it’s not painless, but it’s a practical use of modern tools that saves time without compromising quality.

While I’m on the subject of tooling, a few shout-outs are deserved.

Firstly, RevenueCat. For a long time I didn’t understand why so many indie developers used it. When I was iOS-only, I assumed I could hand-roll everything with StoreKit 2. The number of edge cases quickly proved that assumption wrong. One evening I gave up, replaced everything with RevenueCat, and within hours had a far more robust solution. The built-in revenue graphs are also how I spotted the platform differences mentioned earlier.

Another tool I can recommend is AppFollow, which helps track App Store keywords. I’ve tried a few competitors and they’re all good, but AppFollow’s free tier does what I need right now. The paid tiers are aimed more at larger businesses than a solo developer quietly working away. Marketing is something I’ve had to learn along the way. I never expected anyone else to use the app, let alone see it used in courses, and selling myself doesn’t come naturally. I probably don’t do the app justice on that front yet, but AppFollow helps.

My final shout-out is RocketSim. It’s iOS-only, but it’s essentially the simulator tooling Xcode should have shipped with. Things like standardising the status bar for screenshots or quickly editing UserDefaults make everyday development far more pleasant.

The economics of indie dev

I’ve already touched on pricing and the transition from free to paid, but it was the hardest decision I’ve made so far during development. Value Study originally had a free version with a paid upgrade, back when the feature set was much smaller. Over time, that felt like maintaining two apps with different bugs, and the free version was always the inferior experience. After a lot of advice from friends, I made the decision to make Value Study a paid app.

Even then, it wasn’t straightforward. I had existing free users, people who had already paid for lifetime access, and an app that needed ongoing work. Adding a paywall with both yearly and lifetime options felt like the least disruptive path forward. Everyone was given plenty of warning. For a while I considered making it subscription-only, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I believe in one-time purchases, especially for small, focused tools. When the change finally happened, I expected a backlash, but it never really came. I had quite a few personal messages of support, recognising that I had made a hard decision and many people wanted to congratulate me for it. One person even emailed to say the app should cost $25 a month. It doesn’t, but I did add a tip jar in Settings just in case!

There’s an awkward tension in making a useful learning tool. You want it to be accessible, but it also takes years of effort to build and maintain. As a solo developer, pricing isn’t a spreadsheet problem. It’s personal. Charge too much and it feels exclusionary, or greed. Charge too little and you risk devaluing the work.

I don’t regret the decision. The app has done better financially than I expected, and most people seem happy with the low price and the two payment options. In an ideal world I’d be able to work on my own apps full time. Maybe that will happen one day. Until then, I’m grateful to have a side project that people clearly care about.

Re-investing

The money the app earns has allowed me to invest in it in ways that simply weren’t possible before. That mostly shows up in uninteresting but important places: better tooling, more real devices to test on, and more time spent fixing the small edge cases that only appear once an app is in real hands.

None of this is about greed. It’s about making sure that when someone does download Value Study, the app feels considered, reliable, and worth the small amount it asks in return. When people choose to pay for it, or take the time to leave a thoughtful review or email, it’s genuinely fulfilling.

More recently, I’ve also started paying a small number of artists and content creators to talk about the app. I put this off for a long time because I was concerned it would be disingenuous. What’s mattered to me is that anyone I work with actually finds the app useful and honestly want to recommend it.

That brings me to the final twist in the journey so far.

“No funciona en mi dispositivo.”

While browsing the micro-influencer platform Collabstr, I came across Christian. He’s an incredible artist and content creator who makes tutorials with millions of followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. I reached out, and he was immediately enthusiastic about the app and keen to make a video.

The video was brilliant, and thanks to Instagram’s automatic translation, I understood every word which is impressive technology in its own right.

Christian is from Colombia and has a large Spanish-speaking audience. I knew this going in. The app had already been translated, and I thought it would be a great way to reach more Spanish-speaking users.

In hindsight, what went wrong feels obvious.

Christian demonstrated the app on his iPhone and iPad, where everything worked well. But I had underestimated just how Android-heavy usage would be. Very quickly, the low-star reviews started coming in.

I had forgotten that Android wasn’t translated yet.

The Android app wasn’t at a stable 1.0 release and still had plenty of rough edges

The minimum supported Android version didn’t account for older devices that are far more common in those regions

All of these were things I should have anticipated. Until then, most users were on iOS, so while Android mattered, it wasn’t my primary focus. That changed very quickly.

Thankfully, I was able to fix the major issues in a short space of time. Android is now in a much better place, and the app feels far closer to where it needs to be.

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Looking back, the journey has been far less linear than I expected. What started as a small personal tool has slowly become something other people rely on, in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Each step (and indeed misstep) has forced me to think more carefully about what I’m building and who I’m building it for.

Value Study isn’t finished, and I hope it never really is. For now, it feels like it’s in a good place. It’s useful, it’s affordable, and it reflects the care that’s gone into it over the years. That’s enough to keep me going.

Takeaways

Framing intentions instead of rigid core values made it easier to adapt without guilt

I’m glad I focused on keeping the app affordable to as many people as possible

Android needs first-class thinking, not just feature parity

Real users in different regions surface problems no test suite will

Paying for tools and help can create focus, not laziness

AI can be used as a tool, without being a crutch

Being “not an expert” doesn’t stop you from building useful tools that true experts will recommend