Promoted my Mac app in developer communities for 2 months. Zero sales. Then I found the real users.

💻 Tech & Softwareby thomasbuilds · 6w ago

▸ What I did

I built PIDKill — a macOS app that auto-kills runaway processes. $3.99, does one thing well. When your Mac fan starts screaming because photoanalysisd or some Adobe process ate all your CPU, PIDKill catches it and kills it automatically. I spent 2 months posting in r/programming, r/webdev, r/macapps, and Hacker News. Wrote detailed technical posts about the architecture. Made comparison tables.

▸ What I expected

Developers constantly complain about runaway processes. I figured a $3.99 tool that fixes this automatically was an easy sell. Expected maybe 50-100 sales in the first month.

▸ What actually happened

Two months of promotion in developer communities. Result: zero sales. Not "low sales." ZERO. Every single response was some version of: "just use `kill -9`" or "Activity Monitor exists" or "I wrote a bash script for that." Developers saw this as a solved problem. I was mass of devastation.

▸ What I've tried so far

First I tried "educating" developers about why a GUI tool is better. Didn't work — they don't want a GUI tool, they ARE the GUI tool. Then I tried different subreddits. r/macapps said "cool but I'd never pay for this." Then I almost gave up entirely.

🔗 PIDKill - Mac Process Auto-Killer

Progress Updates (3)

It's been 2 weeks since I stopped all developer marketing and shifted everything to non-technical Mac users. Set up F5Bot to alert me when people mention "mac fan loud" or "macbook overheating" or specific process names. I reply with genuine help first, product mention second. Also started writing SEO content targeting long-tail searches like "photoanalysisd what is it" and "kernel_task high cpu fix." It's a completely different game. These users don't have free alternatives. They don't know Terminal exists. They WANT a $3.99 app that just fixes it. The lesson: I was selling a painkiller to people who enjoy pain (developers). Now I'm selling it to people who actually want relief.

✓ How I Fixed It

A random comment changed everything. Someone in r/mac (not a dev subreddit) posted "my MacBook sounds like a jet engine what do I do" and another user tagged me. I replied with a genuine help comment explaining what photoanalysisd is and that PIDKill can auto-catch these processes. 8 upvotes, 3 sales that day. That's when it clicked: my real users aren't developers — they're designers, students, remote workers, parents. People who DON'T know what Activity Monitor is. People who Google "mac fan loud how to stop." I completely pivoted my marketing away from dev communities to helping regular Mac users in r/mac, r/macbookpro, and SEO content targeting pain-point searches like "photoanalysisd high CPU how to stop." Activity Monitor tells you what happened. PIDKill fixes it.

0 / 3000

3 Replies

ux_first_kai · 2w ago✓ the fix

"Activity Monitor tells you what happened. PIDKill fixes it." — that's incredible positioning. You went from competing with free tools (kill command, Activity Monitor) to being the ONLY option for people who can't use those tools. There's no competition when your users don't know the alternatives exist.

indie_hacker_vet · 2w ago

This is a masterclass in audience mismatch. You had the right product, right price, right landing page — wrong room. The "I was selling a painkiller to people who enjoy pain" line should be framed on every indie dev's wall. Developers are almost never the right first audience for dev tools unless you're solving something DEEPLY technical that has no workaround.

debug_queen · 2w ago

The F5Bot strategy is genius. You're basically setting up tripwires for the exact moment someone has the pain you solve. That's way more efficient than broadcasting to people who might have the pain someday. Saving this post for reference.

Status

✓ fixed

Stats

Me too0

Replies3

Following4