Skip to content

Dang it! Built the indie app, forgot the marketing (again)

I often spend way too much time building and forget about marketing or reaching out to early users. For the past 6 months, I’ve been working on collector.dev — a Chrome extension that turns your new tab into a productivity launchpad. The MVP was ready in the first 2 months... but then I spiraled.

I spent months obsessing over the right color scheme, fine-tuning animations, and endlessly polishing things. The goal was always to build something truly useful — something that solves real problems and gives me that quiet satisfaction of “yeah, I made that.”

After some nudging, I got a few friends to onboard as pilot users. Their feedback helped fix some rough edges — but even then, I didn’t launch. I kept thinking it wasn't ready. It had to be perfect. What followed was a familiar cycle of overthinking, tinkering, and spiraling into my ADHD-fueled maze.

Thankfully, a friend of mine actually sat down with me, made me wrap up the hanging bits, and basically forced me to release it overnight — or else. That’s when I realised how much I had ignored the marketing side. Now that I’m prepping for launch, there’s a lot of ground to catch up on.

Improving Chrome Web Store Search Indexing

Apparently, the Chrome Web Store pulls keywords from your extension description and ranks you based on relevance, reviews, and usage. Simple enough — until you realize most people aren’t searching for fancy phrases like “smart launchpad” or “sandbox environment.”

They're looking for things like: - bookmarks - speed dial - developer tools - JS playground

My original description had none of that. So I’m now rewriting everything with real search intent in mind.

Turns out, SEO only gets you so far — backlinks matter. A lot.

Even though collector.dev has decent on-page SEO, it needs those little nudges from other sites pointing to it. I’m still figuring out how to do this (writing this blog is one attempt 😅). I’ll probably post more on socials, reach out to some directories, and maybe even guest post a bit.

If you’ve got ideas — I’m all ears.

I recently found out that getting featured on the Chrome Web Store isn’t some random thing — turns out you can actually self-nominate your extension for a proper review. They look at things like usefulness, design, and whether you follow best practices.

Wish I knew this earlier. I might’ve optimized for it from the beginning instead of building in a bubble.

Right now, I’m just trying to: - Get more users - Improve visibility - Avoid paid ads for now (because seriously, who clicks on those?)

Let’s be honest — when was the last time you clicked on a Chrome ad? Yeah, same.

The Missing Structure: Milestones & Metrics

Looking back, I think the biggest issue wasn’t the product — it was the lack of clear milestones.

An MVP shouldn’t take more than 1 to 2 months. 3 tops. Beyond that, you’re just polishing for the sake of it. Once the core thing works, ship it. That’s when you should switch gears and focus on marketing.

And marketing also needs a proper strategy — not just random tweets and hoping people stumble across your work. You need actual milestones like:

  • Improve search ranking by X%
  • Reach out to 10 communities
  • Write 3 blog posts or dev updates
  • Test keywords and track what converts

Without real numbers, you won’t know what’s working. Track bounce rates, impressions vs installs, geo and platform breakdowns. For example, trying to sell something for $25 in India? Yeah… good luck. That kind of pricing needs a lot of convincing — but it might totally work elsewhere.

Going forward, I’m switching to an 80/20 cycle:

  • Divide my time between marketing and development
  • Every 6 weeks, review what worked
  • If visibility is growing, double down on marketing
  • If feedback suggests friction, go back and improve the product
  • Then rotate again

It's not glamorous, but let's see if it works.

And if you’re reading this, do check out collector.dev — it’s in beta, evolving, and yours to try 🙂

Comments