64th on the App Store!

Hia folks? How’s everyone doing 😀 ?

So Pencil Bible has been live on the app store for over 6weeks (more or less).

Want some stats? 👇

• 1400 Downloads
• 36 Crashes
• $1.3k in proceeds
• 9 updates/bug fixes
• 64th on the App Store under reference (there are 2 Million apps on the App Store)

I’m very thankful for all the support. There has been no marketing and every day 20–40 new people download the app. Feels like magic.

The feedback and reviews have been very positive — even though this is an MVP (so much to do still 😅).

Check out these reviews:

“I’ve been saying this for years — we need a Bible app we can write on! Good job.”

“This app is hands down better than any other in the App Store.”

“Thought I had finally found the perfect bible and note taking app, but it needs the NLT version. Plus, like others have said, also needs to be landscape compatible.”

“Seems like it’s still early days for the app, but I love this Bible study experience with my family more than any other app.”

“There are other Bible apps, and there are other journaling apps, but no other app quite strikes the balance that Pencil Bible does. For its first day, this app is doing pretty well. I have yet to experience any real bugs. The design is clean and minimalist, which I love. Having both a search function and a toolbar to play with is key, and along with these come features like bookmarks, customizable spacing and page layout, and little things like an opacity slider for highlighters.”

Crazy right!?

Features

Users have been sending me some suggestions and 90% are all the same — which is a good thing so we know exactly what to change. I want to implement these features yesterday — but I can only push new features as the cash flow allows.

Some of the top suggestions:

• Pencil VS Touch
• Horizontal Mode
• Quick access tools
• More translations

These are things we will tackle as fast as possible — I promise 🙏

App Store Ranking

👇🏻

What?!

Funding

So I didn’t want to raise a round of funding in the beginning, but then there was some quick interest when we launched so I reconsidered 🤔

I quickly researched everything about raising a round, made a pitch deck, and even chatted to a few VCs. I took some meetings and put a lot of my evening time into this process. After all the trouble though it didn’t work out 🫤

Unfortunately, the people who were interested to invest — didn’t. Never count your chickens until they are hatching in your bank account 😂

For now, the plan is to use the revenue from subscriptions to fund new features one at a time. So development will be slow for now.

What else?

It feels like I had more stories to share 🤔

Oh yes — so some people are having trouble subscribing and logging in or the app crashes — and they email PB support. To those people taking the time — thank you. I just wonder if there aren’t more people like this who just don’t reach out — so we don’t know what we don’t know — you know😓

Please do me a favour. If you are having trouble with the current version (1.0.14) — issues like logging in, can’t upgrade, crashes, or drawings are lost please send me an email: erin@pencilbible.com — this would really help solidify the foundation of PB making it, better, faster, and more trustworthy.

That’s it folks.

Erin

P.S. Thank you Paul for making these amazing illustrations with Pencil Bible. Their awesome right!?