The First Week of Trail Wallet

Launching a product was something that I've always said I wanted to try but have somehow never managed to get around to.

I think it was the fear. The idea of spending a lot of time creating something that is uniquely mine and then saying to the world "I believe this thing I made will enrich your life in some way. Will you give me X dollars for it?" is actually quite a scary proposition.

Not scary like being confronted by a bear holding a tiger in one paw and a nuke in the other, of course, but more scary than, say, boogie bording.

Client work is safe: guaranteed income, (mostly) fixed requirements, an end date and, most importantly, it's not your reputation on the line.

Building a product is basically the opposite. No guarantees of any income, infinite requirements (our roadmap for Trail Wallet already stretches many versions into the future), no end date, and it's our reputation—and the reputation of our travel blog, Never Ending Voyage, that we've spent 3 years building—that's on the line.

But we finally did it. After 6 months of development, we pulled the trigger and released it to the world.

I thought when that I got that message from Apple that the app was "Ready for Sale", I would finally get to rest.

Not a chance.

That little green light just marks the end of the development process. It also marks the beginning of over a week of hard work and stress. From worries about how it will sell to fixing major bugs as you find out that your comprehensive pre-launch testing wasn't that comprehensive, it was (and still is) intense.

But I'm loving every second of it.

Trail Wallet has now been in the app store for over a week and the reception has been absolutely wonderful. People are actually using this thing I made. Not only that, they're saying lots of really nice things about it.^[1]

It's magnificent and humbling and now I'm wondering why I didn't do it sooner.

The app is available on the App Store, priced at a measly $1.99.