Things You Should Know Before Starting Indie Development

lan yi — Sat, 09 May 2026 12:01:55 +0000

Apple Small Business Program

If your annual revenue is under 1 million USD, you can join Apple's Small Business Program and reduce the App Store commission rate from 30% to 15%.

That means if a user pays 10 dollars, you would receive 8.5 dollars instead of 7.

As long as your annual proceeds stay below 1 million USD, the lower rate continues. If you go above 1 million USD in a given year, the commission returns to 30% for the rest of that year, and you will no longer qualify for the program in the following year.

Both individual and company developer accounts can apply.

Apply here: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program/enroll/

Cloudflare Startup Program

The credits can be used for the services below and are valid for one year.

This is especially useful if you want to build the backend for a website or app.

Databases and Storage

R2
Workers KV
Queues
D1

Compute

Workers
Workers for Platforms
Durable Objects
Workflows

AI

Workers AI
Vectorize

Media

Images and transformations
Stream
Cloudflare Calls

Performance and Security

Argo
Load Balancing
Cache Reserve

UI/UX Skill

This is currently the most starred UI skill project. It can be used to guide AI when generating app or website interfaces.

https://github.com/nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill

App Submission

When uploading screenshots in App Store Connect, it often reports that the image size is incorrect. You need to crop according to the exact size shown in the error message.

These two tools can crop images directly to the dimensions required by App Store Connect.

Preview and screenshot crop tool:
https://app-icon-generator.com/tools/apple-screenshot-preview-capture-tool

In-app purchase review screenshot crop tool:
https://app-icon-generator.com/tools/in-app-purchase-review-screenshot-crop-tool

Apple Search Ads

After your app goes live, you can run ads for it on the App Store through Apple's ad platform. New users usually get 100 USD in ad credit, which is worth claiming.

Eligibility

As long as you meet the following conditions, you can qualify whether your account is personal or company-owned:

New user: You must be registering an Apple Search Ads account for the first time.
Developer status: You must be the Account Holder of a registered App Store Connect account.
Published app: At least one app under your account must already be live on the App Store.
Account linking: Your Apple Search Ads account must be linked with your App Store Connect account.

How It Works

The credit is usually added automatically, but you still need to complete the basic setup:

Add a valid payment method, such as a credit card, in Apple Search Ads.
The system will consume the 100 USD credit first. Only after that is exhausted will it start charging your card.

https://app-ads.apple.com/

DEV Community: lan yi