Niche down until it hurts

The best advice I never knew I needed

Niche down until it hurts. It's perhaps the best advice I've ever heard, and it's been the guiding principle behind everything I build. The concept has been popularized by entrepreneurs and founders across the board, and for good reason. Extreme specialization in a target market creates intense focus, deeper authority, and faster growth.

Here's how it works in practice. Imagine you want to start a blog reviewing restaurants. That's broad. Then you go one level deeper and focus only on vegetarian restaurants. Deeper still, you target vegetarian restaurants specifically in South Korea. Now, take it one more step and run the entire blog in Spanish. What you've just created is the exact place a vegetarian traveling to Korea would search for.

This isn't just theory. I actually built Vegetariano en Corea, a blog dedicated to exactly this, vegetarian dining in South Korea. It became a go-to resource for the community, and the results speak for themselves.

You'd be shocked at how fast you'd grow, how much authority you'd gain, and how sustainable the profitability could become. And here's the thing: there's almost always a market. The real strategy is converting those insights into actual value. Even if you're only converting 2–4% of your visitors into paying customers, you've put yourself in an ideal situation. The economics work because the audience is so precisely matched.

Building with purpose, not features

This approach shaped how I've built all of my apps. The philosophy isn't just to niche down until it hurts, but to do one thing and do it right.

Take Split Workout Tracking. I created it to replace my workout routine in my notes app. That's it. No dashboard. No detailed stats. No progress tracking. It does one thing: help you remember what exercise comes next in your routine today. Clean UI, intuitive design, no friction, straight to the point.

You can download it here: Split Workout Tracking on the App Store

Look at the Apple App Store. Search for PPL workout apps and you'll find thousands. Some have everything: analytics, calendar integrations, social features, meal planning. They're feature-packed machines. If Split Workout Tracking tried to compete on features, it would lose immediately.

But here's the insight: if you're someone looking for a simple app to tell you which exercise is next, Split Workout Tracking is the perfect fit. It's not competing with the all-in-one monsters because it doesn't need to. It's solving one specific problem for one specific person.

The fear that holds us back

Where does the hurt come from? The fear of missing out. FOMO. The worry that if your app doesn't do everything, you'll lose potential users. But the truth is the opposite.

When your app does one thing and does it right, it's targeted at the right people. And here's what matters: those who are simply looking to solve that single problem will find you. If it's well executed, you'll be the solution to their problem. You won't be just another app in a sea of mediocrity.

Split Workout Tracking is the app I've marketed least. In fact, the only marketing is this post and the one before it. There's not much beyond that. The main reason is because I built it for myself first, to solve a problem I was actually having. Getting a second user was never the goal.

But here's what's happening: downloads, page views, and conversions are growing steadily week by week. One of the most amazing things I found in the Apple Connect analytics is that some downloads are coming from ChatGPT as an app referral. Think about that. The app is getting recommended by an AI when people are asking for a solution to exactly the problem it solves.

Quality over everything else

My philosophy is simple: niche until it hurts, and do one thing to perfection.

Yes, marketing matters. We all know that marketing is more important than the process of building the product. But in my experience, marketing isn't nearly as important as the value of your product. Quality is the final goal, not the first 1,000 users. Marketing is how you get discovered. Quality is how you get recommended.

If your product solves one specific problem better than anything else, word spreads. People recommend it to friends. Algorithms recommend it. The market finds it.

The hurt isn't a sign of failure. It's a sign you're focused. It's a sign you're not trying to be everything to everyone. And in a world full of bloated apps and scattered products, that focus is your superpower.

Stay focused. Build something worth recommending.