Why Every Indie Developer Should List Their App on Nazca.my

Independent developers and small teams often struggle to get their apps noticed. Traditional channels like app stores or big launch platforms are flooded with products backed by huge marketing budgets, making it hard for solo founders to break through the noise. Nazca.my addresses this "Indie Developer Dilemma" by providing a dedicated discovery platform built by indie makers, for indie makers. It's an App Discovery & Submission Platform where makers can share their creations and users find the next digital breakthrough. In short, Nazca.my is like Product Hunt, but specifically focused on curated, indie-built apps and tools – making it a must-use channel for any solo dev or bootstrapped startup.
The Challenge for Indie Developers
Indie developers wear many hats: they build, market, support, and manage their product all at once. Unlike large companies with marketing teams and big budgets, solo devs often can't afford expensive ads or PR campaigns. And even if they do pay for advertising (e.g. Google or Facebook ads), the cost per user is rising and returns are unpredictable. On mainstream platforms, algorithms and front-page features tend to favor established players. This means great indie apps can easily get lost in the flood of new releases. As one Nazca blog post puts it, organic discovery on traditional app stores has become "exponentially more difficult" for small teams.
Beyond marketing costs, indie developers need users who truly understand and appreciate niche tools. They thrive on feedback and community support, yet mainstream channels rarely facilitate direct interaction with early adopters. The typical launch cycle on broad platforms is a one-and-done burst (e.g. a Product Hunt weekend launch) that doesn't support the slow, iterative growth many indie projects need. In this context, Nazca.my fills a critical gap: a specialized ecosystem designed to highlight indie-built apps and foster genuine, long-term growth for solo and small-team projects.
What Is Nazca.my?
Nazca.my bills itself as a curated discovery platform for innovative apps. Its tagline makes its mission clear:
"Discover and submit innovative apps. Nazca is where makers share their futuristic creations and users find the next digital breakthrough."
In practice, this means Nazca is an online directory where indie developers submit their apps (mobile or desktop), and users browse and discover new tools. The homepage features sections like Trending Apps and Featured Products, and apps are organized into categories – from Productivity and Development Tools to Entertainment (including games) and Social. For example, trending listings might include an AI writing assistant, a sleep calculator app, or a unique couple's life-planning tool.
Critically, Nazca is exclusive to indie and small-team projects. Unlike vast marketplaces, it doesn't list apps from big tech companies or crowded consumer brands. The platform explicitly targets solo developers and bootstrapped startups. In the words of its founder, Nazca is "an app discovery and submission platform" tailored for "apps made by solo devs, bootstrappers, [and] indie studios". This focus creates an environment where quality and innovation – not marketing spend – drive visibility.
Nazca.my is often compared to Product Hunt, but it intentionally rejects the "launch-and-pray" culture of chasing upvotes. As one Nazca Medium article explains, Product Hunt is like a "24-hour firework", whereas Nazca is built for a "slowly growing flame", emphasizing continuous, compound discoverability. In other words, Nazca's philosophy is to reward steady growth and community engagement over hype. This makes it a more sustainable and developer-friendly alternative for indie projects.
Key Features and Benefits for Indie Devs
Nazca.my offers a suite of features designed specifically to benefit indie and solo developers. The platform's own descriptions highlight several core advantages. In practice, these translate to clear benefits for anyone considering listing their app:
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Free & Forever Listings: Nazca lets you submit your app completely free, with no ads, fees, or sponsorships required. Your listing "never disappears" – once approved, it stays on the platform permanently (as opposed to expiring after a launch event). This removes any budget barrier: even bootstrapped devs can get exposure without paying.
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SEO-Indexed, Evergreen Pages: Every app on Nazca gets its own dedicated landing page that's optimized for search engines. That means your app can be found via Google and other search engines indefinitely, not just on launch day. The Nazca team calls this "Evergreen visibility" – your product listing continues to attract traffic and rank for relevant keywords over time. It effectively turns a one-time submission into a long-term SEO asset.
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Hand-Curated, Ad-Free Environment: Nazca emphasizes a curated discovery experience. Every submission is manually reviewed, and the site is designed to be clean and free of banner ads. This uncluttered, quality-focused presentation means users browsing Nazca see only high-standard, relevant apps – no noise from irrelevant content. For the indie dev, that means your app isn't competing with low-quality or spammy listings; it's evaluated on its own merits.
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Indie-First Ethos: The community on Nazca knows what independent developers need. The platform's curated content is strictly "apps made by solo devs, bootstrappers, [and] indie studios", and it prides itself on being free from "corporate noise". This creates a friendly vibe: visitors are tech enthusiasts and early adopters who expect to find niche, innovative tools. For the maker, that means genuine appreciation from peers who understand the indie journey.
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Community Feedback & Engagement: Unlike anonymous ad clicks, Nazca offers direct user interaction. Browsers can comment on apps, save them to collections, and engage in discussions. This turns Nazca into an informal focus group: you can gather real feedback, bug reports, and feature ideas from users who care about indie tools. The platform even features community-driven spotlights and weekly features, actively promoting interesting new apps and giving them a wider audience.
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Relaunch-Friendly Listings: If you update your app with new features, Nazca allows you to "relaunch" or refresh your listing. Each update can grab a fresh spotlight on the platform. This aligns perfectly with the iterative, "build in public" approach many indie devs use. You're not penalized for improving your product – you're rewarded with renewed visibility every time you ship an update.
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No Sales Commission: Nazca is about discovery, not transactions. It doesn't take a cut of your sales or require you to sell through it. There are no hidden fees or paywalls for basic listing features. Your focus stays on building a great app, while Nazca handles getting the word out.
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Aligned Niche Focus: By design, Nazca caters to tools and products that might be "too small for big tech". If you've built a specialized micro-SaaS or a creative utility, Nazca's audience is the perfect match. On a broad platform, your niche tool might drown out; on Nazca, it can shine among users who value its unique problem-solution fit.
Each of these features addresses a pain point for indie developers. The free, SEO-optimized listing lowers marketing costs while increasing discoverability. The hand-curation ensures quality exposure. The community support fosters authentic engagement and improvement. All together, Nazca shifts the game from "pay for upvotes" to "build value and let it accumulate over time".
Evergreen Visibility and SEO Advantages
One of Nazca's most powerful benefits is its focus on evergreen discovery. When you submit an app, Nazca doesn't just toss it into a daily feed – it gives you a permanent, searchable page. These pages are SEO-optimized, so they often rank in Google for relevant searches. For example, if someone searches for "best Chrome SEO audit tool", a Nazca listing for your SEO Auditor app might appear prominently.
This is a game-changer. Rather than a one-day spike of traffic (and then obscurity), a Nazca listing continues to attract users for months or years. The platform calls it a "compound discoverability loop": each month the listing remains online, more people can find it, bookmark it, and share it, creating organic growth. This long-term visibility is rare on other launch platforms, which typically focus on short-lived hype.
In practice, this means your app can slowly climb search results and niche directories as users save and link to it. The SEO boost is "arguably Nazca.my's most powerful feature". Bootstrapped devs love it because it doesn't cost anything but yields traffic steadily. One Nazca success story described how focusing on SEO (aided by their Nazca listing) helped apps like TidyTabs and ChartDeck reach thousands of users and meaningful revenue without paid ads. Essentially, submitting your app to Nazca is like building a permanent marketing asset rather than buying a single billboard.
Community and Feedback
Nazca's community aspect is another standout benefit. By listing your app, you're entering a community of fellow creators and early adopters who are keen on new indie software. These users tend to be more tech-savvy and patient than the average consumer – they know indie apps may be rough around the edges, and they're happy to help shape them. Nazca explicitly encourages user feedback: visitors can comment on app pages, post suggestions, and engage in conversations about updates.
For a solo developer, this direct engagement is invaluable. Traditional marketing yields only quantitative metrics (e.g. click-through rates), but Nazca offers qualitative insights. Users often share detailed bug reports or feature requests in comments. The platform essentially becomes an extended QA and product validation channel. Instead of anonymous analytics data, you get real stories from users ("I'd love an Android version!", "This feature would make my life easier!"). This close loop of feedback and iteration helps you build a better product, faster, with less guesswork.
Nazca also fosters peer-to-peer support among developers. You'll find other indie creators on the platform – many willing to collaborate, exchange tips, or even form partnerships. As one article notes, being part of the Nazca ecosystem means you're contributing to a "broader ecosystem that supports independent software development". That network effect is hard to quantify, but it turns the often lonely journey of solo founding into a shared adventure. In short, Nazca is not just about finding users; it's about connecting with a community that truly gets indie development.
Cost-Effective and Stress-Free Marketing
Marketing can be daunting, especially for small teams. Nazca dramatically reduces this complexity. Creating a listing on Nazca is straightforward: you fill in app details, add screenshots, and hit submit. There's no need to craft ad copy, target audiences, or manage budgets. The platform's guidelines are clear and accessible even to developers with little marketing experience. This simplicity is a relief for technical founders who prefer coding over campaigning.
More importantly, Nazca listings cost zero dollars. As the site emphasizes, it's "Free & Forever". Unlike platforms that might charge for premium placement or featured spots, Nazca's basic listing is entirely free. You keep 100% of your sales and gains; the platform only asks for your participation and feedback. This is huge for bootstrappers. Instead of draining your development budget on ad spend, you can invest it in product improvements – knowing that Nazca's community will help spread the word organically.
The platform's cost model aligns perfectly with indie values. According to Nazca's blog, the site's "free to submit" policy removes any barrier to entry. No hidden catches, no time-limited trials. This transparency builds trust, and it means small teams can scale their visibility at no financial risk. For many indie devs, simply listing on Nazca becomes a no-brainer way to get exposure they otherwise couldn't afford.
A Niche Audience of Early Adopters
Another key reason to list on Nazca is its audience. Who visits Nazca? Generally, it's people actively looking for new, useful software – often early adopters, tech enthusiasts, and professionals seeking innovative tools. These users visit Nazca because they want to find the next big thing in tech (and they expect it to be indie-made). This is exactly the demographic indie developers dream of: an audience predisposed to try fresh ideas and give feedback.
In contrast to mass-market consumers who download apps on a whim, Nazca's visitors are a self-selecting crowd. They understand the indie ethos (admitting apps might be in alpha or beta) and are motivated by discovery. This means the users you gain through Nazca are more engaged, more forgiving of rough edges, and more willing to support indie projects – whether by recommending them or becoming paying customers.
The platform covers broad categories (Productivity, Design, Development, Social, Entertainment/Games, etc.), but within each category the community is tight-knit. For example, if you build an indie game or a creative tool, Nazca's "Entertainment" section will connect you with gamers and creators interested in exactly that niche. If your app is very specialized (say, an analytics tool for UX designers), you won't be lost among generic apps – you'll stand out to precisely the people who need it. As Nazca's founder points out, this makes Nazca especially effective for niche projects that might get buried on broader platforms.
Nazca vs. Other Launch Platforms
It's worth contrasting Nazca with other discovery channels to highlight why it's often a better fit for indie devs. The most obvious comparison is Product Hunt. While Product Hunt introduced many to the idea of indie product launches, it has become crowded and hype-driven. Product Hunt's 24-hour launch cycle often forces indie devs into a stressful "launch game" of seeking upvotes and campaigning on launch day. Many indie makers find that approach unsatisfying: all-or-nothing day with a spike of traffic, followed by a return to obscurity.
Nazca inverts this model. Instead of a one-shot big splash, Nazca offers continuous exposure. There is no daily leaderboard to top; listings stay live and can resurface whenever you update them. The platform explicitly encourages you to iterate in public: every time you ship an update, you can relaunch your app listing and reconnect with users. This aligns perfectly with agile development and building in public.
As the Nazca team puts it in a direct comparison, Product Hunt is "The Big Bang: a single, high-pressure event" whereas Nazca is "The Slow Burn: a continuous, low-pressure process". On Nazca, success is measured by long-term traction rather than daily upvotes. The audience is also different: Product Hunt is broad (including VCs, journalists, big startups), but Nazca is niche-first. This means on Nazca your app is competing with similar-sized projects, not against multi-million-dollar launches.
These differences are not just theoretical. Indie developers who have tried both platforms often report better outcomes on Nazca. For example, the productivity app FocusLoop was launched on Product Hunt with minimal success, then later listed on Nazca and gained "$300K+ MRR in 18 months — all organic". On Product Hunt it only got 40 installs; on Nazca it found a dedicated user base and revenue. This kind of case highlights that Nazca's community and model can turn modest products into sustainable businesses, rather than just short-term publicity stunts.
Of course, Nazca isn't the only indie-friendly option – there are blogs, forums (like Indie Hackers), and social platforms. But Nazca is unique in combining curated discovery, SEO, and community features in one place. It can complement other strategies: many startups still use Product Hunt for initial buzz, but then rely on Nazca for long-tail growth. Bottom line: if you care about steady growth over viral spikes, Nazca provides a clear advantage.
Who Should List on Nazca.my?
Practically any indie developer or small team can benefit from Nazca, but here are a few ideal scenarios:
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Solo Devs with No Marketing Budget: If you built a great app but have no mailing list or ad spend, Nazca's organic SEO approach finds users over time. Your app can surface in search results even if you've never promoted it elsewhere.
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Creators Who "Build in Public": Nazca loves ongoing updates. If you iterate openly and use community feedback, each new release on Nazca re-energizes attention. It's specifically built to let you relaunch and share progress, aligning with "building in public" strategies.
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Niche Tool Builders: Did you make a tool for a highly specific audience (e.g. a Pomodoro app for designers, or a Twitch overlay for gamers)? On a broad platform, your niche might get ignored. Nazca's community, however, appreciates these specialized tools. They are often looking for unique solutions and will value your project's focus.
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Developers Who Hate the Launch "Game": Not everyone enjoys begging for a Product Hunt hunter or rallying votes on launch day. If that feels like a circus to you, Nazca offers a calmer, fairer path. Success on Nazca is based on product merit and word-of-mouth, not how many friends you twist an arm to upvote.
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Founders Aiming for Sustainable Growth: If your goal isn't a quick exit but a sustainable business, Nazca aligns with that vision. Its audience tends to include early adopters who convert to paying customers and stick around. As Nazca notes, it's a platform for people focused on "building a profitable, sustainable business" rather than chasing vanity metrics.
In essence, if you're an indie maker who values authenticity and long-term impact, Nazca is designed for you. It's a platform where slow, steady wins out over flashy one-time wins.
Real-World Success Stories
The theory behind Nazca is compelling, and it's borne out by real indie success stories. Besides FocusLoop's example, Nazca highlights other cases:
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TidyTabs (Chrome Extension): This browser utility gained "$2K MRR and 8K users" through organic SEO and its Nazca listing. It shows that even simple free tools can monetize through user support when properly discovered.
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ChartDeck (Web Tool): A web-only charting app generated "$600 MRR in 3 months – minus ads" by dominating search results for "free charting". Its Nazca listing helped it rank, leading to direct conversions.
These examples demonstrate that Nazca isn't just hype; it helps creators turn niche apps into profitable products without paid marketing. They underscore the idea that with Nazca, "sustainable revenue and user growth are achievable for solo founders".
Conclusion: Join the Indie-First Revolution
Nazca.my represents a new wave of indie-friendly platforms that challenge the one-size-fits-all model. It puts indie developers and small teams at the center of its universe. By offering free, perpetual listings and a supportive community, Nazca dismantles the barriers that usually keep solo projects in the shadows.
Listing your app on Nazca.my is more than ticking off another marketing channel – it's joining a community and leveraging a system built for people like you. Your app gets a polished, SEO-optimized home page, direct access to tech-savvy users, and ongoing exposure without the need for paid ads. In the words of Nazca's platform description, it empowers creators to "discover, launch, [and] share" their digital tools.
If you're an indie developer dedicated to building a valuable product and reaching genuine users, Nazca.my is an opportunity you shouldn't miss. It offers a sustainable alternative to traditional launch sites, aligning with the realities of indie growth. By listing on Nazca, you not only gain a platform that truly understands your needs, but you also contribute to a diverse ecosystem that celebrates innovation.
Take advantage of Nazca's community-driven discovery today – your next breakthrough could be just a submission away.
fAdnim
Author at Nazca. Passionate about creating exceptional mobile applications and sharing knowledge with the developer community.