Case study · Copywriting
Copywriting for Truly Simple Tools
A single voice that works across all touchpoints and a growing catalog of tools.
Truly Simple Tools’ voice is that of the competent, trustworthy mechanic who’s more than happy to help. The main copy is the deliverable, in the brand’s voice. The note beside each piece is mine, on why the writing works.
In its first year the TST catalog reached roughly 4,000 downloads across 100+ countries, with paying customers in 29 of them, about one paid unlock for every 18 downloads. Nothing was spent on ads, all reach was organic.
01 · Campaign
Good basic apps
TST runs zero paid media and treats that as a value, so the campaign keeps it honest. It advertises only on free surfaces, in the brand’s own plain voice, with no hype and no exclamation points. One umbrella line (“Good basic apps”), two surfaces: social posts and letter-sized posters printed out and pinned to public bulletin boards.
Social posts
The offer, stated flat
Good basic apps. Free to try, $4.99 to own. No subscription, no ads, no tracking. You buy it, it’s yours.
Origin story · Truly Simple Timeline
I built Truly Simple Timeline to keep a trilogy’s dates straight while I edited the first book. Remembering every event had become a second job, so I made this app because I needed it. Now a few thousand other people use it to keep track of their own stories.
Restraint as the point · Truly Simple Kanban
Spent some time mulling over a potential new feature for TS Kanban this week, but decided against it. Doing it right would have dramatically complexified the basic structure of the app, and I’d like to keep things intuitive.
Bulletin-board posters
Letter-sized, printed at home, pinned to corkboards in coffee shops, libraries, and campus halls, among the flyers for guitar lessons and lost cats. Tear-off tabs with QR codes along the bottom.
Poster A · the honest flyer
Good basic apps.
Truly Simple Tools is a catalog of simple apps made by one person. No subscriptions, no ads, no tracking. Free to try and use forever. Pay $4.99 once if you want an additional feature or two.
Tear-off tabs, repeated: trulysimpletools.com + QR
Poster B · Story Wiki
A quiet place to build your world.
Story Wiki keeps your characters, places, and lore linked and searchable, like your own personal Wikipedia.
A simple app, made by someone who needed it to keep track of his own imaginings.
One wiki is free forever, pay $4.99 once to make as many as you please.
Tear-off tabs, repeated: Story Wiki · trulysimpletools.com + QR
02 · Landing page
Story Wiki
Reader: writers, game designers, and worldbuilders weighing it against sprawling, more expensive worldbuilding software. Goal: make the calm, single-purpose option feel like the obvious one. Approach: lead with the feeling, then the few features that matter.
A calm, searchable home for the world you’re creating.
Story Wiki keeps your characters, locations, lore, and events in one place, linked like they are in your story. One wiki is free forever, pay $4.99 once (no subscriptions) to create as many as you like.
Built for your story
Story Wiki gives your world, no matter how sprawling, a quiet place to live. Link related entries and travel through them with Wikipedia-like backlinks.
- Link characters, places, and lore with wiki-style connections
- Build reusable templates with custom fields for species, magic systems, or houses
- Export any selection, or the whole wiki, to a clean, printable PDF
- Sync your work privately across your Mac, iPad, and iPhone
The deal
One wiki is free, or make as many as you like for $4.99 (one-time, lifetime). No subscription, no ads, no tracking.
Download free
03 · Landing page
Truly Simple Symptom Log
Reader: people with chronic conditions, and anyone tracking how they feel. Goal: be the tracker someone can actually face on a bad day. Approach: empathy first, plain features second, no medical overpromising.
A symptom log you can face at 2 a.m.
Truly Simple Symptom Log helps you record how you feel in seconds, on one simple screen. No accounts, no bright badges, nothing nagging you to come back. It’s there when you need it, and only when you need it.
Logging that takes seconds, not minutes
Most symptom trackers bury you in graphs, onboarding, and subscriptions, at a moment in which you may be uncomfortable or in pain. This app is simpler: open it, tap some icons to note your mood, symptoms, and what might have set them off, then put your phone away and focus on getting better.
- One screen for mood, symptoms, possible triggers, and notes
- A heatmap calendar that makes patterns easy to see
- Large touch targets, for the days your hands aren’t cooperating
- Private by default; everything stays on your devices
The deal
All logging is free, forever. A one-time $4.99 adds data export, including a printable PDF for your doctor, plus a Face ID lock. No subscription, no ads, no fluff.
Download free
04 · App Store listing
Truly Simple Timeline
Reader: a writer comparing it against heavier, pricier timeline software. Goal: win them on credibility and ease. Approach: lead with the maker, who shared the reader’s problem.
Description
Truly Simple Timeline was built by a professional author to keep track of narrative arcs, story beats, and character moments across a novel that was becoming a trilogy. It’s a clean, tactile workspace where you can add events individually or in bulk, drag and drop them across centuries or hours, and adjust all your milestones whenever and however you please.
What you get:
- Drag-and-drop events across any span of time
- Arcs, single dates, and durations on the same timeline
- A paper-like palette of warm creams, slate blues, and earthy greens
- Private sync across Mac, iPad, and iPhone
Fully featured and free to use with one timeline. A one-time, lifetime $4.99 unlocks unlimited timelines. No subscriptions, no ads, no tracking.
What’s New
Smoother dragging across very long spans, plus display toggles so event bubbles show only what you want to see.
05 · App Store listing
Truly Simple Kanban
Reader: someone who finds full project-management tools overbuilt. Goal: make three columns sound like a feature, not a shortfall. Approach: name the dread the category creates, then refuse it.
Description
Truly Simple Kanban allows you to see what’s waiting, what you’re in the middle of, and what’s finished. Move cards between these columns. That’s the app.
It’s built for makers, students, and creatives who want a clear view of their work without the overhead of full project-management software. Paper-inspired colors, expansive accessibility features, and private, automatic syncing across your devices.
What you get:
- Drag tasks across To Do, In Progress, and Done
- Customize or add columns to suit your workflow
- Color-code tasks and boards
- Private iCloud sync across Mac, iPad, and iPhone
One board is free forever. Create unlimited boards for a one-time, lifetime $4.99. No ads, no subscriptions, nothing tracked.
What’s New
Smoother drag-and-drop animation on macOS, plus a few new default palette colors.
06 · Product descriptions
Just Birthdays & Color Archive
These ran as the apps’ link-preview cards, the image that appears when the app is shared, so the blurb does its at-a-glance job in the place a stranger first meets the product. One or two lines each, written to help a stranger understand the app at a glance. Two apps, two very different readers.
Just Birthdays. A tiny CRM that helps you remember birthdays without opening Facebook. Widgets show who’s coming up, nothing leaves your devices.
Color Archive. Keep your per-project color palettes organized and accessible, and export to hex, RGB, or paste-ready CSS. Free, synced across your devices, nothing tracked.
07 · Before and after
Truly Simple Envelopes
The “before” is a competent first draft, the kind of App Store copy plenty of good apps actually ship: clean, fluent, upbeat, and wrong in small, specific ways. The “after” is the same description edited into TST’s voice. Subject: Truly Simple Envelopes, the catalog’s personal budgeting app.
Before
Take control of your money with Truly Simple Envelopes, a simple yet powerful budgeting app built around the proven envelope method. Allocate your income across customizable categories, track your spending in real time, and always know exactly where you stand. With seamless iCloud sync across all your devices and a clean, intuitive design, building better financial habits has never felt so effortless. And there’s no subscription required.
After
Truly Simple Envelopes brings the cash-envelope method to your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Add your income and distribute it between envelopes like Groceries, Rent, and Coffee. When you spend, you subtract from the relevant envelope by hand. That small, manual step reminds you that an envelope is running low before you reach the register. TS Envelopes is completely private and never connects to your bank. Free to use forever, $4.99 for unlimited envelopes. No ads, subscriptions, or trackers.
08 · Podcast host-read
A sponsor read for the ear
A 30-to-60-second host-read spot for a tech or indie podcast, written for a host to deliver in their own words. This is a distinct medium: spoken, conversational, built to be vocalized. Goal: sound like the host actually uses the app.
Sponsor break
[Host read, ~55 seconds, feel free to adjust to suit your voice]
Quick word about today’s sponsor, Truly Simple Tools. You know how every app on your phone wants a monthly subscription now? Or has a million features you don’t need or want? Truly Simple Tools is the opposite of that. It’s a catalog of small, single-purpose apps for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone, made by one person, and you pay once. No subscription, no ads, nothing tracking you.
I’ve been using their app [pick one, like Truly Simple Symptom Log, along with riff on app tagline, like “which helps me track any pain, my mood, and potential triggers”], and what I like is that it does exactly what it says and then gets out of my way. Every app is free, and if you want another feature or two, it’s usually about five bucks, one time. The paid, Pro version is yours forever.
Truly Simple Tools makes good basic apps. Go take a look at their catalog at trulysimpletools.com, that’s trulysimpletools.com.
Hear the read
09 · Changelog
Release notes as small stories
Software release notes are a recurring opportunity to reinforce a brand’s voice, rather than passively logging changes. Goal: make an update worth reading even by people it doesn’t affect.
Truly Simple Timeline 2.0.1
- You can now drag an event across the year-zero line without the app quietly losing its mind. Turns out the timeline used to insist history began at year one; that’s been fixed. Moving dates across that line, between BC and AD, is now doable. Carry on, ancient historians.
- Event bubbles now have display toggles, so each card can show just the dates, just the titles, or the whole story. Your call, and you can set it per timeline.
- Faster scrolling across very long spans, so it’s easier to navigate between the founding of Babylon and last Tuesday.
10 · Product Hunt launch
Truly Simple Envelopes
The launch-day post for a new app, on the platform where indie software debuts. A tagline plus the maker’s first comment. Goal: stand out in a feed of superlatives by being the calm one.
Maker’s first comment
Hi Product Hunt. I make a small catalog of single-purpose apps called Truly Simple Tools, and this is the newest one.
Truly Simple Envelopes is digital cash-envelope budgeting. You add your income, split it into envelopes you name, and subtract by hand as you spend. The manual part is on purpose. It’s what lets you feel the money leaving before you reach the register, instead of finding out later at a more inconvenient moment.
Like everything I make, there’s no bank connection, no subscription, no ads, no tracking. Free to try, five dollars once for unlimited envelopes. It lives on your device, not my servers, which is why it can be a one-time price.
I built it because every budgeting app I tried wanted my bank login and a monthly fee to show me my own spending. Thanks for taking a look, and happy to answer anything in the comments.
