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Bootstrapping My Side Project to $6k/Month

• dovdovdov 9y ago
  nice appygen ad...
  • pc86 9y ago
    Indiehackers is literally advertisements for the companies/founders it covers (most of the time).
    • da02 9y ago
      Do these Indiehackers stories ever leave out important details? (Example: I remember reading about ProSoundEffects in a book, and the author (Tim Ferris) left out important facts, like how the founder of the company had years of experience in contract law and negotiated exclusive distributorship deals before automating the business in Yahoo Stores. In other HN anecdotes, people leave out all the spam and email ads they have to send in order to get sales for their product.)
      • pc86 9y ago
        Tim Ferris is a charlatan. That probably has a lot to do with it.
        • arkades 9y ago
          Ha! I was about to write an identical post, word for word.
    • wiradikusuma 9y ago
      And I think it's fine, as long as it gives something valuable to the readers. Not necessarily repeatable business ideas (there's a saying that when someone share his secret, it's already exhausted), but it gives motivation.
    • highace 9y ago
      That's the whole point. You thought the founders were getting warm fuzzies from sharing their story?
  • AlexAffe 9y ago
    Yes! Was looking for that comment. Super slow read, half way through I recognized I was reading an ad.
  • empath75 9y ago
    It’s a rare ad that starts with the product owner telling you how much he hates the product.
    • dovdovdov 9y ago
      still an ad, and such a transparent lousy technique.
• stillsut 9y ago
  This guy: A.) makes stuff, B.) The stuff works and is useful to other people c.) Challenged himself to drill into the "crass" business side to make himself far more profitable. But would anyone here in a cool startup hire him?
  • jaymzcampbell 9y ago
    If I was still working in a startup (whether it would count as cool or not I'm not sure) I certainly would. People like this are rare - he's proactive and clearly driven. If a cool startup turned their nose up at this sort of person it's their loss (and probably nowhere near as "cool" an environment to work in that they think).
  • jcadam 9y ago
    Depends... how fast can he implement an AVL binary search tree on a whiteboard?
    • SaltyBackendGuy 9y ago
      Ha I laughed out loud when I saw this.. But also very true.
    • acangiano 9y ago
      This literally happened to Max Howell, the guy behind homebrew. "Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off." https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en
      • always_good 9y ago
        I can agree with Jonathan Blow's responses in so far that you should be able to invert a binary tree in an interview if that's the sort of knowledge you need on-call on the job and there's somehow no room for rustiness because it's some sort of high stress environment that needs immediate results (btw that doesn't describe jobs at Google). But then he reveals that he's completely full of himself when he suggests that "sorry, you're not a good programmer then."
• Flimm 9y ago
  > I couldn’t understand why users who were making a thousand dollars in ad revenue each month, didn’t upgrade their accounts, after all it only costs $25. Turns out, a lot of these users were living in countries where they couldn’t have a Visa card or PayPal account, and just couldn’t pay me even if they wanted to. I was highly interested when the author said he moved to Morocco to lower living costs. I was hoping he would have insights in how to overcome problems like this. I find it fascinating that these users are somehow receiving money online, but can't pay for things online.
  • curiousgal 9y ago
    Online banks like Payoneer and Neteller offer debit cards that can be used in ATMs but get rejected by PayPal.
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    I wrote this. All users get paid directly from the advertising network through bank wires / western union.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• YPCrumble 9y ago
  Very cool read. It's always hard trying to find the right mix of building something people want, building something that has a big enough market, and building something that you're passionate about.
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    Thanks, currently trying to figure that as well.
• kumarm 9y ago
  Thank you for helping people spam PlayStore? This tool does not help anyone other than spammers, who make fake Icons and Screenshots and spam PlayStore. I believe that is the part of the reason why Dev himself hates the tool. Edit: 1) Create clone apps tutorial by dev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_CrJkz7-4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_CrJkz7-4g
  • guilhermepontes 9y ago
    Check mate.
  • gourou 9y ago
    He acknowledges it in the article: > I also came to the conclusion that AppyGEN didn’t really help make the world a better place like every other startup I read about. It seemed to me like it was just making the play store a worse place, helping non-developers publish hundreds of unoriginal apps that only took away from the visibility and chances of more ambitious apps. > I was myself an app developer once and I could clearly see how my product ultimately harmed other developers. I started hating everything AppyGEN stands for, no matter how much money it continued to make for my existing customers.
    • ryandrake 9y ago
      He hates it but didn't stop selling it. I understand though--I've had hard times myself and at one point almost considered doing stuff like this, or worse (go read up on lead generation, affiliate marketing--you'll need a shower afterward). But, one would hope that once enough income was made to get back on his feet he'd make the right ethical decision, end it, and move on to something else.
  • ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    Does anyone have an example of one of these clone apps that has done well? Why does this process only work in PlayStore and not IOS as well?
    • oculusthrift 9y ago
• zengid 9y ago
  Has anyone else had success 'gameifying' their app? I've been mulling over how to structure the 'getting-started' phase for a new app project and this sounds like a good idea.
  • jacobush 9y ago
    You mean gamifying the app or the development of the app? I'm down for the latter... super procrastinating here...
    • zengid 9y ago
      The app itself.
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    I'd be down to help, hit me up, my email is at the bottom of the story.
• wiradikusuma 9y ago
  Congrats! Two questions: 1. What are some of the apps made? Even the website doesn't show any link. 2. How do they (himself and his customers) get users for the app they made? I've built android apps, and I'm telling you, making the app is the easy part (even when coding yourself from zero).
  • dnate 9y ago
    The reason he doesn't link to any apps is, that appygen is mostly used to make spam apps.
    • EO-IO 9y ago
      The reason I don't link to any apps is that it wasn't the point of the story. Not sure what you mean by "spam" apps, but that's not the case. Nobody is spamming anyone.
      • username223 9y ago
        > Nobody is spamming anyone. Really? I'm sure at least some of these are made using (cr)AppyGEN: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=dog%20simulator&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=dog%20simulator&c=app...
        • EO-IO 9y ago
          Could be, but how is this considered spam ?
          • username223 9y ago
            AFAICT someone realized that it was possible to make money with an animated dog app, and it got popular. Then dozens of others heard of it and made knockoffs, some just using the idea, some going farther and publishing apps with confusingly-similar names and icons. So now there are dozens of confusing, bottom-feeding apps swarming around this little pile of money when there used to be just one, and the Android app store is a worse place for everyone. Searching an app store is about as effective as seeking medical/dating advice in your spam folder, so I don't bother.
• jnordwick 9y ago
  Flagged. Who's voting this junk up? 84 points in 33 minutes? Doesn't seem realistic.
  • quuquuquu 9y ago
    People like you make this site so very unbearable. I enjoyed reading this article and all your behavior does is censor relevant and interesting info. That you announce it for kudos is even more infuriating.
  • makapuf 9y ago
    maybe there's an app for that ;) (or even an app maker GenAutoUpvoterApp)
  • valuearb 9y ago
    This is an excellent article, I'm going to up vote it right now. It's rare you get to read something so self aware that the author admits they hate what they sell.
• VyseofArcadia 9y ago
  > So I came up with the idea to get my users to share it, so that I didn’t have to. To do so, I set up a very enticing referral program: >> Users could share their referral link and get a 10% cut of the ad revenue from every app the referred user makes, forever. > For example, if user A brings in user B, and user B makes an app that brings in $10/day, user A would get $1 every day without lifting a finger. > If user B decides to upgrade to a premium account, user A would get a commission every time user B pays his subscription. This sounds like a pyramid scheme...
  • _grep_ 9y ago
    Yep. That's basically the definition of a pyramid scheme.
    • alphydan 9y ago
      No it isn't. Imagine that A convinces B to sign up. A pyramid scheme pays "A" with the signup fees from "B". If people stop signing up, then you can't pay B. Here, "A" is paid IFF "B" makes money. if B makes no money, then A makes no money. It's revenue sharing from referrals, not a pyramid scheme.
    • zem 9y ago
      not really; in a pyramid scheme (at least the generally understood scammy sense) you pay money to buy in, and then recovery that money by inducing other suckers to sign up. the money you pay goes to support the people higher up the pyramid. in this case, the people at the bottom are actually making money, rather than paying it; it's just that some percentage of their fee is shared with their referrer (it comes out of the company's cut, not the user's)
  • a-priori 9y ago
    If it were recursive -- if User B then referred User C, and User A got a cut of the revenue -- then I'd say that's a pyramid scheme.
    • hinkley 9y ago
• _grep_ 9y ago
  Getting a percentage of the profit of all the people you recruit into the ecosystem sounds suspiciously like an MLM.
  • jrhurst 9y ago
    Oh no it's clearly mutated into an MLM. I found it interesting how it turned into one last minute. In a lot of ways it is the logical next step for this kind of product.
  • valuearb 9y ago
    Doubling his/her revenue in 2 months shows how powerful MLMs are. I don't think there is anything inherently unethical in MLM sales structures, it's really just how they are run. The real problem with most MLMs is their core business doesn't work, they only work by sucking money out of those unsuited to succeed selling the core product.
  • matharmin 9y ago
    That would be the case if referrals were the only source of income.
    • username223 9y ago
      Sorry, no. MLMs also make money selling bogus nutritional supplements and such.
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    Not an MLM, see other comments for more details.
• wffurr 9y ago
  Lessons I learned from reading this article: * The author had multiple opportunities to return to freelancing and stop working on a tool that he fully realized was morally bankrupt. * Then, even after his partner left, the author used gamification to hook people into using the app, recruiting people into his pyramid scheme, and exploit people in countries underserved by payment systems. That's some pretty solid lessons there.
• adrianmsmith 9y ago
  "This guy had made hundreds of apps in less than two months, and was making 10 times what I was making from the software sales!" If the only thing you wanted to change was to get a cut of your user's revenue, and you already had a product which worked, and which users found, why did you have to spend one year changing everything e.g. making it a web app, having to find new ways to find users, etc.? Couldn't you have just altered your pricing model with the existing codebase? Just write an additional new server-side component to handle the billing, keep the existing client software, keep the existing methods to find new users?
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    Good point, this actually never crossed my mind. I guess at that time, I was feeling a little behind since SaaS was the hottest thing and I wanted to be part of that.
  • jajern 9y ago
    I think a change to the license model to make it subscription based and then the subsequent changes to the software along with a license server would have been just as effective. No need to rewrite everything and figure out the cloud related stuff. Worked for Adobe and Microsoft.
• mattezell 9y ago
  Thanks for the writeup, @EO-IO. As other have said, it's a 'skeezy model', but as you've said, you know this and were sharing for the lessons learned more than to promote this model - which I can certainly appreciate. All in all, I found it to be a pretty good read - and a peak into a world of generating revenue that I may have not otherwise been as aware of. I do have a question. As I read, it does seem that you're driving the point of 'native app' pretty heavily without substantiating the emphasis; as if it's a large feature/benefit/sales-point. So, "Why native?" As primarily a hybrid developer currently (Angular 4 + Cordova / some Ionic), there have been leaps and bounds made in the arena of hybrid dev - and arguably the entry point for hybrid dev is much lower than it is for native. Of course you could still have created the same business with either stack, but since the article seems to be promoting 'native', I was hoping you could share some insight into what made native superior to hybrid here? Thanks!
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    Thank you for the kind words. I took that decision years ago, when hybrid dev was still struggling. If you're asking why I'm not switching now, I just don't have it in me to invest more time in the tool, even though it would significantly cut costs.
    • mattezell 9y ago
      Got ya... As someone who's worked in hybrid since ~2014, I completely understand where you're coming from - we've come a long way. Hybrid is an interesting dev space currently - so much tooling (Ionic's Creator, View, Deploy products, for example), flexibility and near-native experience in most applications. Anywhos. Thanks again!
• fpgaminer 9y ago
  My first real job ever, as a software developer, was developing software for internet marketers. It would spam your links to a bunch of RSS submission forms. I was relatively young at the time; this was back in high school. My career stayed around that internet marketing world for a few more years after that, working as a contractor. I had similar feelings as OP at the time. When I first went into it, the negative impact my software would have didn't really occur to me. I was wrapped up in the nerves of interviewing for the job, the emotions of writing my first commercial software, trying my best to do my best work. I thought of everything _but_ the impact of the software. I made something like a few grand on that contract. A lot of money for me at the time. The internet marketer who paid for it made 6 figures off it. He resold it to other IMs who would then resell it to the final end users. A few months after that code went out into the world, I was reading articles on one of the websites that my program spams (most popular blogs at the time had ways to submit links to them). I stumbled into an article where the website owner was complaining about the program, and how much it was spamming their site. They wanted some way to contact the author and have their site removed. My stomach sank in that moment. I felt terrible. Lucky for them, the program had an auto-update feature. So I removed them from the list and pushed the update. Still, I've never forgotten that horrible feeling... There are always more corners of that internet marketing industry that feel "less scummy". I kept working in that world, a bit more picky in what I worked on, but the truth was ... there really was no good that comes from the internet marketing industry. About half way through college I get fed up with the whole thing and abruptly quit the contract I was on at the time. I remember sending the email out, walking out of my dorm, hoping on my bicycle, and just ... riding. I rode forever. Lost in thought about what I was doing with my life. I ended up riding for several hours into the night, just trying to burn off all the emotion. These days, I would never do that kind of work again. But I can appreciate why I did the work at the time. We don't really think about that kind of stuff, the impact our work can have, until later in life. It's a fact of human biology. And when you're first entering the job market, the money and getting into the swing of "adulting" is enough to fully consume you, leaving precious little thought left to give to what impact your work might have. I don't think anyone should be ashamed of stories like these. It's all a part of growing up and learning about the world. We should celebrate those self aware enough to realize their mistakes and grow from them. There is so much more life left after young adulthood.
• jmull 9y ago
  Good lord, that project is truly horrifying. So many crap apps pumped into the store. I guess at the bottom, the money is coming from ad revenue, so I guess somewhere there are people who actually use these apps?!? Or I guess maybe it is just a lot of people getting tricked. Kudos, I guess, to the author, for coming clean. I never would have admitted to something like this publicly. (Then again, I never would have done this kind of thing in the first place. By the way, I don’t know if I have a price, but it sure as hell isn’t $6K/mo.)
  • EO-IO 9y ago
    Would you define crap apps though ? I'm not sure we're on the same page here. None of the apps made through the software contain malware or spam or anything "horrifying", they simply lack originality.
    • jmull 9y ago
      I would say a low-value, low-effort app is bad ("crap"). Your system encourages lots and lots of very low-effort, low-value apps. So crap at scale. That's horrifying to me.
• atonse 9y ago
  Isn't indie hackers the same site that was bought by stripe? It used to just list all the businesses. Right now I can't even find that list anymore, instead a completely free-form "search" – well sometimes I just want to browse the companies to find interesting ones I didn't think about.
  • opdahl 9y ago
    It's hidden in the dropdown menu on the top right under interviews, or https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses . I agree with you though, it looks like IH is trying more and more to become a Medium-like blogposting site.
    • Drdrdrq 9y ago
      FWIW, I am a fan. I find their content inspiring.
  • ChanningAllen 9y ago
    We have a lot of content: text-based interviews, a podcast, free-form articles, and a forum. And there's more coming down the pike. Different visitors like different content, so the current homepage surfaces a curated list of all of it. To see just interviews: https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses
• tomc1985 9y ago
  What I see is someone who abandoned a user-centric desktop app in favor of a gimped cloud solution that makes the dev more money and gives users less control.
• chromaton 9y ago
  If you hate it, why not sell it?
• hellbanner 9y ago
  So 6k a month, which means the people using AppyGen are earning much less.. ?
  • r00fus 9y ago
    If you read, not much less. Some of his users are making $1000/mo.
• archagon 9y ago
  Seems most of the business value was in that initial spark of insight, vis a vis consistently earning money from trending niches. The product dev stuff is interesting, but I’m most curious as to how that initial targeted app was conceived. (Not that I’d want to work on this kind of software, but I feel the lessons would still be applicable.)
• ecthiender 9y ago
  If you don't enjoy this business so much, have you considered selling it?
• lafar6502 9y ago
  Hey, nice work there, both on the idea and execution. And, since 'don't be evil' companies spam us mercilessly on every occasion, a single guy pushing some spam up their arses should get some reward for his work.
• dude01 9y ago
  This is such a well-written story about a startup! I mean, it has so many twists and turns - pivoting for auto-generating mobile apps, cloud, gamification, affiliate marketing. It's so good I would have said it's fiction, especially the part that you're not even proud of doing it.
• darth_mastah 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Really good and honest write-up. Everyone needs to put bread on the table. It's much more rewarding investing your time in your own project than selling your time to some corporation. At least you actually have something to show for it. Respect. And if people found your project useful - you succeeded. The mere fact that the apps were making money shows that those apps were used by some other people who found them worth using.