
Bootstrapping My Side Project to $6k/Month - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/@EO/how-i-bootstrapped-my-side-project-to-6k-mo-hating-everything-it-stood-for-43c35faa25
======
kumarm
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)

~~~
EO-IO
Hi there, I'm the guy who wrote the story.

I agree with what you said, and yes that is why I hate the tool. That was the
point of the write up.

I did not want to post this on hacker news, but seems like someone did.

Edit : Our users do not spam the play store with fake icons though, they just
make unoriginal apps based on templates ( Wallpapers, stuff like that ).

~~~
arkades
Funny, I couldn’t disagree more.

The overwhelming majority of software does not “change the world,” and a
tinier fraction yet of impactful software makes a notably -positive- impact.

It seems to me that you let people’s self-serving bullshit into your head, and
you’ve let it make you feel shitty for producing something people find
valuable.

I thought your article illustrated someone with a great amount of work ethic
and resourcefulness. Doing that with the work at hand and not just what you
feel “passionate” about is what separates the real go-getters from over-
idealistic kids. I have a lot of respect for your work ethic.

~~~
EO-IO
Thanks man, this really means a lot.

~~~
arkades
I meant every word. If you ever want to get into developing something for the
healthcare sector and need a brain to pick, I’d be happy to make myself
available. You strike me as someone who’d get something done with the
information.

------
stillsut
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?

~~~
jcadam
Depends... how fast can he implement an AVL binary search tree on a
whiteboard?

~~~
acangiano
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)

~~~
znfii
Was it ever figured out what "invert a binary tree" means? At least I had
never heard this term used prior to this incident. This has me slightly
worried about this particular example somehow, and I'm not quite sure what to
make of it...

~~~
guessmyname

                2                             2        
               / \                           / \       
              /   \                         /   \      
             /     \                       /     \     
            1       3                     3       1    
           / \     / \                   / \     / \   
          0   7   9   1    reverse >>>  1   9   7   0  
         /   / \     / \               / \     / \   \ 
        2   1   0   8   8             8   8   0   1   2
               /                               \       
              7                                 7
    

— [https://leetcode.com/problems/invert-binary-
tree/description...](https://leetcode.com/problems/invert-binary-
tree/description/)

~~~
znfii
So several people replied with this same thing, which I have heard before
being suggested. However, as I recall it at the time, if you tried to search
for "invert binary tree" this term basically did not exist on the internet. I
just tried searching on google with time set between 2000 and end of 2014
which seems to give similar results.

I guess I did not spell it out in my original post, but I always felt it might
have been an intentional nonsense question intended to gauge how he would
react to someone talking nonsense, or something like that, and not necessarily
related to technical things. A sibling post of my original to suggest this was
the case, without the weird detour through the term "invert binary tree".

Edit: Of course an alternative explanation is that the interview used another
term and he then used the term "invert" on twitter.

Idk, this example at least has to me always felt like people who complain
about not passing the driver's test coz they did some minor error and then
forgetting to mention that they drove past a stop sign.

~~~
xiphias
I'm not 100% sure about the inverting part, but at Google nobody ever told me
to ,,fuck off'' and nobody would tolerate that language, and that person would
get a serious talk from his/her manager, maybe even laid off instantly,
especially if it's written.

------
mattezell
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
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
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!

------
adrianmsmith
"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
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.

------
Flimm
> 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.

~~~
EO-IO
I wrote this. All users get paid directly from the advertising network through
bank wires / western union.

------
YPCrumble
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
Thanks, currently trying to figure that as well.

------
dude01
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.

------
wiradikusuma
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
The reason he doesn't link to any apps is, that appygen is mostly used to make
spam apps.

~~~
EO-IO
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
> 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=app...](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=dog%20simulator&c=apps)

~~~
EO-IO
Could be, but how is this considered spam ?

~~~
username223
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.

------
VyseofArcadia
> 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_
Yep. That's basically the definition of a pyramid scheme.

~~~
alphydan
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.

------
jmull
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
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
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.

------
fpgaminer
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.

------
wffurr
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.

------
darth_mastah
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.

------
archagon
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.)

------
atonse
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
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
FWIW, I am a fan. I find their content inspiring.

------
zengid
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
You mean gamifying the app or the development of the app? I'm down for the
latter... super procrastinating here...

~~~
zengid
The app itself.

------
tomc1985
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.

------
_grep_
Getting a percentage of the profit of all the people you recruit into the
ecosystem sounds suspiciously like an MLM.

~~~
matharmin
That would be the case if referrals were the only source of income.

~~~
username223
Sorry, no. MLMs also make money selling bogus nutritional supplements and
such.

------
chromaton
If you hate it, why not sell it?

------
ecthiender
If you don't enjoy this business so much, have you considered selling it?

------
hellbanner
So 6k a month, which means the people using AppyGen are earning much less.. ?

~~~
r00fus
If you read, not much less. Some of his users are making $1000/mo.

------
lafar6502
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.

------
dovdovdov
nice appygen ad...

~~~
pc86
Indiehackers is literally advertisements for the companies/founders it covers
(most of the time).

~~~
da02
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
Tim Ferris is a charlatan. That probably has a lot to do with it.

~~~
arkades
Ha! I was about to write an identical post, word for word.

------
jnordwick
Flagged.

Who's voting this junk up? 84 points in 33 minutes? Doesn't seem realistic.

~~~
valuearb
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.

