I wanted a niche, I got into mainstream.
Intro
Hello Indie hackers! My name is Emin, and I am a fully employed iOS developer. I have a loving wife and a very energetic 2-year-old. I am getting close to the age where I feel like I am "too old for this s*it".
However, I am still a passionate indie developer with dreams like most of you, which is to live off my own product.
If you're interested in some storytelling, grab a chair, pour yourself a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever your beverage of choice is, and hopefully, you'll enjoy my story.
Throwback
Rewind your social network memory to about 4 months back.
- there is no ChatGPT
- DALL-e is all the rage
- there is an interesting player on the horizon, Stable Diffusion.
- the smell of change is in the air
I was immediately drawn to dalle, having heard and seen what it can do, but now I had access to the API 🙌 However, after only a few days of pushing my app to the store, I could see I was not the only one (surprise surprise).
Something was different though...instead the regular "competition", you could see a wide variety of apps that copied each other, most blatantly, lying about what the AI can do and overcharging to almost criminal levels. Not a good place to be at.
Yikes #1
As an indie dev with only a few hours to spare a day at best, sometimes under 1 hour, I knew a few things:
- I cannot keep up with the competition this dynamic
- the amount of scam apps are bound to put bad shade on my app as well
- ASO would be crazy hard to optimize.
So, I left my app in its current state 👉 thoth, and made a decision to dedicate my hacking to a somewhat underrepresented AI model, Da-Vinci!
I know what you might think, considering the levels of popularity chatGPT has reached today, but from a little exploration I did, I could only find a few apps on the store that were focusing on text-based AI.
It was perfect I thought, something more nichy I could focus on and take my time. A nice, quiet place on the store 🫣
I believe it was Friday when I posted my AI Copywriter app for a review. It took Apple (for some weird reason) 7 whole days to review it! It was actually in "in review" state for that long, and when I reached out on day 5 they responded, "we need more time". 🤦♂️
Yikes #2
My app landed on a Friday, and as you might have guessed it, that was the week when ChatGPT came out. I guess that was the very reason why my app was in review for so long, as it was one of the hundreds of apps that hit the store that week. Sheesh.
There I was, in the midst of the same apps I ran away from, some scammy, some really good, but mostly bottom-of-the-barrel quality, mine included probably 😂. Not sure if it was my persistence or just pure spite but I decided to stay there, and this time "fight" for my spot in the store. Kind of "well, I already made the app, why not make it better?!"
Realisation
One major problem though, I did not like what I made. It was rather ugly, too simple of an approach, you might even say lazy. It took me a few iterations to get it right, and to find the look that I really like, one that I might be happy with for longer than 2 days.
I will be honest, I am still not "hot" for AI. I made an app that, thanks to an insane demand, reached 2kMRR, which is just 🤯, but I am not really passionate about it. I have a feeling that I will make sure it looks slick and performs nicely, but I do not want to keep working on something I do not feel inspired by.
Not a light decision mind you, considering the earning potential. I am well aware that my other side-projects are nowhere near that earning level.
Conclusion
It is a simple app, and it will stay simple.
Maybe that way, I win? Maybe there was no fight, to begin with, just something I told myself. Either way, what I am certain of, is that this app looks like it has a ❤️, and I at least, love it.
If you have gotten this far, I have to say I really appreciate you. Thank you for listening to my ramblings and half-baked storytelling :)
Self-promo
In case you are interested in more of it, I might start a newsletter soon Newsletter
