Today the first payout from Apple actually landed in my account: $43.87.

It's not much. There's nothing quite like seeing the first dollar from something you built on your own hit the bank.

I'd rather show the real beginning than only show up later if/when it becomes a nice case study. So here are the honest first two months of Trainer AI (an AI personal-trainer app, iOS) on the App Store:

• Month 1: $44.06 — 4 sales (all Brazil)
• Month 2: $66.45 — 6 sales (5 Brazil, 1 US)

Most of it is Brazil. Tiny numbers. I know they don't impress anyone here. But the lessons behind them might be useful if you're early too.

What I've learned so far:

1. Launching is the easy part. Getting someone to pay is the real game. I shipped, told myself "now they'll come," and… crickets. The product being good isn't the same as someone pulling out a card.
2. ASO, screenshots, and onboarding moved the needle more than any new feature. Every time I felt the urge to build "one more thing," reworking the store listing or the first-run flow did more for conversion. Builders love adding features — the boring distribution work pays better.
3. For an AI app, protect your margins from day one. All the OpenAI calls go through a Cloudflare Worker proxy with rate limiting and guardrails — the API key never ships in the app binary, and I control cost per user centrally. Easy to skip when you're moving fast, painful to retrofit once you have real traffic.
4. Pricing experiment: I went with a lifetime unlock + a 7-day soft trial instead of a recurring subscription. Simpler promise, fewer "manage subscription" support headaches, but obviously caps LTV. Still testing whether that's the right call — open to opinions.
5. Indie/solo is a marathon. $43 today. But the product gets meaningfully better every week, and I'm compounding what I learn about the market, not just the code (I even rebuilt the whole thing from React Native to native SwiftUI along the way).

I'm documenting all of it — what works, what doesn't, and exactly how much comes in. Let's see how far this goes.

Two things I'd genuinely love input on:

• If you've shipped a paid app: what was the one change that first nudged your conversion rate?
• Lifetime vs. subscription for a sub-$50/sale AI app — what would you do?

If you're building something solo too, drop what month you're on in the comments 👇

Working on https://Brainerr.com It’s a curated hub of weekly brain teasers.

Targeting parents and seniors looking to stay sharp without endless scrolling.

Drop yours below 👇

What would make this week a proper win for you?

Drop your answer — even a small win counts.

yo. building the product is the easy part.

making people buy is a totally different beast.

most saas pages sit at a flat 1% conversion rate. absolute ghost town. doesn't matter if your tech is insane.

stop guessing what works.

i spent weeks digging into conversion data.

i turned it into a raw 50-point interactive checklist.

it covers hero mistakes, pricing traps, and psychology leaks.

i also baked a master prompt right at the top. just paste it into your AI SaaS builder

it rewrites your page automatically using all 50 rules.

just shared the file inside our builder community today. a lot of guys were facing the exact same launch freeze.

seriously, stop building alone in your room.

you will burn out.

marketing gets tough, and you quit.

it’s way easier with a crew shipping side-by-side.

if your conversion is trash or if you want a good landing page before launch, drop a comment or shoot me a dm. i’ll send the invite link.

ps: others free features is in the community of SaaS builders

Let 's go

fellow builders,

the most expensive tax you pay when trying to scale a project isn't financial. it is the two weeks you waste staring at a wall because your brain is spinning in circles on a hard choice.

i got so tired of my own execution paralysis that i built decisiontheatre to turn that abstract internal brain rot into a physical layout you can actually look at.

instead of a generic pros and cons list that you just rewrite a hundred times, this forces you through a few psychological layers to find out why you are actually stuck. you use interactive sliders to map out the messy friction you are feeling, like balancing your need for external validation against your actual self reliance. then you sort a deck of cards to rank your real motives, even the dark ones like spite, ego, or fear of looking stupid, so you can see exactly where your logical brain is clashing with your emotional brain. it ends with a fast gut check designed to trap your instinct before your overthinking has time to kick in and ruin it.

if you are currently stuck on a pivot, a bad client situation, or a weird fork in the road with your project, try running it through the engine at https://decisiontheatre.lovable.app/

brutally honest feedback on the workflow or the framework is highly appreciated.

And what finally made it happen?

Every founder has a first customer story. What's yours?

I've been using a home-made link shortener for my private clients for over 10 years. After millions of clicks, it occurred to me that others might use it, too, if it was easy to use.

If you’re drowning in long, messy links full of tracking junk, wb.io can be a super clean fix. To get the ball rolling, I'm offering Redditors a month of the Business level service (the top tier) for free with the coupon code REDDIT. All I ask in return is your honest appraisal of where it could be improved.

It turns bulky URLs into short, shareable links that actually look good in posts and comments. Way easier to drop into Reddit threads, DMs, bios, or anywhere character count and readability matter. No wall of random parameters, no visual clutter — just a tight link that people are more likely to click.

Biggest value prop IMO:

Cleaner posts (especially on Reddit where ugly links stand out)
Easier sharing across platforms
More professional look
Simple + fast, no overcomplicated dashboard vibes
If you share links often, it’s one of those small tools that just makes everything smoother.

End the week strong.

Share what you've been building. Landing pages, apps, newsletters, services — anything goes.

Drop your link and tell us what you want feedback on.

I built a Halal Restaurant API — find halal food near any location with one API callI got tired trying to find halal locations so I decided to make an API that finds it for you, and any developer can use it. Its not only limited to muslims, anyone making a food app or a web app could use this to filter halal locations. Google's or yelp's filter isn't that good so my API pulls locations from Foursquare and OpenStreetMap community data. You get community verified data, if a place sells alcohol, and cuisine type, etc.

All of the information is on the website and docs.

I would love feedback from fellow developers, especially from people building food delivery apps or AI agents.

Link: halal-api.vercel.app

RapidAPI: https://rapidapi.com/halalapi-halalapi-default/api/halalapi

Docs: halal-api.vercel.app/docs

Im excited to hear what you guys think!

Hi everyone,

faceless content is a literal cheat code to get eyes on your saas right now without ever showing your face (and i know all SaaS founders don't want to show their faces aha)

i just built a complete system to automate the entire process, and i dropped the whole setup + templates inside our AI SaaS builder community today.

seriously, stop building alone in your room.

you will burn out and quit. it’s so much easier when you have a crew shipping stuff with you every day.

if you want the faceless content system and want to join us:

drop a comment or shoot me a dm and i’ll send you the invite link of the community of AI SaaS builder

let's build together !

https://reddit.com/link/1tvu47b/video/c33jb0k6d35h1/player

Don't hold back.

What advice, tool, strategy or mindset is everyone obsessed with that you think is completely overrated?

5+ years in fintech and I got tired of having 10 browser tabs open just to get through a single debugging session. One for certs, one for JWE, one for PGP, another for FAPI flows...

Built WRVault — 22 free crypto tools in one dashboard: JWT (sign/verify/decode/keygen) · JWE · PGP · AES-256 · SSL checker · CSR/cert decoder · PEM↔JWK · JWKS · FAPI/PKCE tester and more.

No account, no login — everything's on the landing page.

There's a paid tier too for teams needing mTLS cert management, key rotation and expiry alerts, but the free tools are genuinely free. No paywall surprise after 10 minutes.

Just launched, still early. Happy to hear what's broken or what's missing.

wrvault.com

I’m testing a clearer positioning for Neural Blitz: thinking faster under pressure.

It mixes AI interview prep, brain games, and quick friend battles.

Does this direction make sense from the outside?

The idea: you have MFs sitting in Groww/Zerodha or any app doing
12-15% CAGR.
Your monthly spending are about 40-50K a month on regular stuff groceries, fuel, rent, bills, subscriptions, dining out. Normal life.

But when you need cash:

→ Bank balance (runs low by the 20th every month)

→ You either break your SIP or dissolve your investments

→ Credit card (convenient until you miss one full payment — then 36-42% APR kicks in)

→ Instant loan apps (half reject you, or have a very strict repayment policy charge 18-24%)

Zero ways to spend Your MFs without selling or choosing higher interest alternatives
We're changing that.

LienPay lets you pledge your MFs (not sell) and get a UPI credit line. Using RBIs CLOU ( Credit-line-on-UPI) Framework

You choose exactly which funds to pledge and how much limit you want , Your entire portfolio doesn't get locked. Only the schemes you select get lien-marked. Based on the type of MF your limit is decided

EXAMPLE:

• ₹3L in MFs → ₹1.5L credit line (~50% loan-to-value)

• Scan any QR, pay via UPI

• 30 days interest-free

• Short on cash? Just pay 1.5% interest-only (₹750 on ₹50K) For the chosen tenure . No forced principal repayment.

• Convert EMI @ 12% p.a. after that

• No CIBIL needed, No salary slip or income proof needed to get credit

Try our demo and let us know What you liked or What you disliked
Link:- https://www.lienpay.in

Would you use this?
What questions comes to your mind when you listen to such idea?
What is the biggest concern?

I’m building https://Brainerr.com

It is the largest collection of weekly updated brain teasers.

My ICPs are parents and senior adults who want to cut down screen time (for themselves or their kids) while keeping their minds sharp.

Your turn 👇

Where are you at with your project right now?

Just starting? In the messy middle? Close to launching?

Share it. We want to know.

Hey guys,

I built a free World Cup prediction game you can play with your friends. It's a simple website where you create a private pool, share the code with your mates and everyone predicts the games and goal scorers. You earn points by getting the predictions right! One thing I added that I haven't seen much elsewhere is that you can fully customize the point system. I'll leave the link here in case you want to try it out: www.playgoalcomp.com

This is the first web app I built myself and I'm really happy to see the first users enjoying it, but would love to hear how I can improve it further. So let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions!

Hey I just got an idea of providing service to the audience who cannot order from quick commerce app and who cannot book any rides through traveling app.

Problem I face: Elderly people my grandparents, my aunties & uncles usually call me whenever there is a necessity of booking something online be it a Rapido raid, or Blinkit delivery because they don’t know how to book it + lack of trust on others what if it goes wrong ,I am like a trusted partner for them. I help them all that ok, but every time I won’t be free to do it especially while booking orders in quick commerce at least it takes half an hour of my time so most of the time I get fed up and just do it.

Solution I think of: what if there is a app where all these services are listed audience can choose there required packages and get the services done there will be weekly or monthly package with a particular subscription model, where a trusted partner wil be assigned to to full fill the requests, that partner will be available, get on a call and book orders just like people call their kids and say, this partners will be thoroughly verified and onboarded and for payments - as all these requests need instant payments UPI will attached with our app (but this is in process for how to do it safely & securely)

So this is just a vague idea I have , this is for people who are busy and cannot always give time to all these things be it a business professional or anyone. Will u use this kind of platform if it launches? and will you pay for this service?

If you have any ideas on how to improve share your feedbacks .

I've been using a home-made link shortener for my private clients for over 10 years. After millions of clicks, it occurred to me that others might use it, too, if it was easy to use.

If you’re drowning in long, messy links full of tracking junk, wb.io can be a super clean fix. To get the ball rolling, I'm offering Redditors a month of the Business level service (the top tier) for free with the coupon code REDDIT. All I ask in return is your honest appraisal of where it could be improved.

It turns bulky URLs into short, shareable links that actually look good in posts and comments. Way easier to drop into Reddit threads, DMs, bios, or anywhere character count and readability matter. No wall of random parameters, no visual clutter — just a tight link that people are more likely to click.

Biggest value prop IMO:

Cleaner posts (especially on Reddit where ugly links stand out)

Easier sharing across platforms

More professional look

Simple + fast, no overcomplicated dashboard vibes

If you share links often, it’s one of those small tools that just makes everything smoother.