I built and released a new mobile game and it took about two days from the first line of code to getting it approved on the app store. This same game would've probably taken me months to build but I've been using Claude Code lately and coding feels basically solved at this point. The hard part isn't coding, it's everything else. It's less about building the house and more about the blueprint.
I've been trying to make at least $1,000 a month from my own apps and this is month three. When I started this series I had one app making $8 a month. Now it's $19 and I've shipped a few more. I have four apps and each one is teaching me a different lesson about what actually matters now that pretty much anyone can build. These are the four apps.
I built all of them for iOS, Android, and web using Flutter with some native Swift and Kotlin. Supabase for the backend, RevenueCat for subscriptions, AdMob for ads, and a lot of Claude Code.
💰 MRR $19 / mo
So as I write this I'm at $19 a month. I need to increase this number. Most of it comes from Ritualz and Expensif since they've been out the longest but I think Tuteee and Blink Battle have higher potential. I use RevenueCat for subscriptions and I love it because it's super easy to set up. I made tutorials for both RevenueCat and AdMob if you want to learn how to monetize your apps.
🔥 Ritualz Habit Tracker
Ritualz is a habit tracker and the first app of this series. More of a learning project than anything — just getting a real app through the whole process and onto the app stores. Fifteen hundred users, fifteen daily active. One percent retention (which is very bad). And now that anyone can vibe code an app, a habit tracker is probably the most common one people build. But this one taught me how to build and ship so it was a valuable part of the journey. I can build the house now. The question is whether it's the right house.
💳 Expensif Personal Finance
Expensif is a personal finance app. The natural next step from Ritualz. More complex, more design work. Beautiful UI but same story — there are hundreds of expense trackers out there. These first two were really just me refining my craft. Learning how to build and ship, setting up landing pages, buying domain names, the whole process.
Speaking of domain names — all my domains, ritualz.app, expensif.app, tuteee.app — I get them all from Porkbun. If you need a domain name just go to Porkbun. Super easy, transparent pricing. You can get .app and .dev domains for $5.99 for the first year through my link below.
💬 Tuteee AI Math Tutor
Before I got into coding I was teaching math for a living. Tuteee is an AI chatbot tutor wrapped in a 100-level math game. And this app raises a question I think about constantly. Why would someone use this instead of just asking AI directly?
I was building interactive UIs and visual graphs into the chat experience and then the next week Claude releases basically the same thing as a built-in feature. So the question becomes what are you actually building that AI itself won't just do better tomorrow?
A few things I keep coming back to. Going narrow. General AI does everything for everyone. But a specific app for a specific type of student learning a specific subject can be way more useful than a general chat window. There's also data — over time the app learns what my users get stuck on and what actually helps them improve. That compounds. And then there's distribution. If the right students and teachers find this app, they're not going to compare it to a general AI. They're going to use it because it was built for them.
So the direction is go narrow, go deep, move fast.
🎮 Blink Battle Game
I built this in about 2 days with Claude Code. Inspired by Starcraft which was my favourite game growing up. I put it out, shared it on my IG, and quickly realised I made the game way too hard. Most people were stuck on level two. When I looked at what mobile games people are actually playing they're all easy dopamine hits. Meanwhile mine felt like a punishment.
Two days to build. And I still shipped the wrong difficulty curve. Speed didn't save me from that. I still had to put it in front of real people to find out what was actually wrong. The house went up fast. The floor plan was still wrong.
But the bigger thing I noticed is the same pattern from every app. There are thousands of games out there. How does anyone find mine? I keep building things and then realising the hard part starts after you ship. Getting it in front of people. That was always a hard problem but it's becoming THE problem now that building is easy.
Coding is Solved. Now What?
I spend more time now deciding what to build than actually building it. That never used to be the case. Building used to be the whole job. Now I can ship an app in days and the real questions are completely different. Not "can I build this" but "should I build this." Not "how do I code this feature" but "will anyone care."
When anyone can build, building isn't the advantage anymore. The advantage is knowing what to build. Having real experience with a real problem. And then getting it in front of the right people.
That last part — distribution — that's the one I've been avoiding. I've been heads down building for three months. Four apps. Nineteen dollars. And I think the reason it's still nineteen is because I've been doing the comfortable thing. Coding is comfortable for me. Putting myself out there is not.
And honestly that's partly why I'm making this video. This series, this written piece, me sharing what I'm learning — this IS me trying to solve the distribution problem. Not in theory. Right now.
And it's funny because I actually made this entire video with Claude Code. No video editor. And I ran into the exact same thing. The editing wasn't the hard part. Figuring out what I actually wanted to say was the hard part. It all comes down to the same question no matter what you're making. The tools are solved. What are you going to do with them?
Maybe the answer is: you have to do the things that don't scale. The human stuff. Talk to people. Show your work. Share what you're building and why. Figure out what you actually want to say. Everyone can build the house now. The question is whether anyone wants to live in it.
Month three. Nineteen dollars. Long way from a thousand. But I know the right questions now. And that's different from where I started.
Download the apps and let me know what you think. Good or bad. Especially bad.