Dan Vailur

Indie dev | Building my one-person business and sharing everything I learn along the way. | Goal → $10,000 MRR

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

3 years of living on savings barely earning $200-400/month from mobile apps.

Last month I hit ramen profitable with my mobile apps.

Next goal: $10k/month SaaS.

Dad of 1, soon 2. No safety net. Just faith.

Let's see if I can make it! 👊

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Looking back at my last 8 weeks:

My 'unproductive' weeks: signed a partnership, made the call to kill an app, planned the SaaS.

My 'productive' weeks: shipped 40 commits and 3 features nobody used.

Output isn't progress. Decisions are.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Registered a trademark on my app name 4 months ago.

This week Apple pulled 3 clones that copied my icon and keywords.

I didn't even file a complaint. The trademark just makes their auto-enforcement actually work.

$250 well spent.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Apparently once your app crosses ~$700k/month, Apple assigns you a dedicated account manager.

Review times drop. Rejection appeals get answered in hours. Edge cases get human eyes.

The App Store is two stores. Most of us are shopping in the wrong one.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Quiet milestone: my TikTok slideshow automation tool just crossed $1k MRR.

Funny part. Half my users are creators whose main accounts got shadow banned and they're rebuilding from zero.

When the platform punishes humans, the tools that help them scale win.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

vibe coded a 4 player realtime game in an afternoon

no redis, no game server, no rooms architecture. just supabase realtime channels and claude

works for 50 concurrent users. when it breaks ill rebuild it. shipping beats planning

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Building a Chrome extension for my SaaS this week.

Same data, different surface. A web user opens 20 tabs a day, the extension is 20 reminders the product exists.

Free top of funnel that Apple can't reject.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Submitted my lifetime offer for review on Oct 14.

Resubmitted Oct 22. Resubmitted Nov 3. Resubmitted Nov 18.

Identical binary every time. Still 'in review'.

Meanwhile my yearly converts at 4% and lifetime would print. Apple, please..

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Dance AI: launched ~6 weeks ago, currently $860k/month.

Viral content generation apps are the new gold rush. The pattern:

- one TikTok-native output format
- one tap to generate
- paywall before the result

That's the whole playbook right now.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

The math nobody runs:

10 apps x $5k/month = $50k/month
Apple's 15% cut: -$7.5k
Servers + tools: -$500

$42k/month at 92% margin.

One $50k app is sexier. Ten $5k apps is a business.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Shipped my first SaaS landing page yesterday.

No review. No 'Guideline 4.3'. No 48 hour wait to fix a typo in a button.

Just pushed and it was live.

I forgot software could feel like this.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Top grossing niche I didn't see coming:

Unclaimed property finder apps. $710k+/month.

Class action settlements, missing checks, dormant accounts. People will pay $9.99/week to maybe find $40.

Legal-tech-as-utility is wide open.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Non-game apps over $50k/mo in the last 90 days: 57
Games over $50k/mo in the same window: 169

Everyone's chasing AI wrapper apps. Games are quietly printing 3x more winners.

Might be time to learn Unity.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Appfigures data just dropped.

57 non-game apps launched in the last 90 days are already pulling $50k+/month.

57. In 90 days.

Anyone telling you the App Store is saturated isn't shipping.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

asked claude to build realtime pitch detection for a singing app

15 minutes later i had working FFT analysis, note recognition, and a tuner UI in SwiftUI

3 years ago this would've been a weekend of stack overflow rabbit holes

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

Changed one paywall button from 'Continue' to 'Try free for 7 days'.

Nothing else. Same flow, same price, same design.

Conversion went from 3.1% to 4.6% overnight.

Button copy is the cheapest A/B test you'll ever run.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

@kalashvasaniya nice

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

@umeshchw Codex

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

@athcanft That’s the true freedom

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

@thatweb3gee @circuitx_app MRR goes BRRR. Now lets ship more stuff.

[Dan Vailur @dvailur]

@skirano I miss the iPod or iPhone 5 days. Do you think we still need a device with screen though?