Andrea De Santis

Founder @GiveawayNinjaHQ • Built for brave Shopify Plus DTC brands. Hype is cool. Sales are better.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

How to build a Shopify App that prints money in 2026...

Spoiler: these old good days are gone.

I was chatting with a friend about indie hacking (I’ve been doing it for 13 years now 😅) when we realized that launching a brand-new Shopify app makes little sense unless you have a *pretty high* go-to-market budget to “bootstrap” it.

When the Shopify App Store launched in 2009, it was El Dorado: a free distribution channel where first movers planted their flags everywhere. Some disappeared; others became fortresses. Now search for “bundle”: 1,300+ apps. “Discount”: 4,300+. “Popup”: 1,000+. “Affiliate” ... You got it.

That's brutal: if you’re not near the top, you don’t exist. Merchants want quick wins; they’re not trying to catch apps like Pokémon.

Like it or not:

👉 The MVP is gone. Day-one expectations are polished UX, integrations, flawless onboarding: “Ship fast and iterate” only works if someone... installs first.

👉 Merchants expect 24/7 support. On Black Friday at 3 AM, they want Mr Wolf from Pulp Fiction, not your clever AI bot. That’s support team payroll, not a $200/month Hugo subscription.

👉 When anyone can vibe-code new features in a day, reviews, distribution, retention, and trust become the moat... and your competitors have a 15-year head start. Good luck jumping over the crocodiles.

👉 App Store ads can cost $30-70+ per click, and free plans are a tax. Now do the CAC math on a $15/month app, and suddenly buying a food truck doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, does it?

👉 Cold outreach is not “send a few emails.” Big players send millions of emails through hundreds of domains and 1,000+ warmed mailboxes. Infrastructure alone can cost $10–15K/month before closing a single deal.

👉 Platform risk is real. One Shopify Editions announcement can wipe your business overnight.

👉 Watch the veterans: many now sell boilerplates, courses, starter kits, and tools instead of launching more apps. When gold miners start selling shovels, pay attention.

👉 Big players set pricing expectations. https://t.co/qxe1AQFqxZ made “all-you-can-eat for $15/month” the benchmark for a whole category… and beyond. Every niche will eventually end up there.

👉 VC money found the App Store: this stopped being a nerd game years ago. The ecosystem matured, revenue became predictable, and the suits noticed. Now the "app" you're competing with has raised millions and runs a 30-person growth team: you're not up against a solo dev in a garage anymore; you're fighting against a cap table.

IMHO, that should reshape valuations too. Established apps may be worth more than the usual 2.5–4x: buyers are still paying 2019 multiples for businesses protected by 2026 barriers to entry, which also makes the classic “build to exit” dream look increasingly delusional.

Well, if you still want to launch a brand-new app from scratch in 2026, just follow Will Ferrell’s proven playbook: all you need is your own two hands, one old computer… and an $8 million loan from your father.

Very inspiring, sir. 🫡

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

Want the full strategy - setup, prize picks, entry mechanics, and how to run the AOV Booster?

It's all in the free Shopify Giveaway Playbook 👉 https://t.co/ISX54w686N

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

John Wick had a pencil… Shopify merchants have purchase-based giveaways.

And if he ran a Shopify store, I’m pretty sure he’d say: “Use Instagram giveaways to get attention. Use purchase giveaways to turn that attention into revenue. And use the damn AOV Booster!!!”

(For the uninitiated: the Average Order Value Booster is a digital product customers can add at checkout to multiply their giveaway entries: more entries for them, and a bigger cart for you. 💪)

Here’s how the full strategy works:

Instagram giveaways bring the likes, tags, follows, and reach. Great for getting people through the door. Purchase giveaways, take it from there.

Every order earns entries, while the AOV Booster gives customers a reason to spend just a little more for even more chances to win.

Result? Bigger carts, more entries, and higher average order value.

So don’t choose between Instagram giveaways and purchase giveaways: use Instagram to attract the crowd, then use Giveaway Ninja to turn that attention into sales. #shopify #dtc #ecommerce

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@robincingh @eComJonathanX Agree, not all their apps are free - the free ones are used to cross-sell the others, pretty common pattern for companies owning a Shopify App portfolio :)

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@elygiux Yep. Again.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@leteyski Will apply soon!

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

Correct, this is a real pain. Some hobbyists (to be gentle) open a store, install apps, commit to a trial, close the store, come back months later, and get mad at you because "you charged" after Shopify restores all the subscriptions. Shopify App developers are getting sick of all that review madness.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@faridmovsumov Same here... have a demo call in 5 minutes and everything is down 🥳 I need a rest, guys. Considering switching to WiX. No, just kidding, I am not so self-destructive.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@DsMatie Amazing stuff, just shared my two cents about what is happening with reviews recently here https://t.co/rH6u2p08Nw

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@patjakubik Stuff like this is holding me back from raising prices.

Merchants have too much power in that. While you can deliver huge value to top brands that don't blink at paying premium prices, it takes a minute for some random Karen to hold you hostage with such disgusting behavior.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

I’ve been thinking about this lately lol.

There’s an old trend that seems to be making a comeback.

I remember when I first started, some merchants were much more inclined to “blackmail” app developers with things like “add this feature, or I’ll leave a bad review,” and similar behavior.

Then, for years, it felt like that had mostly stopped.

Now it looks like it’s becoming trendy again.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@faridmovsumov Don't worry, another Reviewgeddon will come soon, I can feel it in the air.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

Report that to Shopify immediately; at least there is a track that you are in good faith. It is becoming a far west lately. I also noticed some strange install patterns lately, keeping track, but having to deal with these and preparing for forensics is totally distressing and mentally draining.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

I love the smell of 5-star Shopify app reviews in the morning. Especially the ones I answered support for myself LOL 🥷 @GiveawayNinjaHQ

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@yeramianm When it works, it’s dead simple. The problem starts when you get “refund failed.” Once, I got stuck with Partner Support for a month over this. Luckily, the customer was very chill.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

I don’t know your cost structure, but let’s say you’re netting $4k/month. That’s $48k/year in SDE, so a $100k valuation is roughly a 2x multiple, whereas ideally you should aim for 3.5–4.5x.

And in my opinion, given how competitive Shopify apps are, valuations should probably be even higher. Not to mention that hitting $5k in the first month is a strong signal that the app is working.

So, unless you’re burned out on the app and support is manageable, I’d keep it ;)

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@patrickbo11e Yeah! Previously, if you needed to send a collaborator access request, you could do so directly from Partners by finding the shop that already uses the app. Now the button is gone, so you have to use the longer flow... 😅

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@DaveDiederen @malisauskasLT Over $1M, they should send S.W.A.T by default, I guess.

[Andrea De Santis @mrpokoto]

@DsMatie Agree. This will remain a mystery to me lol

Not to mention every GTM guru is apparently running 47 outreach agents in parallel while sipping mojitos🍹, all producing outstanding benchmarks....mmm ok.