How I Code Profitable Apps SOLO (beginner / step by step / best tools)

Key Takeaways

How do you build a profitable app from scratch solo? [music] Well, get a coffee, get comfy, because this is going to be a behind-the-scenes journey of me building an app from scratch. And we're starting this journey flying to Bali. And this video is going to focus on the start of the process. So, getting an idea, figuring out what features to make, what text act to use. I'm going to go through all of that in this video and I'm going to share the whole process and I've already made some mistakes already. So, I'm going to share those with you. So, if you're watching this and you're thinking like, I want to build an app, but I have no idea where to start. Then, this is the perfect video and subscribe. I'll be doing more like this. I'll take you on the full journey of building this app from scratch. Okay. Also, later on in the video, I'm going to show you how to how do you actually get started making like a mobile app? Like, what's the process? So, I'm going to show you a free way. All you need is your phone and [music] your computer, whatever, and I'll show you how to get started. So, if you're on the fence, let's just get something going and [music] we can go from there. But that's later on in the video. But the journey starts in Bangkok airport. I'm going to fly to Bali. And I've been thinking basically for a year about what kind of app I wanted to make. Start to give it more thought, take it more seriously. Thought about what kind of app I wanted to make, what kind of ideas I have, what problem I'm trying to solve, and started to settle on something. If you're stuck on this part, there's a book, an ebook I recommend from Peter Levelvels, who's basically like the OG number one indie hacker in the world. [music] And he recommends that you look at it through problems. But you don't have to buy the book. I'm going to sum it up for you now. Cuz what he says is spend one to two weeks [music] in your day-to-day life just writing down whatever problems you face. So rather than thinking of like a genius startup idea, just think of like annoyances in your life or at work. Then brainstorm just simple tools that can remove that pain of [music] that problem or just pick an app which is already out there already does good revenue and give it your own twist and think about how I can improve this product. How can I put my own twist on it? For this is a few resources I recommend. There's a great YouTube channel called Starter Story and also a few websites where they actually show you the revenue of successful apps. So if you're looking at some of these and you're thinking like I could add my own twist onto this, go for it. The mistake I did, I just overthought this stage too much. And I had people commenting on my last video asking for like what ideas, you know, how to come up with ideas. Just start. And it might not even be the best idea, but it's best just to get yourself into this mode of building. [music] Worst case scenario, you've learned a bunch about how to make and build stuff. Best case scenario, you have a business and a product which could sustain your life. The first idea I had which I went deep into for like maybe like two or three months was building a platform for co-l livingiving or co- co-working spaces. So I'm a digital nomad and I just know this area really well and I just didn't go with it. But it's something I could do in the future. What I settled on is I love this idea of being a polymath and having lots of different hobbies. That was the core idea to make an app for people who want to be a polymath. They want to learn loads of different interests. He want loads of different hobbies rather than doom scrolling to use your phone to learn. So this is the rough idea I have. But how do we make this thing? Well, let's get into it. And I've been building this in Bali, which is a really inspiring place to be because there's loads of people building stuff. You know you're in Bali when you're watching the ocean and your view is blocked by four screens and one of them's a crypto dashboard. So each day I'll wake up, this is where I'm staying. Then I'll go to the gym. I'll do like my job, my client work. So I'm a freelance software engineer. do a better content as well. And then take a break and then go back to building the app in like a another coffee shop. Usually in this place, it's like a co-work cafe. It's free. Just a really cool vibe. You just buy some food and you can work there as long as you want. But bear in mind, if you have a full-time job and you're building an app, it's going to be intense. So yeah, definitely felt intense for me. It felt like I was working so much, but also I was really motivated. And this is the MPM install, [music] the first bit of this app. And it is an exciting part when you're just building something. I always document the first mpm install because it's quite a big moment. But what text stack am I using? Let's talk about it. So for the language, I narrowed it down to Cotlin multiplatform or TypeScript using React Native. I ended up going with React Native and Expo. And let me explain why. So the biggest reason is I just know it the best. I've made a big app last year using it. And there's something called Expo, which is a platform built on top of React [music] Native. and it just allows you to get going really quick. But let's do this together and let me show you. Firstly, we go on this website here. It's called expo.dev. And then you click on docs. All right. And then just copy that command there. And then go into whichever coding editor you're using. I'm using cursor here. So I copy that and then boom. It's going to ask me a lot of questions. I just say yes. Okay. I just cleaned my screen because it was dirty as hell. But yes, then you get this. You want then you want to go again run start. Okay. Then it will open this. Make sure it's saying using Expo Go. Then you want to take a picture of this QR code. Opening Expo Go. Click. >> Okay. And that is it. Look, this is a mobile app that you can now customize. Now, React Native and Expo aren't perfect. You're going to get issues when they update Expo. I find it screws things up a lot. But to get started, this is a good option. All right. And what about the back end? So, I ended up going with Superbase. The reason for that is the data and my back end is just not really too complex. So there's not like relationships between different types of data. So for this app, it just made sense. It also uses a Postgress [music] database which I know well. So this is a theme you'll find with this is just use the technology that you know the best. Also users are going to need to log in, register, reset password, all that kind of stuff and Superbase has that builtin. Now there's another option which is also really good called clerk but I went for superbase. for styling the app. I thought about using Native Wind, which is like Tailwind for a mobile app, and then I was just like, nah. So, I'm just using styled components. And the reason why I love this text stack too with JavaScript is [music] just there's so much built on JavaScript, like web apps, mobile apps, and whatever feature you want, there's probably a library for it. Like last year, I wanted to put Google Maps into my mobile app, and there was [music] just loads of different options for it. And also, a lot of the LMS are trained on JavaScript code. Okay, quick pause. I'm going to take you on a little bike journey through Bali. In the meantime, if you're enjoying the video, if you're getting any value at all, I'd massively appreciate if you just like the video. Help me out hugely and subscribe if you want. Also, I have a newsletter with like written content about this process. That's in the description. Back to the video. I might make a full video on this, but I quickly want to talk about some of the apps that I'm using at this stage in the process to make this app. So, the first one is Canva. This is really good for like branding and like marketing. So I just made these logos. Also I use for note takingaking I use Notability. So I used Apple notes and I find I need an app to help. So it's really good for organizing stuff. If I have like features or ideas for viral videos or like anything regarding the app, I put it in its own folder. And it has these templates you can use. So like when you're mapping out an API or thinking about features or like [music] relationships in the database, whatever. It's like a second brain for me of like tech but also this app. So yeah, really good note takingaking app link in description if you want to check this out. And also Manis, so if you've not heard of Manis, it's like Metaboted recently. It's like an AI tool which is really good for research. So at this stage in the process where you're figuring stuff out, it's a really good deep research tool. Also Reddit, like I use Reddit for just random questions about like tools, marketing, use it all the time. So I'm using these apps a lot right now at this stage. And to build it, I'm using three AI coding tools. cursor, claw code, and warp. This is overkill, okay? You only need one, and this is how I'd approach it if I was you. If you don't want to spend too much money, just use cursor $20 a month. You got a little bit more, use cursor, and also claw code at $20 a month. And experiment with some different ones because it's whatever you vibe with, which do you like using the most? And they always change as well. There's anti-gravity, Gemini 3 is really good for front ends, but if you want to keep it simple, cursor and cloud code, you can't go wrong. Now, I've got a bit of a hack here because at this point, you might be tempted to buy like a boiler plate or a starter pack for a mobile app which has authentication, screens, routing already included. I just find they never work. The free ones are terrible. They're just poorly maintained. Or if you buy one, then you're relying on someone else for the boiler plate to be maintained and updated. What I would recommend is pretend that you're going to build 10 apps. spend a little bit more time now building a nice simple vanilla boiler plate which has authentication, login, reset password, all this kind of thing like blank screens and then when you're building your second app, you can just rather than starting totally from scratch, you can just use that again. Or what you could do is just worry about the authentication right at the end. So make the app and then worry about authentication as a final step. Now here's a trick though. We don't just jump in generating loads of code. We use plan mode. And what this does is you just talk to the AI about what kind of features, what kind of app you want to build, and it will just make you a to-do list. There'll be a back and forth. We'll ask you loads of questions. It'll be like, "What do you want for this? What do you want for that?" And one of the biggest things I learned at this point is like coding with AI is like a train. It can take you in the wrong direction really quickly. It will generate loads of code, waste loads of tokens, and cost you money. So, plan mode helps you stop that. And I want the app to have three or four screens. I'm not focused on the UX so much or what it looks like. I just want to get the functionality [music] sorted. And at this point, I added in the Superbase MCP server, which is you can think of it like plugging in a USB for AI where it has access to all this data. And it was just so good. It synced the back end to my app with just a [music] few prompts. So, if you're using Zubase, I recommend the MCP server. And I'm still figuring out features. I'm still figuring out what I want it to look like, but I'm going to the gym a lot. I'm working. And when I get space in my [music] day, even if I get like 20 minutes, I'm getting on claw, I'm getting on cursor, and trying to build this thing out. And I've heard some people say they don't enjoy [music] coding with AI, I still will manually code things when I need to, particularly styling. [music] But I find it exciting that I can build so quickly. This would have taken me months years ago. But it's also destabilizing, I'd say, just seeing this AI generate all this code, which took me years to learn. But I guess as this becomes more normal, that will pass. So, at this point, I've figured out exactly what I want this app to do. I want it to focus on people who have many different [music] passions, many different hobbies. They want to learn. They want to improve themselves. And this is an app to help them organize and do that. So, rather than doom scrolling, they can learn about chess, [music] astronomy, SQL, or self-improvement. So, how to improve their voice and be less monotone. And I'm thinking to split it into deeper, longer road [music] maps if you want to learn a new hobby, but also a quick screen with introductions to new subjects. So, if you go into this app, you know you're going to learn something new. But let's see how this develops and let me know in the comments what you think. I'm going to share more about this in the next few videos. Subscribe if you want to see those. And one thing I spent an embarrassing amount of time on was the name of the app. So, I thought about hobbies or fun, hobbyism, the anti-brain app. I spent so much time on this and then it just hit me, the Polymath app. A polymath is a person with deep extensive knowledge and expertise across many different fields. And I practice this as well. So, I've made loads of reels for like 2 years about all the different hobbies that I have on my page and they seem to connect with people. So, this is the reason why marketing it I don't think is going to be too much of a problem. And the next step and the final step for this video was to make a weight list. It's in the description. I use Framer and Forms Spark. Again, probably spent too long on that cuz it was easy to pick a template. So, Framer has loads of different templates, but then I got bogged down on the logo for like 2 days, but I think it looks really cool. What does it look like? Please let me know your honest feedback [music] in the comments. And that's it for this one. If you got any value from this, the only thing I ask, I'd massively [music] appreciate it. It's free for you. Just like the video, subscribe if you want to see the next installment. I will see you in the next one. Happy coding. Take care. Bye-bye.