I cloned 3 apps and now make $35K/month

My name is Samuel and I run three apps

making $35,000 a month.

You might think you need to come up with

a completely new idea. But I just met a

guy who does the exact opposite. His

strategy is simple. One, find an app

that's working. And two, make it 1%

better.

If it's already successful, I know it's

validating.

But don't be fooled. He's not just

copying and pasting. And in this

episode, he breaks down his meticulous

method for finding winning ideas and

turning them into successful apps. We'll

get into where the best ideas are hiding

in plain sight, how to validate fast so

you don't waste months working on a

failed project, and the playbook for

researching and replicating successful

apps that you can put into practice

today., All right,, let's, dive, in., I'm, Pat

Walls, and this is Starter Story.

[Music]

All right, welcome Samuel to the

channel. Thanks for coming on. Tell me

about who you are and what's your story.

So, my name is Samuel Rondo. I used to

have a full-time job, but I quit a few

years ago and I taught myself to code on

YouTube and now I run three SAS apps

that are making $35,000 per month.

Okay, cool. So, before we get into all

your apps and how they grew, you said

that you actually taught yourself how to

code. How did you do that? And could you

break that down for us? So yeah

actually I used to be an optician and I

had the zero coding experience. At the

time I wanted to rebuild a tool I was

using for Instagram, but this time I

wanted to build it myself using code. I

ended up following a 15-hour course on

YouTube. And every time I learn

something new in the course, I

immediately try to apply it to that tool

I was building. So if you just watch a

course, most of the time it's not enough

because you end up losing yourself in

the languages that you will probably

never use and you don't really see why

you are learning what you are learning.

But yeah, it all starting like this

following a YouTube course and it

quickly became a passion for me.

Cool. All right. Well, for anyone

watching this today who wants to learn

how to code, how to build apps, what

would be your advice? What would be your

framework or playbook or how you'd get

started? If I were 18 years old now, I

don't think I would learn to code the

traditional way. I would probably just

use AI coding tools. And with AI today

you can literally build like 90% of most

apps. So my framework today would be

one, pick a real project. Two, ask JPT

what you need to learn to build it. So

for example, you go on Google or on

Twitter and you find a product you like

and you take a screenshot of that page

and you ask JPT, how can I build just

the landing page to start? and three

build step by step asking Chad GPT for

help at each roadblock. I would of

course ask him to use modern

technologies like Nexjs, NodeJS.

That's awesome. What I really want to

talk about is ideas and finding

successful ideas. You have multiple

successful products and you share with

me your strategy for how you found

those. Could you tell me a little bit

more about that?

I'm someone a bit lazy and I don't have

unlimited energy. So I have one rule

that is really crucial for me is to

never build something that doesn't

already exist and isn't already

successful or at least getting some

traction. So this way I reduce my chance

of failure and I increase my chances of

success. So usually to find products

idea my number one source of idea is

Twitter especially around communities

like solopreneur in the building public

etc. And then I look for things that are

working or products that I personally

like. Here are my four keys filter.

Number one, I will use it myself. Number

two, I can see that it already works.

And three, they are not spending

thousand on marketing, meaning there is

a true demand. And four, the product is

simple enough to maintain. If your

product passes this filter, then usually

I'm confident building it.

Okay, let's go a little bit deeper on

that. When you come across ideas online

what is the actual criteria that you're

looking at? what are some of the numbers

and websites and things that you look at

to know if this is worth building and if

this is validated.

So first the most important thing I look

for traction. Uh the best signal you can

find on Twitter is when founders share

their MR screenshot or stripe

screenshot. Uh I know that sounds basic

but honestly it's the ultimate proof

that the tool is working and that people

are paying for it. Second I analyze how

they are getting their customers. So I

use href to check their traffic sources.

So, are they getting customers only from

ads or are they also ranking on SEO? If

they are growing with both ads and SEO

that's a very good sign because it shows

a strong demand and it's usually easier

to replicate their success. Is they rely

mostly on SEO? It can be harder because

SEO takes time, but it's still doable if

I'm patient. And third, I check if the

product is technically something I can

build and maintain easily. I don't want

to build a product that will make me

lose sleep maintaining a complex back

end. Simplicity is very important for

me. And uh finally I asked myself, do I

actually like the product? Because

there's nothing worse than working on a

product you don't care about. If I don't

enjoy using it myself, I won't have the

motivation to keep going longterm. So in

short, uh traction first, analyze

traffic sources, check if I can build it

easily, and make sure I like the

product.

That strategy is cool, and it's amazing

to have it kind of all boiled down, but

I want to hear how it actually applied

to your actual apps that you built. How

did that strategy specifically work?

So actually the first real app I built

was usimus and at that time I didn't use

that strategy and it was a mistake

because I ended up building an email

finding tool that have for competitors

big names like Apollo limb list and

stuff like that and it was so difficult

to maintain. So after us I really

decided to build something that will be

easier to maintain and that's how I end

up building story short. So I saw a post

from a guy building a tool to automate

posting faceless video on YouTube, Tik

Tok, etc. And the numbers were crazy. So

I started to investigate is it hard to

build and where is the traffic coming

from? The really good thing with this

one is all the traffic was from Facebook

ads which means I can replicate it

literally in a week because Facebook ads

you just have to start it and you have

the traffic. So I went for it. I built

the tool launched ads and story shorti

grew very fast. So story short, it was

100% the process I described earlier. I

validated the idea. I saw there a clear

demand. It was simple product and it was

a market I was personally interested in.

All right,, before, we, finish, talking

about how Samuel grew his apps to

$34,000 per month, let's talk about

something a lot of solers struggle with.

Design. You've got a working idea. You

know it solves a problem, but suddenly

you've wasted hours taking screenshots

just to figure out how to make your app

look good. That's where Mobin comes in.

Mobin is the world's largest library of

realworld mobile and web app designs.

Over 1.7 million people, from Airbnb

designers to indie devs, use it to find

inspiration, study flows, and build

smarter, not slower. You can search

thousands of actual product screens by

keyword, flow, or even style. Whether

you need an onboarding flow, payw wall

layout, or just a clean signup form

Mobin shows you exactly how the best

apps do it so you don't have to start

from scratch. Whether you're building

your first app or your 10th, it's a

massive timesaver. Just click the first

link in the description to check out

Mobin. Thank you to Mobin for sponsoring

this video. All right, let's get back to

Samuel. All right, so I mean on that

note, can you break down the three

different businesses that you built that

are all successful?

Okay, so I built us.com. It's a LinkedIn

scrapping tool that is making around

$15,000 per month and has around 10,000

customers. I have storyshow.ai, which is

an AI video generator for Tik Tok and

YouTube that is making around $20,000

per month and has around $4,000

customers. And Capacity.so, which is

brand new. It's an AI coding tool that

is making currently $900 per month and

has around 50 users.

Okay, that's awesome. So we talked about

the ideas, we talked about the framework

for finding ideas, let's talk about what

everyone wants to hear about, which is

once you find the idea, how do you grow

the business? What growth strategies are

you using and how do you know which ones

to do?

So I always start by running ads. It's

always the first thing I do. So I do it

on Google and meta depending on the

product. Sometimes it's better on

Google, sometimes it's better on meta.

It's the fastest way to validate and

test the market. And as soon as I get

some traction with ads, I move to the

second part of the growth, which is SEO.

I think too many apps rely only on ads

and never got a single visitor from

Google. Of course, SEO takes time, but

once it works, it's almost free traffic

and it compounds. I also use faceless

YouTube channels to grow my apps. I even

created a feature inside Story Short for

this. The idea is that story short will

automatically publish daily UGC style

video about your product on YouTube

channels, Tik Tok and Instagram. You can

create multiple channel that talk about

your product every day on autopilot. So

depending on your niche, this can bring

crazy results over time. It works really

well. And finally, I do affiliate

marketing. I did it for all those three

apps, especially on Story Short. It's a

super important because not only does it

bring clients at a fixed cost, but it

also create virality because I have many

people doing a YouTube video about story

short writing articles. So it bring a

zero results and people are more likely

to share your product if they earn a

commission. So in short to my grow stack

is one start with ads. Two build SEO as

soon as there's traction three use

faceless YouTube channel to drive

attention on also on Tik Tok and

Instagram. And four run an affiliate

program to boost virality and get

customers at a fixed price.

All right, cool., Well, on, a, similar, note

let's talk about tech stack. I know you

don't come from a software engineering

background but what stack do you build

your apps in and how do you deploy

these? So all my apps are built with

NexJS and NodeJS for the coding part. I

use Href for the SEO analysis and I use

also AI tools for writing articles. So

for the SEO so I was using SEO which is

really great but now I just switched to

a new one called outrank.so. It really

automates the writing of article posted

automatically on your blog and I use

Versel for deploying my apps, Stripe for

payments and yeah that's it. That was

great. On a similar note, people who are

watching are probably wondering, "Okay

you're telling us how much money your

business is making, but what's the

profit? What's the cost to run this

business and how profitable are these?"

Well, us cost me around $4,000 per

month. And story short, cost me around

$5,000 per month. So, it cost a bit less

than us because Artimis you have to run

instances to automate many things. So

it's quite expensive. And capacity, I

can't tell yet, but it will be quite

expensive because we have to run

instances to deploy a website each time.

Cool. You built a bunch of successful

businesses. Some things have worked

some things haven't. What did you learn

while building those businesses that

surprised you?

What really surprised me uh is that you

don't need to innovate. You just need to

see what is working on ex in

communities, on forums, and build your

own alternative, your own version of a

product. If you like the product and see

that it's working, just clone the idea

build an MVP in two weeks and launch ads

immediately. I think people are always

over complicated this uh but simple

boring tools are what makes the most of

money I think.

Great. And last question that we ask

everyone who comes onto the channel, if

you could go back in time and stand on

Samuel's shoulder when you were an

optitian, what advice would you give him

to get started to build apps and make

money online? My first advice would be

of course to use AI coding tools. At

that time there was no coding tool but

today you can use so many AI coding

tools that I think that I wouldn't have

learned to code. Two would be spend time

learning Google ads and meta even X ads

and there are many ads you can learn.

Three launch as soon as possible. Skip

the boring parts of building a SAS like

the password reset pages setting pages.

Just launch the minimal basic products

and run ads to test demand right away.

Once you get traction, focus on SEO. It

will bring a compounding free traffic

over time. And even if one day you want

to sell the tool, having SEO traffic is

also very valuable. And automate as much

as you can use automation tools. So like

outrank, story short, etc. to automate

posting, article creation, as much as

you can. Finally, once you have growth

and customers coming daily, I would

finish the product, bring new feature

etc.

All right. Well, that's great advice. I

love your strategy. I love the business

that you're building. Thank you for

coming on the channel, Samuel. And I

hope everyone watching this learned

something and you're going to build cool

stuff because of it. Thanks for coming

on.

Thanks bud.

I love Samuel's story because it goes to

show that you don't need to invent a

brand new idea. You can go find

something that's already working and

just make it a little bit better. With

the right process and the right

approach, anybody can build something

successful. And inside Starter Story

Build, we'll show you how to build apps

the right way. In just 2 weeks, you'll

find an idea, build it with AI, and ship

it out into the world. Over 1,000 people

have already joined and shipped their

first apps. So, if you want to finally

bring your idea to life, head to the

link in the description and check out

Starter Story Build. Thank you guys for

watching. We'll see you in the next one.

Peace.