How I Code Profitable Apps SOLO (Idea + Build + Marketing Guide)

If you want to work for yourself, you want to build a passive income [music] or just earn more money on the side, or you want to become a digital nomad like I am, [music] then building your own app is a great way to achieve all of these goals because you can work for yourself. You can have a lot of freedom in your life. You can work from anywhere and it's never been easier than right now to build your own SAS app, whatever. And in this video, I'm going to give you a rundown of how to do it from idea to getting your app in front of people. And if you clicked on this video, you clearly want to do it. So, this is a complete playbook for you. It barely costs any money to start as well. So, no excuses. Let's get to it. We're going to go from how to come up with a good idea all the way through to real customers testing and using your product out there in the world. In this year, I created a mobile app from scratch which is about to be used by the UK government. And over the last 5 years, I have built a lot of different apps. So, I've built finance, AI, SAS, and now it's time to branch out and make my own after building apps for other people. And I taught myself to code at 30, so I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed by the technical side of making an app. But if you take it step by step and follow this playbook I'm going to give you, you will get there. You just got to become a problem solver, basically. And I'll teach you how. But if there's one thing I've learned is that building it is just the first step. Things have changed now. Now it's a lot easier to build. So a lot of your focus should be on distribution, i.e. how to get eyeballs on your product. And before I worked in tech, I actually worked in marketing for a few years. So learn all about this. And it's still creative to say this, but I've built up a social media following of about half a million people. And this is one of the best things you can do to get distribution for your product. I'm going to make another video on that. So subscribe if you want to see it. So, the reason I'm saying this is that along the way, I've learned how to build an app from scratch, but also how to market it, to get in the hands of real users, not just your weird uncle or your grandmother. So, the whole goal of my page is to teach you guys these skills. All I ask is that if you do get value, just like the video. It's free for you, but help me out massively. And I'm going to be building myself. So, let's go on this journey together. Travel the world doing it. Have fun and build cool stuff. And it doesn't have to be a million dollar app. You can literally just copy something that's already on the market and it could pay your rent. Okay, we're 2 minutes in. Let's get to the first technical question. Do you need to learn to code? Different people on YouTube will tell you different things. This is my take. I think you should, but the definition of learn to code has changed a lot with AI. It's basically a lot easier nowadays. Also, you don't need to go [music] as deep as a software engineer, which is what I am, would do. I.e., you don't have to know data structures and algorithms, which is what I teach on this channel. Now, if you enjoy it, go deeper. All right? But if you just want to build an app, just learn the fundamentals. Then you learn as you go. So, this is called project-based learning. It is the best way to learn where you are presented with problems, real world problems for your app, and you learn coding by solving these problems. [music] And the reason I recommend it is that knowing some fundamentals, you can speak the language of code to an AI coding assistant. For example, with front end, it's just really helpful to know some HTML CSS when you're getting these horrendous errors that you're definitely going to get. And also, if you are serious about this, then learning how to code, I'd say, is a good idea. In a perfect world, you'll learn clean code, but this is not a perfect world. You want to [music] build an app. So, learn what you need to and learn by doing. But let's rewind. Let's go to step one, the idea. Or a good way to look at it is a problem you're trying to solve. Now, if you got literally no idea here, a good thing to do is focus on real world problems that you have. So, maybe write down a list of five to 10 problems in your life that can be solved by technology. Because if you're having this issue, I bet you other people are, and they're willing to pay for a service that solves that problem. Or if you can't find any problems in your own life, just copy a product or a service that's already on the market and there is already a demand for. So, don't feel guilty about having to come up with your own idea. A great example of this is Amazon. Amazon aren't massively innovative, but they copy other products, but they do it so well that they become the market leader in that area. This is great if you're starting totally from scratch. So, don't feel bad about copying. Maybe give it different marketing, give it your own personality and just add different features to give your own twist to it. So, yeah, don't feel you have to be so creative. If there is a product out there, clearly there is a demand for that product. So, take advantage of it. Now, at this stage, there is a hack. And I've worked with some indie developers who do this because you think at this point you'd be like, "Okay, I need to build the app, right?" Uh, not necessarily. So, what some people do is they build a landing page, they market the product, they see if there's a demand, they've not even built it yet. And if there is a demand, they'll build it or they might even pitch it to investors. So, you can try that if you want. All right, let's fast forward and pretend that you have an idea at this stage. Now, the question a lot of people ask at this stage is what text should you use? This is not as important as you think, but the most important thing, as I said earlier, is to do projectbased learning. So, learning by doing projects or with us, we're building this app, so we're learning that way. The reason I'm suggesting this is because a lot of people end up in tutorial hell where you just watch other people code and you don't actually learn anything, but you feel like you're learning. The tech stack is dependent on what you want to build, right? And a quick Google search will help you, but always pick the most popular tech stack you can. Why? because these AI coding assistants have been trained on years and years of code. So these coding assistants will perform better on popular languages and also there's just so much more documentation online if you come into an error if it's a popular language for example JavaScript. And if I was you would focus on full stack JavaScript. The most simple tech stack I recommend you learn is the MER stacks. That's MongoDB Express, React and Node. There's a ton of documentation out there. Loads of apps have been made on it and you only need to learn one language and that's JavaScript. If you're looking for a road map, road map.sh is good or look on Reddit for what you need to learn or just learn it in this order. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, next, Node, Express, then MongoDB. And if you want a place to learn it for free, I use the Odin project. It is amazing. It's a full stack JavaScript course and it's all about project-based learning. So, this will get you there and it's completely free. But if you're looking for something that goes a bit deeper and it's paid, I recommend Zero to Mastery. I'll link the course in the description. Now, coding isn't as difficult as people give it credit for. I learned to code in my 30s. I'd say don't go too deep. Learn the basics and learn to solve problems when you need to solve them. For example, you don't need to know everything about authentication. Just learn it as you need to implement it into your app. What about if you want to build mobile apps, too? It's really easy. Just follow the text like I've given you, but you add on something called React Native. If you know React, this is really easy. and you use something called Expo, which will allow you to build iOS and Android apps with the same text stack. Now, we want to get this app out as soon as possible, and how you do that in 2025 is to use AI to write most of the code. Now, there is an overwhelming amount of AI coding assistants out there right now. So, which one should you use? Well, the truth is a lot of them are the same. They use the same models under the hood. So, it's whatever user experience you like, but also how much it costs. I like cursor, claw code, and warp. I use all of these. If you're starting off, I just use cursor because it's quite cheap. $20 a month will get you started. Some people obsess over which is better, Claude or Cursor. It's not that deep. Just pick one and stick with it. And if you don't like that one, just switch to the other one. It's not that big a deal. Now, the next video I'm going to release is going to be all about specific claw code and cursor hacks. So, yeah, subscribe for that. But this is my number one bit of advice when you're using these tools to build your app because you'll be coding less. The tradeoff is that you've got to plan more nowadays. Claude code and cursor both have like a version of plan mode. And Claude has something called Ultra Think. And you should get the AI to make the plan and [music] let it plan out the steps for you based on the features that you want. And you'll have this like back and forth where it finds out what you want. Just trust me on this because it'll be smoother. There will be less surprises. And because you're writing in plan mode, it forces the model to break things down [music] into steps. And this is what I do. So I use the plan mode, but I also plan out the app before. I use a note-taking app called Notability which you can use on your tablet or on your phone. It's free and the reason I use it is I found it's better than the notes on my iPhone because they give you these visual templates which are good for visualizing the features you want in your app. So if I'm just like out and about and I have a good idea for a feature, I'll just put it in this app. And what about vibe coding tools where you don't actually see the code? For example, like lovable, you just prompt and it builds something. I mean, listen, if you can build what you need to build with them, then clearly use them. But for most projects, for most apps, you're going to need to tweak it. You're going to have to customize it. So, you'll reach a limitation with these kind of platforms. A crucial part is UX. All right? And this is just what the app looks like. So, is it beautiful to look at? And is it intuitive to use? If it's the best app in the world, but it looks like no one's going to use it. A good rule of thumb, unless you're trained in UX, is just to use a template or just copy existing apps out there. If you design it yourself, there is a danger it could look like garbage. No offense. At this point, you want to build the most simple version of your product, or as it's called, the minimal viable product. Now, this is close to my heart because working in tech, I found that this is probably the number one mistake people make when they're making a new app. Instead of just making a basic version of the app, they get a bit carried away. They add in loads of new features. This obviously delays it, but then they release it and they realize that these users don't actually care about those features. And sometimes the feedback takes a product in a totally different direction. Just way better to do this. Release a simple working version of your app, then get it out there in the world and take feedback from real users. Then change it, tweak it, whatever based on that feedback. Okay, big fast forward. We've actually made the app now. What the hell do we do next? A good question now is what pricing model do you want? A few options. You can either do a subscription service every month or every year or a one-off fee. Either way, you should offer a free trial. For taking payments on your app, I just use Stripe. It's the most documented one out there, most trusted. use that. Next, you actually want to ship the app and get it out there in the world. And there's a few options to do this. For web apps, I recommend Versel. There's also Netleifi. Versel. None of them are perfect. Vel's a bit expensive, but it'll do the job and most people use it. For mobile apps, you just use Expo. Really easy to use. It's just one command and it builds it and it will ship it to the Google Play Store and also the App Store. Next, you're having such a fun time building it and you're like, actually, coding is quite fun. Now, we have to enter the hell of marketing it. digest. Okay, some people actually enjoy marketing, but I think it's the most crucial part if your app is going to be successful or not. And I highly recommend that you build in public. I'm going to explain what that means and how to do it because building an app seems quite glamorous, but it's actually quite lonely and could be really frustrating. And there's loads of upsides to building in public. Number one, you're creating a distribution funnel. You're getting feedback on your product just to see if it's a product fit. You've seen potential issues. You're getting potential users. It's more fun. you'll make friends and also improve your communication skills. So, don't worry about people stealing your ideas. I'm going to be doing it on this channel. I'm going to be building in public and showing you guys. So, yeah, subscribe for that. Just my opinion, but I think X is the easiest platform to start with if you're building in public, but also experiment. Try video content like Instagram and YouTube. And what I'd do is I'd be building the app, but also dedicating around 20 to 30% of my time into making content around building in public. But that's just a personal preference. Then once you launch it, get it on sites like Product Hunt. Reddit's probably the easiest one to do because you can just write a post and just say, "Hey guys, I've built this product. This is the story behind it and ask people to test it for you." And Sam Alman said that if you stick around tech long enough, you become a salesperson. And this is all about what you're doing now. You're trying to sell the product, sell you as a person, but [music] sell the story. Try and get really clear on what you're trying to communicate in your brand. Who's your perfect customer? What kind of tone do you want to use? Ask yourself these questions. And if you like this video, I've got some good news for you because I'm going to be making a lot more content like this. Now, I've not done anything like this before, but I'm going to be building a brand new app right in front of your very eyes in public. So, it'll be on YouTube, obviously here. Subscribe if you want to see the first episode. It'll be on Instagram and also my newsletter for more technical written stuff. There'll be a link in the description to the newsletter. But yeah, I think it's going to be fun either way. I will see you in the next one. Hope you got value out this video. Happy coding. Ciao.

How I build and code a profitable app SOLO. After 6 years coding apps, my roadmap for building them as a solo founder. Link to my newsletter 📚 https://andrewcodesmith.substack.com/ Business inquiries: hello@andrewcodesmith.com MY LINKS https://beacons.ai/andrewcodesmith Subscribe for more content here: ‪@andrewcodesmith Links / How to get into tech guide https://shop.beacons.ai/andrewcodesmith/0760ea45-51c7-4139-8cda-cad2b3e0f5d1?pageViewSource=lib_view&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fbeacons.ai%2Fandrewcodesmith&show_back_button=true Instagram https://www.instagram.com/andrewcodesmith/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtattersalltech/ TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewcodesmith Courses ZTM course I recommend to learn web dev https://academy.zerotomastery.io/a/aff_1g5hnt3h/external?affcode=441520_jokk7aer Best course that taught me data structures & algorithms https://academy.zerotomastery.io/a/aff_k1zrd62r/external?affcode=441520_jokk7aer