So, OP worked hard on a product that help OP, so that it would help others. OP did whatever it took to keep revenue coming in and learned a valuable set of skills along the way. Now OP is providing useful services to many users worldwide and making a living off it.
Everyone has a disillusionment moment, and that's the real takeaway from this post, for me.
IT and online problems I tend to be accelerationist about, so if he's managed to automate the ridiculous "download this app" cycle then more power to him.
Giving some other people with questionable motives and/or aptitude what they want might be “useful” to them, in the broadest sense of the word, but the net effect may well be less than that. The author himself admits that this might just end up flooding the store with questionable, low quality content.
Lots of actions have consequences beyond their direct and immediate effects, realizing that is one of the harder parts of growing up.
The most valuable point for me: Gamification! A friend of mine wrote his master's thesis on that topic. And yeah, turns out it works really well if done right ;-)
Regarding the rest of the text: I wonder what value people using these apps get out of them?
I share some of his sentiment: The aim is to onboard a bunch of people with a "get rich quick"-kind-of-mentality and flood a platform with content of questionable content (I mean, the content could be good - but somehow I doubt it if a single person creates a thousand apps). On the other hand: Living on 6k$ in Morocco? Could be a worse life...
The secret of Hell, I think, is that you get there before death. By doing evil things, you invite an evil mentality into your mind which will prey on you as you become more feeble. The final transition from deathbed to the eternal fire is just a formality. If you plant the seeds of hell in your mind, they will be all that remains in the end.
I guess some people think they will never become feeble, that they will maintain the power to keep the evil stuff separate from the rest of their life. But we are all enfeebled in the end.
There was once a general who asked the Zen master Hakuin:"Are there really such things as Heaven and Hell?"
"What do you do for a living?" Hakuin asked him.
"I'm a general."
"Ha, ha, ha! What idiot asked you to be his general? You look more like a butcher to me", the Zen master teased the general.
"I'll cut you to pieces!" the general angrily pulled his sword.
"Here lie the gates of Hell!" said the master.
"Excuse me...Please forgive my insolence.”
And Hakuin said:"Here lie the gates of Heaven."
Heaven and Hell aren't places that suddenly appear after death. They exist here and now. Good and evil involve just a single instant of thought, and the gates of Heaven and Hell are ready to open for you at any time. (From Zen Stories: The Staff and Shout of the Venerable Ones)
Seconded, I think I've learned something new about life. I knew a similar idea which I'd call instant karma that is basically this but I wouldn't be able to word it so eloquently.
I heard a podcast this weekend which explains the distinction between hell and the condition of being dead ("in Hades"). "The Descent of Jesus into Hades" by Eastern Orthodox Christian Fr. Thomas Hopko (32:25, transcript available)
> So we determine whether we are in hell or not by our own belief or unbelief, by our love of love, and our love of light, and our love of truth, and our love of glory, or by our hatred of it. That has nothing to do with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, who died for us. When He descended into Sheol and Hades, it means simply that He died, and through death, trampled down death and raised the dead, all the dead, there is no one left in the tomb, as it says. In St. John Chrysostom’s sermon on Paschal night, he said, “No one is left in the tomb. Christ is risen and life reigns.” But if you hate that life, it is hell. If you love it, it is Paradise.
C. S. Lewis writes along similar lines in The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, two very different books, but both of which of I'd credit as changing my life. The common theme in both is that to be damned is not to sin greatly, but to become comfortable with the abandonment of good.
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn)
This is an excellent, truthful appeal to secularists. One should note further that demons literally exist and are actively roaming the Earth, putting us in warfare for our souls we are growing increasingly ill-equipped to handle.
Ancient Christianity believed in invisible powers that influence human beings to have evil thoughts, desires, passions. So, it's not just bad human habits, there can be external influences as well. This is part of the Nicene creed: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible." Demons are generally believed to be powerful enough to influence humans against their will. This is why Christians pray "Lord, have mercy" or "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me" throughout the day, so that God helps them in the "spiritual warfare" for their souls.
>The secret of Hell, I think, is that you get there before death. By doing evil things, you invite an evil mentality into your mind which will prey on you as you become more feeble.
That's the Christian orthodox view btw -- that you make your own hell by your stance and action (in which view, hell is not an actual place, even in another dimension, with fire pits and demons, but just your resentment and the distance you feel from God's love).
". . . those who find themselves in hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God . . . But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" (Saint Isaac of Syria).
> Before I knew it, the conversion rate from new user to active user ( level 3+ ) skyrocketed from 5% to 45%.
And also:
> Users could share their referral link and get a 10% cut of the ad revenue from every app the referred user makes, forever. For example, if user A brings in user B, and user B makes an app that brings in $10/day, user A would get $1 every day without lifting a finger.
damn, this guy built a tool for growth hackers to make android app store spam, added gamification when it started failing, then added a pyramid MLM referral system for users to market it by word of mouth. he's obviously very smart and motivated. it's just kind of sad to me that the ad economy has grown so large that this is the best way for smart young people to make money.
i doubt he really hates his product at the end of the day, it's just a catchy way to market it. if he did, he would've walked away when his partner did to freelance some more or do another startup.
Yeah, hate is a strong word. Then again helping people build generic crappy apps - which seems like is most of the user base - is probably disheartening.
I worked for a SEO company for about a year making SaaS tools to help "analyze keywords", "supply backlinks", "generate content" and other woo woo magic. Waking up and walking to work was fun for only the first month :/
Most of the users made crappy copy-paste websites and did whatever they could to get a better rank on search engines.
It's like when you see people on YouTube who make horrendous clickbait, yet get millions of views. It's easy to laugh and dismiss them, but financially they're probably rolling in it...
Are they the smart ones for exploiting the largest, most lucrative audience (young children who are more likely to watch more of the video before clicking off) and cashing in? Or are they legitimately not self-aware?
I think it's incumbent on us to change that. Too often something dubious is justified by how much money it makes. But we don't have to buy into it. And we can call it out when it happens.
Look at how people treat the statement, "I work at Facebook", for example. It has changed a lot over the last decade. It used to be hot and positive. But I had a friend start just recently. They're doing something worthwhile and entirely unrelated to the many things terrible about Facebook. But they still felt obliged to apologize for it.
I'd like to see more of that pressure applied to people who are making money by making the world worse.
> I'd like to see more of that pressure applied to people who are making money by making the world worse.
Yup. 100% agreed. And I want to remind everyone here that putting such pressure is a perfectly legitimate thing to do in market economy. Companies respond to market signals, so if a moral value is not made into a signal - i.e. made to impact sales - it won't get considered.
So should I tell other people in my coworking space that I think their job is total bullshit?
One or two happen to be in some field that trigger my bullshit alert and I think it’s somewhat sketchy what they do. For example, stuff around network marketing for dietary supplements.
I don't know that I'd walk over and say, "Buddy, this is bullshit!" Just as a practical matter, that doesn't do much to change minds.
But as to who you are, I'd say you have several things that give you grounds to have an opinion. One is that you're a human being and want to see other humans treated well. Two, you're part of a variety of communities, and you have an interest in seeing those communities be healthy. Three, you're a successful entrepreneur, so you have real expertise in what makes for a good business. And surely there are more.
In your shoes I'd definitely look for opportunities to influence people like that. It can be as simple as the look that passes across your face when they tell you what they do. If they ask for advice, you can point them to something healthier. You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses. And with people where you are already an influencer (e.g., friends, family) you can definitely help keep them from getting into work like that.
Thanks for your insightful and encouraging comment. This actually helps me a lot. The community-aspect is totally right: I don't want to have the coworking environment poisoned with "get-rich-quick" people.
> You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses.
I will do! And I'll try to find words that sound encouraging to them. After all, most of them probably just want more freedom for themselves and the sketchy business ideas probably look like the simplest way to get there.
Excellent point. My mom got suckered by a couple of MLM schemes when I was a kid. She was very sharp but really wanted to improve our lives, and these people sold the opportunity angle really hard. Although it made me absolutely hate get-rich-quick schemes, I also know that the people caught up in them are generally sincere and well meaning.
Good luck with it! Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how it goes.
I think of self-awareness as similar to the problems of achieving consistency in a distributed system: it takes a lot of work to get right, and even then you probably missed things.
Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In my experience, when people have a strong financial interest in not being self aware, they will generally not be self aware. I can never decide whether that's legitimate or not.
It is perfectly possible to be conflicted about your product, in fact caring too much can be problematic for finding real product market fit. He probably does hate everything it stands for but loves building features that solve pain for his users.
Haha, already corrected it as you were typing this, but I’m sure there is a market for an App that deliberately annoys its users (it’s called Windows 10 - ba dum ching).
"I also came to the conclusion that AppyGEN didn’t really help make the world a better place like every other startup I read about. It seemed to me like it was just making the play store a worse place, helping non-developers publish hundreds of unoriginal apps that only took away from the visibility and chances of more ambitious apps."
I'm glad he got there in the article. But yes... He's not only doing what I would consider a net harm, but he's aware of it. And all that's before he added the referal scheme to it.
His take away at the end is good, don't do it for money (which is easy to say when you're making money), share with people as soon as you can, and be proud of what you're doing. How he got that last one after the realization he's making things worse - I don't know. Do as a say not as I do I suppose? I agree, he doesn't hate this app at all, he's just figured out a way to market it.
> I couldn’t understand why users who were making a thousand dollars in ad revenue each month, didn’t upgrade their accounts, after all it only costs $25. Turns out, a lot of these users were living in countries where they couldn’t have a Visa card or PayPal account, and just couldn’t pay me even if they wanted to.
I don't know if cryptocurrency is going to solve this problem, but whatever does solve it is going to generate an enormous amount of wealth.
Okay. I ultimately liked this posting. It started out rocky because he exposed he had accomplished so much at a young age (#imverysmart). Sounded like at several times he wanted to spend money he didn't really have. I liked the reflection and how he tried several different strategies to grow revenue.
And the posting itself is a good way to boost visibility.
First of all, thank you for sharing this story. Secondly, I envy your grit and the ability to just go and sell, instead of being stuck in impostor syndrome mode.
Thirdly, shame on you for building a product which sole point is to make money by destroying the Play Store. And shame on you for working on it after you realized this.
Foruthly, and this is the part I don't understand - how on Earth were you able to make money on that first app of yours? And how your customers are able to repeat that? I mean, who on Earth downloads this kind of stuff? I'm very confused about this. By your description, that app is "simple app with a list of videos, targeting a specific trending niche", i.e. not much more than a YouTube playlist. So who are the people downloading cookie-cutter apps when an universal one-stop app is available?
One of the first comments on the post is asking about whether or not the OP intends to duplicate this effort on the Apple App Store. Say what you will about Apple's walled garden but the core difference between it and the Play store is that it's designed to prevent things like this.
The Play store invites this sort of thing. Kudos to the OP for capitalizing on it.
> So who are the people downloading cookie-cutter apps when an universal one-stop app is available?
A good question that I too would like to get an answer to. He does not mention if they had an adwords campaign.
He did, however, write that they made tons more apps like that. So it's the "quantity vs quality" scenario I guess. Maybe something like what Ketchapp are/were doing.
67 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 46.7 ms ] threadEveryone has a disillusionment moment, and that's the real takeaway from this post, for me.
Lots of actions have consequences beyond their direct and immediate effects, realizing that is one of the harder parts of growing up.
Regarding the rest of the text: I wonder what value people using these apps get out of them?
I share some of his sentiment: The aim is to onboard a bunch of people with a "get rich quick"-kind-of-mentality and flood a platform with content of questionable content (I mean, the content could be good - but somehow I doubt it if a single person creates a thousand apps). On the other hand: Living on 6k$ in Morocco? Could be a worse life...
I guess some people think they will never become feeble, that they will maintain the power to keep the evil stuff separate from the rest of their life. But we are all enfeebled in the end.
There was once a general who asked the Zen master Hakuin:"Are there really such things as Heaven and Hell?"
"What do you do for a living?" Hakuin asked him.
"I'm a general."
"Ha, ha, ha! What idiot asked you to be his general? You look more like a butcher to me", the Zen master teased the general.
"I'll cut you to pieces!" the general angrily pulled his sword.
"Here lie the gates of Hell!" said the master.
"Excuse me...Please forgive my insolence.”
And Hakuin said:"Here lie the gates of Heaven."
Heaven and Hell aren't places that suddenly appear after death. They exist here and now. Good and evil involve just a single instant of thought, and the gates of Heaven and Hell are ready to open for you at any time. (From Zen Stories: The Staff and Shout of the Venerable Ones)
https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_descent_of_j...
Here's a quote:
> So we determine whether we are in hell or not by our own belief or unbelief, by our love of love, and our love of light, and our love of truth, and our love of glory, or by our hatred of it. That has nothing to do with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, who died for us. When He descended into Sheol and Hades, it means simply that He died, and through death, trampled down death and raised the dead, all the dead, there is no one left in the tomb, as it says. In St. John Chrysostom’s sermon on Paschal night, he said, “No one is left in the tomb. Christ is risen and life reigns.” But if you hate that life, it is hell. If you love it, it is Paradise.
Posted something similar from early christian theology in the same thread.
Learn more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_Catholicism
That's the Christian orthodox view btw -- that you make your own hell by your stance and action (in which view, hell is not an actual place, even in another dimension, with fire pits and demons, but just your resentment and the distance you feel from God's love).
". . . those who find themselves in hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God . . . But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" (Saint Isaac of Syria).
> Before I knew it, the conversion rate from new user to active user ( level 3+ ) skyrocketed from 5% to 45%.
And also:
> Users could share their referral link and get a 10% cut of the ad revenue from every app the referred user makes, forever. For example, if user A brings in user B, and user B makes an app that brings in $10/day, user A would get $1 every day without lifting a finger.
Pyramid scheme or just Multi-Level Marketing?
This "I feel guilty but they are making money" narrative thing is just genius marketing. I take my hat off to him.
i doubt he really hates his product at the end of the day, it's just a catchy way to market it. if he did, he would've walked away when his partner did to freelance some more or do another startup.
I worked for a SEO company for about a year making SaaS tools to help "analyze keywords", "supply backlinks", "generate content" and other woo woo magic. Waking up and walking to work was fun for only the first month :/
Most of the users made crappy copy-paste websites and did whatever they could to get a better rank on search engines.
That said, I do think app generators in general are a fun and cool idea. It's his target market more than anything else that makes it a spam machine.
a single level referral system is not a MLM
It's like when you see people on YouTube who make horrendous clickbait, yet get millions of views. It's easy to laugh and dismiss them, but financially they're probably rolling in it...
Are they the smart ones for exploiting the largest, most lucrative audience (young children who are more likely to watch more of the video before clicking off) and cashing in? Or are they legitimately not self-aware?
It's a bummer that our society is structured with financial incentives that are so poorly aligned with interesting goals.
Look at how people treat the statement, "I work at Facebook", for example. It has changed a lot over the last decade. It used to be hot and positive. But I had a friend start just recently. They're doing something worthwhile and entirely unrelated to the many things terrible about Facebook. But they still felt obliged to apologize for it.
I'd like to see more of that pressure applied to people who are making money by making the world worse.
Yup. 100% agreed. And I want to remind everyone here that putting such pressure is a perfectly legitimate thing to do in market economy. Companies respond to market signals, so if a moral value is not made into a signal - i.e. made to impact sales - it won't get considered.
One or two happen to be in some field that trigger my bullshit alert and I think it’s somewhat sketchy what they do. For example, stuff around network marketing for dietary supplements.
I mean, who am I to judge?
But as to who you are, I'd say you have several things that give you grounds to have an opinion. One is that you're a human being and want to see other humans treated well. Two, you're part of a variety of communities, and you have an interest in seeing those communities be healthy. Three, you're a successful entrepreneur, so you have real expertise in what makes for a good business. And surely there are more.
In your shoes I'd definitely look for opportunities to influence people like that. It can be as simple as the look that passes across your face when they tell you what they do. If they ask for advice, you can point them to something healthier. You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses. And with people where you are already an influencer (e.g., friends, family) you can definitely help keep them from getting into work like that.
> You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses.
I will do! And I'll try to find words that sound encouraging to them. After all, most of them probably just want more freedom for themselves and the sketchy business ideas probably look like the simplest way to get there.
Good luck with it! Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how it goes.
Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In my experience, when people have a strong financial interest in not being self aware, they will generally not be self aware. I can never decide whether that's legitimate or not.
Amusing typo
I'm glad he got there in the article. But yes... He's not only doing what I would consider a net harm, but he's aware of it. And all that's before he added the referal scheme to it.
His take away at the end is good, don't do it for money (which is easy to say when you're making money), share with people as soon as you can, and be proud of what you're doing. How he got that last one after the realization he's making things worse - I don't know. Do as a say not as I do I suppose? I agree, he doesn't hate this app at all, he's just figured out a way to market it.
I don't know if cryptocurrency is going to solve this problem, but whatever does solve it is going to generate an enormous amount of wealth.
Simple solution: "We take the first $25 in ad revenue your app generates and you keep the rest."
Complex solution: "We take 50% of the ad revenue your app generates unless you pay $25/month through outside means."
...unless they needed to create thousands of apps to make any income and 50% is cheaper than $25/app.
You could invoice them for the $25 but you cannot "keep" it until/unless your service becomes the advertising network's client.
And the posting itself is a good way to boost visibility.
First of all, thank you for sharing this story. Secondly, I envy your grit and the ability to just go and sell, instead of being stuck in impostor syndrome mode.
Thirdly, shame on you for building a product which sole point is to make money by destroying the Play Store. And shame on you for working on it after you realized this.
Foruthly, and this is the part I don't understand - how on Earth were you able to make money on that first app of yours? And how your customers are able to repeat that? I mean, who on Earth downloads this kind of stuff? I'm very confused about this. By your description, that app is "simple app with a list of videos, targeting a specific trending niche", i.e. not much more than a YouTube playlist. So who are the people downloading cookie-cutter apps when an universal one-stop app is available?
One of the first comments on the post is asking about whether or not the OP intends to duplicate this effort on the Apple App Store. Say what you will about Apple's walled garden but the core difference between it and the Play store is that it's designed to prevent things like this.
The Play store invites this sort of thing. Kudos to the OP for capitalizing on it.
A good question that I too would like to get an answer to. He does not mention if they had an adwords campaign.
He did, however, write that they made tons more apps like that. So it's the "quantity vs quality" scenario I guess. Maybe something like what Ketchapp are/were doing.