Indie developer case studies: revenue and exits — 2/3
Indie developer cases
25–48 of 63
A high schooler's paid Discord bot nets ¥12,000/month profit — reading the logic behind pricing ¥500 on top of a ¥320 cost
Entering a Discord text-to-speech market full of free bots at ¥500/month, cost about ¥320 per 200,000 characters, and ¥12,000/month profit by year two. Even the signup pace is quantified.
8 failures, 3 hits in 5 years — the turning point where a solo developer with ¥0 revenue reached ¥200,000–¥1,000,000/month
Of 8 failed products earning ¥0 to a few thousand yen, one successful paid learning service hit ¥200,000–¥1,000,000/month within six months on 50–200 users. Laying out all 11 side by side reveals what actually split them.
From ¥100 to ¥100,000 a Month in Three Years: The Quiet Compounding of an Ads-Only Tool App
The tool app built by Wakanao, a solo developer from Hokkaido, earned about ¥100 a month at launch. Over three-plus years of persistence, MAU grew more than 100x and revenue reached ¥100,000 a month from AdMob ads alone. A record of the growth curve of an app with no paid features and no marketing — one that simply stayed on the store.
Streets of Rogue: An Indie Game Built on $18,000 Sold for Roughly $6.5M — the Six-Year Story
Streets of Rogue, a roguelike made by a solo developer with $18,000 of his own money, sold over one million copies, generated $8M in lifetime revenue, and was acquired by tinyBuild for $6.5M in June 2021.
10 apps over 8 years, 30,000 yen a month. The peak was 2021 — why an indie developer's ad revenue turned downhill
A 50-something engineer at a manufacturer published 8 apps for iOS and 2 for Android. Steady ASO work drove growth until 2021, when he peaked at nearly 50,000 yen a month. After he stopped building new apps in 2022, revenue declined, and it now sits around 30,000 yen a month.
¥2.5 Million a Month From a Chat-Analysis App: 85% of Traffic From TikTok, 37.5% CVR — an Indie Design "Reverse-Engineered From the Distribution Channel"
IsTalk, a chat-analysis app by Kei, an engineer with 15 years of experience, reached 600K cumulative downloads and over 4,600 subscriptions for roughly ¥2.5 million/month, hitting #1 in the App Store Utilities category. 85% of traffic comes from TikTok or friend referrals, and CVR improved from 24.2% to 37.5%. First-class real data on an indie app, published with screenshots.
Potion, the Notion-to-Website Builder, Sells for $300K — From Solo Developer to Individual Buyer
Potion, which turns Notion pages into fast websites, was grown by solo developer Noah Bragg in build-in-public style and sold for $300K (approx. ¥45M) to individual buyer Bruno Morency. A defining example of individual-to-individual micro-SaaS deals.
With a $70 ad budget he got 130 installs and 2 paying users. Then he left Android for a Chrome extension and sold 7 copies in a week
The developer spent about 10,000 yen on Play Store ads for an Android app and got over 130 installs but only 2 subscribers. The same developer then launched two Chrome extensions with a combined 41 installs, and 7 of those users bought the Pro version — revenue overtook the app within a week. Conversion rose from roughly 1.5% to roughly 17%.
90 quiz apps, 8.2 million downloads, ¥20 million+ in revenue — the real picture of mass production, where only 2 in 10 hit
A solo developer who specializes in quiz/personality apps released 90+ titles over four years, reaching 8.2M downloads and over ¥20M in revenue, while admitting flops like a 5,000-download "romantic type" quiz.
A tech-book ranking site built from 300,000 Qiita articles hit 100,000 yen in revenue three weeks after launch
A solo developer aggregated roughly 300,000 Qiita articles via API to build a ranking of 4,000 technical books, and the site earned 100,000 yen within three weeks of launch. The turning point was setting aside his own passion project after a prior failure and rebuilding the concept from scratch by studying and copying successful examples.
A crypto side-hustle app went from ¥300,000/month to a few thousand yen. 20,000 installs, ¥18,000-per-referral, and how it vanished
A manufacturing employee's hobby crypto demo-trading app "BitVirtual" hit 20,000 installs and ¥300,000/month during the 2017 boom, with exchange affiliate payouts up to ¥18,000/referral — then collapsed to a few thousand yen a month a year later.
A Notion-to-spreadsheet sync add-on hits $8,400 MRR: how it reached 400+ paying customers in two weeks
Leandro built Notion2Sheets in two weeks after Notion's API launch, growing it to 40,000 installs and $8,400 MRR. Killing the free plan was the turnaround.
TalkNotes: Sold for $200,000 in 11 Months — Why the $7,000-MRR AI Voice-Memo App Chose an All-Cash Deal
Nico Jeannen sold his AI voice-memo app TalkNotes for $200,000 just 11 months after launch — turning down a higher $300,000 earnout offer for cash up front.
Launch Fast: Built in 48 Hours, $15K/Month in 30 Days — Inside the Non-Technical Founder’s Path to $450K/Month
A non-technical founder built an MVP in 48 hours and grew Amazon-seller tool Launch Fast to $30K MRR after equity-swapping for access to a coaching program's audience.
Warary!: A Comedy Live Show Search Service Built Solo for 2.5 Years, Then Sold to a Company
A case where the comedy live show search service "Warary!" was run solo for two and a half years and sold to a company in 2020. The sale price is undisclosed, but the developer has published his rule of thumb — "monthly profit x 24 months + goodwill" — along with his criteria for deciding whether to sell or keep going.
Easy Folders: One Chrome Extension, $3,700 MRR and $42,000 Lifetime Revenue in 6 Months — a “Fill the Gap” Structure
Edmund Yong's Chrome extension "Easy Folders" hit $3,700+ MRR and $42,000+ in lifetime revenue 6 months post-launch. Running costs are just his Mailgun bill. This piece breaks down a structure built on filling a $9/month gap: ChatGPT's missing folder feature.
Trends.vc: From $15 Lifetime Revenue to $24,000/Month in a Year — What Changed Was Where It Drew the Paywall
As of March 2020, Dru Riley's Trends.vc had lifetime revenue of a single $15 donation. By August that year it hit $24,000/month, and $38,000 by October. What worked was redrawing the paywall from "every other issue" to "the back half of every issue."
Photopea: “Photoshop That Runs in a Browser,” Built Solo for 13 Years — a Bizarre P&L of $3M Revenue on $12,600 in Expenses
Ivan Kutskir started building the browser-based image editor Photopea while a student in 2012. It ran unmonetized for five years before he added ads in 2017. By 2021 annual revenue hit about $1M, and by 2024 it reached $3M (90% from ads) — with expenses of about $12,600 a year and development still done by one person.
14 years of solo development to reach ¥1M/month — the revenue curve from 290,000 page views for ¥100,000 to 4.22 million page views for ¥1M
SiRO, a former systems engineer, reached ¥1M/month after 14 years of solo development. At ¥100,000/month, traffic was 290,000 page views; at ¥1M/month, it was 4.22 million. The turning point was abandoning user-submission-based services in favor of tool-type products — visible in the shifting revenue-per-pageview curve.
Lea, a Tool That Turns LINE Official Accounts Into E-Commerce Stores, Sold to a Buyer Found Through an Online Salon
Lea, an indie SaaS providing e-commerce features on top of LINE official accounts, was sold to INFLU Inc. in July 2022 (price undisclosed). The buyer was found through a paid online salon — a record of an unusual route: "walk into the place where the market is booming yourself."
PDFShift: An HTML-to-PDF API at $8,500/Month — One Channel Ended a Two-Year Plateau; a $500K Sale Fell Through
A Paris-based solo developer's HTML-to-PDF conversion API earned $9 on day 20, reached 150 customers and $3,200/month by January 2020, and turned profitable that September. MRR flatlined for over two years starting September 2021, then returned to 8–9% monthly growth after resuming Google Ads, now at $8,500/month.
Stella: MVP in 2 Days, $350K/Month in 2 Months — an AI App Built by a Solo Creator With 4 Million Followers
AI visualization app Stella hit $300K/month (about ¥45M) two months after launch and $350–360K by interview time, from a 2-day MVP. 12,000 paying customers and 200,000+ downloads. Building a distribution network of 1.2M on Instagram and 2.8M on TikTok before the product mattered.
¥50,000 a Month, Five Years After the First Release. An Indie App's "Quietly Effective Tactics" — and the Ones That Didn't Work
A case of an indie-developed app reaching ¥50,000 a month — five years after the first release, about two years after monetization began. Funnel improvements and the Apple Small Business Program worked; defaulting to the annual plan and A/B testing did not. The record discloses which tactics succeeded and which failed.
Aceternity UI: 7 Free Components to Start, $80,000/Month Within 2 Months of the Paid Tier — a Two-Story Model
Manu Arora of Jaipur, India started a free UI component library with just 7 components built over a weekend. Two months after launching the paid Aceternity UI Pro, monthly revenue reached $80,000 (UI Pro $40K + custom dev work $30K).