I Built an App in 6 Hours that Makes $1,500/Mo - Artturi Jalli - Medium

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Copy my strategy!

Artturi Jalli

Here is the simple web app I created in 6 hours. It is a Finnish rental cottage finderthat has more than 5,000 users every month.

The working principle is simple. The app grabs the information that the user enters and opens up our partner’s website with the cottages based on the user-specified criteria.

Anybody with basic web development skills could create this kind of an app in hours.

But how does this make any money?

It’s a simple affiliate deal.

When a user clicks “FIND!”, they click my affiliate link which our partner notices. If the visitor then rents any cottage in the next 14 days, we earn a $22 commission.

Where do the users come from?

Anybody can code an app. But getting people to use it is the hard part.

First of all, there needs to be demand.

Before I built this app, I knew there were hundreds of thousands of Finnish people visiting rental cottages every year. So there were tons of people looking for solutions like this.

But then there’s also competition…

In our case, many better and more popular cottage finder apps already exist. So how on earth does my app get users if there are better solutions out there already?

The answer lies in marketing.

In our case, we use Google as our free traffic source. During 2022–2023, we wrote 400+ blog posts on our site to showcase the best cottages in different areas.

Yes, that’s a lot of work!

Whenever people Google something like “Rental Cottages in Lapland”, our website is among the first search results. If a visitor then opens up our website, the first thing they see is the rental cottage finder app I made.

At this point, it’s a no-brainer for them to use the app as it sits right there.

Summary
The article discusses a simple web app created in 6 hours by the author, which serves as a Finnish rental cottage finder with over 5,000 monthly users. The app redirects users to a partner's website based on specified criteria. The revenue model is through affiliate marketing, earning a $22 commission when users rent a cottage within 14 days. The key challenge is attracting users, which the author addresses by leveraging Google for free traffic. By creating over 400 blog posts showcasing the best cottages, the website gains visibility in search results. Despite competition from existing apps, the author's app gains users through effective marketing strategies. The app's prominent placement on the website makes it convenient for visitors to use, contributing to its success.