Build Your Own App
Without Investors or Subscriptions

The Honest Version

Most "how to build an app" content comes from people selling courses, not people who've actually shipped products. I'm not here to sell you a course. I built Little Wheels because my own kid was obsessed with vehicles, and I wanted something better than the ad-filled garbage in the App Store.

Two years later, I have 2 apps in the store, a website that ranks for competitive keywords, and a small but growing community of parents who actually pay for quality. Here's what I wish someone had told me before I started.

Why I Chose One-Time Pricing Over Subscriptions

The subscription model is broken for small developers. You're competing against apps with $50M in funding who can afford to give away features for free while burning cash. And users are exhausted—subscription fatigue is real.

I priced Little Wheels at $4.99 per app. One-time purchase. No trials, no upsells, no "premium tiers." Here's why:

• Trust: Parents are tired of being nickel-and-dimed. A clear price builds immediate trust.
• Simplicity: No churn anxiety, no retention metrics, no "engagement" manipulation.
• Sustainability: I'd rather have 10,000 customers who paid once than 1,000 subscribers I have to constantly re-convince.

The subscription model works for some apps. But if you're building something that delivers value upfront—not ongoing content—one-time pricing is often the better choice.

Subscription vs One-Time: When to Use Each

What I Actually Built With

People always ask about tech stack. Here's mine:

AI Tools That Changed Everything

I couldn't have built this fast without AI coding assistants. Here's what I actually use:

• Cursor/Windsurf: AI-powered code editors. I use these for 80% of my coding now. They understand context and can refactor entire files.
• Claude: For architecture decisions, debugging complex issues, and writing documentation.
• Replit: Hosting + AI features. The deployment is dead simple.
• Recraft AI / Leonardo: For the vehicle illustrations in my apps. Different tools for different styles—experiment to find what works for your aesthetic.

The key insight: AI doesn't replace knowing what to build. It accelerates building once you know. I still make all the product decisions—AI just helps me execute faster.

I chose native Swift because I wanted the best performance for kids apps. React Native or Flutter would have been faster to build, but I was optimizing for user experience over development speed.

The real lesson: Pick technology you can maintain for years. Your stack matters less than your ability to ship and iterate.

App Store Approval: What They Don't Tell You

Getting approved isn't hard if you understand the rules. Getting approved for a kids app is harder because of COPPA compliance.

Things that will get you rejected:

• Any third-party analytics in a kids app (no Firebase, no Mixpanel)
• Links that leave the app without parental gates
• Any form of advertising to children
• Collecting any personal information

I spent weeks stripping out standard tools that work fine in adult apps but violate kids app guidelines. Read the Kids Category guidelines before you write a single line of code.

Marketing Without a Budget

I've spent exactly $0 on paid advertising. Here's what actually works:

• SEO: This website ranks for competitive keywords in my niche. That's free, ongoing traffic that compounds over time.
• Content: I write genuinely useful articles for parents. Not keyword-stuffed garbage—real advice that helps people.
• Community: I respond to every email. I engage with parents on social media. Word of mouth is slow but sustainable.

Paid ads can work, but they're a treadmill. The moment you stop paying, traffic stops. SEO and content compound over time.

The Numbers (Honest Version)

I'm not going to pretend this is a get-rich-quick story. Building a sustainable indie app business takes time.

• Time to first app: ~6 months of nights and weekends
• Time to profitability: ~18 months
• Current revenue: Enough to justify the time, not enough to quit my day job (yet)

The goal was never to build a unicorn. It was to build something useful, charge a fair price, and create a sustainable side business that could grow over time.

What I Don't Share Publicly

This page covers the concepts. But I've also built systems that make the work repeatable:

• Content workflows with AI prompts for consistent, SEO-optimized output
• Project templates for new pages, articles, and features
• SEO/AEO systems that I use across every piece of content
• Asset generation prompts for consistent illustrations and images

These are what I walk through on calls—the actual files, prompts, and processes. Not theory, but the working system.