I built a marketplace for indie apps. Two weeks in, positioning is harder than building it.

I'm a web developer who's spent years building things for other people. A few months ago I decided to build something for myself and actually follow through past the deployment phase.

Why I built it

There are thousands of indie developers building small SaaS products, mobile apps, and side projects that never find an audience, and there are people who'd rather buy something with a head start than build from scratch. Flippa and Acquire exist, but they're built for deals in the tens or hundreds of thousands. If your app makes $0-200/mo or you just want to put your starter project in front of people, those platforms don't care about you.

So I built DealMyApp, a marketplace specifically for small SaaS, indie apps, and small digital businesses with zero commission and AI-assisted review to help with listing quality. I built it in Laravel because that's what I know and I wanted to move fast.

Supply vs. demand

I assumed supply would be the hard part, getting developers to actually list their apps. Turns out supply is everywhere and the vibe coding wave alone has created an explosion of apps looking for a home. I'm seeing about 500+ unique visitors a day with only about 30 live listings. Buyers are slower to convert than sellers are to list. Figuring out how to build enough trust and discovery to make the buy side work is where most of my energy goes right now.

The friction trade-off

I also built a Quick List feature to reduce friction for sellers. Drop a URL, verify your email, and we pull your app data automatically with AI. Submissions went up, but the quality went down because when you remove friction you also remove the filter that kept low-effort listings out. Now I'm trying to figure out how to keep the speed without becoming the craigslist for apps.

Ranking

Ranking is its own puzzle. New apps need exposure or nobody bothers listing, but if I just show the newest stuff first then buyers lose trust scrolling through unproven projects. And the apps that actually have traction deserve visibility too. I'm trying to balance all three and I don't think there's a clean answer.

Positioning

Positioning is the hardest part. I started thinking "marketplace for indie apps" but the market is moving so fast with AI-generated apps, vibe-coded MVPs, and the changing landscape of what even counts as a "product" now. I'm glad I picked a name like DealMyApp that gives me room to adapt instead of boxing myself into one category, but adapting means I need to actually figure out what the market wants, and two weeks in I'm still reading the signals.

Where it stands today

The overhead is almost nothing. Shared hosting, Laravel, no investors, no team, zero revenue so far. I have ideas for monetization but I'm not forcing it yet. The one thing I do charge for is an enhanced listing at $3, and that's less about revenue and more about filtering for sellers who are actually committed to putting their best foot forward. Every submission goes through an AI review and then a manual review from me before it goes live, so I don't need to figure out everything right now. I can keep promoting, keep learning, and let the market tell me what it wants to be.

Developer turned marketer

Coming from the developer side and jumping into marketing, positioning, and user acquisition has been the most uncomfortable growth I've had in years. Building the product was the easy part and everything after deployment is where it actually gets hard.

I see a gap for indie developers who are too small for Flippa, too scrappy for Acquire, and just need somewhere to put their work in front of people. Whether that gap is big enough to build a business around is what I'm trying to find out.

A few things I'm wondering about

How do you think a marketplace like this is positioned given what's happening with AI and app development? The number of apps being created is exploding, so does that make a marketplace more valuable or does it just flood everything with noise?

If you've run a marketplace, how did you get the buy side moving? Sellers show up on their own but getting buyers to pull the trigger is a different problem.

And how do you gauge when to pivot your positioning vs. when to stay the course? Two weeks feels too early to make big changes but also too early to be confident I'm on the right track.

Would love to hear from anyone who's navigated something similar.