PhotoCopyThis

After I created PhotoCopyThis, I joined a start-up and got too busy with the work. My original monetization strategy is stupid - I was using Ads - and the main purpose of this app is to help users "save time", so they don't stick around in the app. Lesson learned: only use ADs as a monetization strategy when your app is highly addictive - like a game or social media.

Anyways, I did not have the time to change my monetization strategy with my 80+ hours full-time job. It costs me about $1/mo for Google Vision, and I earn about $0.5/mo from ADs. I was okay keeping it in the App Store and maybe working on it later.

After 1.5 years I launched PhotoCopyThis, I found that Apple is releasing Live Text in iOS 15. The feature is exactly the same with PhotoCopyThis, and it is even better than my app. I did not want to remove the app from App Store since I want to keep it in my portfolio when I do freelancing. But I was pretty sure no one is going to use my App when they update to iOS 15.

This year, I decided to put fewer hours in consulting I was looking into cancel subscriptions or things I don't need in my life to save money. I look at PhotoCopyThis, sometimes the usage is high, and it cost me $2/mo. "That's enough!" I thought, I went to Apple connect and I made it a paid app.

Of course with this change, the bill from Google Vision becomes $0.1-0.2/mo. "That's working!" I was happy with the change because I didn't want to keep letting people use it. Of course, usage and downloads are down.

I forgot about it, and the other day I was in Apple connect looking at some other app's performance. I noticed that I made some money from PhotoCopyThis. It is not $1, or $2. It is $10! I made in average $5/mo. There are only a handful of people downloading and using the app - it is actually good for me. Two Lessons learned here:
1. More download is not more revenue. Paying customers are more important than the number of downloads and subscribers.
2. Everything is worth something - if people are using them, don't let them use them for free. They need to pay for what they had used

What's next? I decided to play with the price a bit and consider adding a translation feature to the app. Even iOS 15 Live Text is better than my app, it still doesn't have some of the features I have in my app. In addition, I guess some people have older phones so they don't get to upgrade to iOS 15. I probably will not put too much effort into this app - but I am happy with the valuable lessons I learned!

I am so happy with many responses and many ❤️ I received during PhotoCopyThis launch day. I especially appreciated the support of my friends and family. You are the best!

This is the most successful launch I got so far - 40 upvotes on product hunt, I was #11 on the launch day. It does not mean a lot in terms of business because good business gets 3-4 digits upvotes, thousands of users on launch day.

However, I see myself growing so much as a product maker compares to what I was before:

• 2-4 years ago, I keep thinking about making products but I have no actions at all.
• 2 years ago, I built CampsiteWatch's prototype - I did not launch it at that time
• 1 year ago, I built DiscoverNP to practice my iOS skill, I learned a lot. I did not have an official launch plan.
• 3 months ago, I completed CampsiteWatch, I had a launch plan. I had a couple of social media marketing things I was trying to do. I launched it on product hunt. I learned that it is a product for a very specific community - I need to reach that community in order to get more feedback and be successful. (still trying to figure out how... any idea?)

I truly believe that I just need to put in my hours, show up every day, make mistakes, learn from mistakes, iterate it over and over again to become very good at what I am doing. I'll continue doing this - and one day I'll get 3-4 digits upvotes, thousands of users. 🎉

I find myself trying to "copy" public wifi password, address, phone numbers, and emails from an image a lot, but there is no quick and simple way to copy text from an image without doing a lot of typing.

There are a lot of scanner apps out there that help users to scan documents, but I feel there is something missing. There is no quick way to abstract short text from an image. Often time, the app scans the entire document/image, which does not return exactly what the user needs. Sometimes, the app required users to draw a box in the image to specify what portion of the text they like to abstract, but this action is very time-consuming for the user.

I spend some time designing the app in a way it'll be fast for the user to abstract short text from an image. In addition, I think it might be useful to integrate with Siri shortcuts since I enjoy using it - I find myself more productive when I use Siri shortcuts.