Creating apps to monetize is usually harder than it looks. I started coding in 2023, but I'd always had an enthusiasm for it. I just didn't know where or how to start. Every tutorial I found online felt overwhelming, and I couldn't figure out which path to take.
Then I found a free course that was incredibly selective about who could attend. They interviewed 2,500 people, and I was one of the lucky 67 accepted. The acceptance email felt like winning the lottery. We learned Flutter - a language I knew nothing about at the time.
Early Struggles
The first part was underwhelming because we only studied Dart and coding basics. This was supposed to be a mobile application course, but there was nothing visual for weeks, so I didn't really enjoy it. I wanted to see buttons, screens, colors - something tangible. Plus, it was 8 hours daily online, which made keeping focus difficult. My eyes would glaze over by hour six.
After the online portion, an exam cut the class in half. The night before the exam, I barely slept. I passed and became one of 24 people chosen for the in-person section: 180 hours over 1.5 months, 8 hours a day, every weekday. Walking into that classroom for the first time, I felt like I'd actually made it. This course taught me so much about mobile development fundamentals - way more than I could've learned alone.
First App Attempt
After successfully finishing, I was excited to build and ship my first app. I had notebooks full of app ideas I'd been collecting for months. Then reality hit me in the face. Even after 320 hours, I'd only learned the basics of this long journey I'm still on today. The gap between knowing syntax and building a real product was massive. But I learn new things every day, which is exciting.
My friend and I stuck together after the course and tried building our first app. We'd meet up at cafes, work late into the night, debugging and problem-solving together. We spent around 160 hours total, but couldn't ship it because we didn't know how. The code worked perfectly on our devices, but submitting to the App Store was a completely different beast.
We hit a wall trying to publish - days of going back and forth with Apple's review team, reading confusing rejection messages, and we couldn't make it work. Every rejection email felt like a punch to the gut. It demoralized us completely.
Second Attempt with Flutter
Then we tried another app with Flutter for song lyrics, but hit another wall: we didn't have the rights to use Turkish folk song lyrics. We'd built the entire app before realizing this. Another 20-30 hours wasted on an app we couldn't publish. We were both on the brink of giving up and never coding again. Maybe this whole coding thing just wasn't for us.
Switching to Swift
After that failure, I changed course and started learning Swift. Whatever we did, we couldn't publish anything with Flutter. I'm not blaming Flutter - we probably just didn't know something critical. But I needed a fresh start with a different approach.
Learning Swift after Flutter was a breeze because I knew all the fundamentals. The concepts translated directly - I just needed to learn new syntax. I spent a few weeks learning the syntax and getting familiar with the ecosystem. I already had a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, so transitioning to the Apple ecosystem was natural. Xcode felt more intuitive than I expected. Starting my Swift journey was smooth and enjoyable - finally, things were clicking.
First Published App
Seven months after starting the original course, I published my first app: GeoTriviaGame. It was a simple geography quiz game, nothing groundbreaking, but it was mine. When I sent it for review and saw the "In Review" notification on my phone, I thought my heart would explode. I refreshed the App Store Connect page every ten minutes. I'd spent a month learning Swift just to publish this app - I couldn't handle another rejection.
The app passed review and showed "Ready for Distribution." I was the happiest man in the world. I called my girlfriend first to tell her the good news - she'd heard me complain about rejections for months. Then I called my mom, then my brother, then friends. If I could've called everyone in the world, I would have. That "Ready for Distribution" status was proof I could actually do this.
Facing Reality
The first few days brought 20-30 downloads. I felt amazing that people were using my app - real strangers were playing something I'd built. I was proud - zero crashes, zero bugs. I'd tested it obsessively. Then downloads started dropping. Lower and lower until they hit zero. Complete silence. I was terrified. What was the problem? Had I done something wrong?
I thought people got bored or didn't like my app, but there was something I didn't understand. The problem wasn't the app itself - it was that I'd created it without researching keyword performance, ASO, or whether anyone was even searching for geotrivia games. My app was buried in a space where no one was looking. It was like opening a store in a desert and wondering why nobody walked in.
I didn't know I needed to advertise for it to be found. That was the hardest lesson to learn and accept because I thought Apple would show it to everyone. I assumed the App Store worked like magic - good apps would naturally rise to the top. I was naive. The truth is there's a huge marketing cost just to get apps seen. Building the app was only half the battle.
Revenue Reality
My app had two monetization options: ads and ad removal. I'd dreamed about my first AdMob payout, maybe treating myself to a nice dinner. To this day, I haven't gotten close to withdrawing anything from AdMob. Not even close to the minimum threshold.
I'm sharing this so people starting their journey know what to expect. Sure, there's a scenario where you become a total hit and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars - but that wasn't my case. I'm sure thousands of other developers experienced the same thing. We just don't hear their stories as often.
Conclusion
I don't want to demoralize anyone, but here's the truth: developing an app is getting easier with AI and new technologies. Anyone can build something functional now. Marketing the app is the real problem. Having an audience or potential customers is critical for your app to be seen. With the App Store being huge and large companies pouring millions into marketing, getting discovered organically is nearly impossible.
I still struggle to make the best marketing choices, but you can never stop trying to be better. Every failure taught me something valuable. It's been an amazing journey so far - despite the $0 earnings, I've really enjoyed every step of the way. And I'm not done yet.