October 2026: $77 in revenue, a leaked API key, and a 9-to-5 from November

October is almost over, and my revenue for the month is $77. I put a lot of time, effort and money into my products. Compared to that, $77 is almost nothing. To be honest, it hurts.

There's a second big change. From November, I'm starting a new 9-to-5 job. I'm running out of money, and right now I don't see another way to pay my bills.

But October wasn't an empty month. I launched a new app, released a big Pushup Club update, put my first SaaS online and started to rebuild one of my oldest apps. Here's what happened, what went wrong, and what I learned from it.

My projects

Tip Tracker is my newest app

Tip Tracker is for waiters and everyone else who works for tips. The idea is simple. After each shift, you log your tips and your wage. The app then shows you charts and progress indicators, so you can see where your money comes from. You can also export your data.

You can pay for Tip Tracker in two ways: with a monthly subscription, or once with a lifetime purchase.

Pushup Club 1.5 is out

Pushup Club got a big update this month. These are the changes you'll notice first:

• A completely new onboarding, with animations and more things to tap
• A notification when someone beats you in a challenge
• A new badge design, with new badge categories
• A new challenge screen with new UI elements
• Better push-up counting with the camera

The onboarding is the first thing a new user sees. Each screen asks one thing: do you want to count with the sensor or the camera, how many push-ups do you want to do each day, and do you want reminders to keep your streak. Then you can sign in with Apple to race your friends.

The badges took the most time. There are 53 new badges in five new categories. Each category has its own frame. For example, the "getting started" badges are circles and the push-up milestones are shields. Inside a category, more chevrons and stars mean a higher rank. I checked every single badge on a review board like this one:

Each badge also has its own share card, so you can show your friends what you've reached.

There's also a lot of work you can't see. I set up a staging server, which is a test copy of the backend, so I can try changes before real users get them. I also deployed new server functions, and I added InsightsKit to the app.

InsightsKit's first version is online

InsightsKit is my feature request platform. It's also my first SaaS: a web product that people sign up for and use online. In September, it was only a waitlist. In October, the first version went online, and I connected all my apps to it. Now my users can send feature requests and support requests from inside the app, instead of writing me an email.

There's still a lot of work to do, and many features are still missing. But the platform works pretty well.

ReelMusic got animations, and BP Tracker learned Hebrew

ReelMusic got a new onboarding with animations, and an animated splash screen (the first screen you see while the app loads). Version 1.2 also added German. I made the new App Store screenshots in English and German with Claude. More about that in the lessons below.

BP Tracker 2.16 added Hebrew. The app is now available in 13 languages.

I'm rebuilding Breathe Out from scratch

Breathe Out is my quit-smoking app, and it was one of my first apps. I built it with Flutter, so I could release it on Apple and Google. But I never managed to release it on Google Play. Over time, I moved further and further away from Flutter. Updating the app and the framework got harder every time.

After the leaked API key (more about that below), I decided to rebuild Breathe Out as a native iOS app. And I decided to change the whole idea of the app, too.

In the new version, you grow a tree. As long as you don't smoke, the tree grows, healthy and steady. When you smoke, it stops growing. And if you keep smoking, it can even dry out completely.

My goal isn't only a new framework. I want an app that looks good, has an interesting idea and a few unique features, and doesn't feel like typical AI slop. The new version is still in development and isn't released yet.

Behind the projects

$77, and a 9-to-5 from November

Let's talk about money. My revenue for October is $77. If I compare that to the effort, the time and the money I put into my products, it's basically nothing.

That's why I'm starting a 9-to-5 job in November. My free time will be split between the job, my indie projects and my family. That feels sad, to be honest. But I try to see it from a different side, even if that's hard right now. A job may bring me new ideas and a new way of looking at things. And maybe those ideas turn into new projects.

I'll keep writing about it here. And maybe I'll finally record a video and start the YouTube channel I've been planning for about two years.

Someone used my old OpenAI key

In October, I got an email from OpenAI about strange activity on one of my API keys. The key was inside the old Breathe Out app. I'd put it there to test a feature, and then I forgot about it. Someone found it in the app and sent 14,364 requests with it.

I revoked the key right away. Then I changed the app, so it doesn't contain anything important anymore. I wrote the full story in Someone pulled an API key out of my old app.

And I built a cupboard

Not everything in October happened on a screen. I built my own cupboard.

What I learned

Polish got cheap too

I'm really impressed by Claude's animation and motion skill. With a single prompt, it made the onboarding and splash screen animations for ReelMusic. The app looks much better with motion than with still images.

I also used it to make the new App Store screenshots for ReelMusic, in English and German. I can switch between the two languages, and all the screens look good. Without it, that would have taken me days. Now I watch a lot of YouTube tutorials to see what else it can do.

If you build alone, try it for the parts you never have time for: animations, onboarding and store screenshots. One prompt and some careful checking can replace days of work.

Doing the same thing won't change the result

There's a line that is often attributed to Albert Einstein: if you do the same thing again and again, don't expect a different result. I think that's what happened to me.

Last month I wrote that I would work on the download problem instead of starting another app. In October, I launched another app. I know I need to look at the whole indie journey from a different side. I just haven't found that side yet. So I keep doing what I've always done: I build the next thing.

Building is cheap, and that's why I can keep going

My main tool cost is a €200 Claude subscription. The rest is my time. Cheap building made it easy to ship a lot in October. But it didn't make anyone buy.

The good news is the same fact, seen from the other side. Because building costs so little, I don't have to stop. I can keep building next to a full-time job, in a smaller way, and see what new ideas come out of it.