Your original app idea is why you're broke

If your app idea is original, congrats. You probably just found a market nobody wants.

That sounds harsh, but it was the most expensive mistake I made as an indie dev. I treated “unique” ideas like an advantage, when most of the time they were just unproven for a reason.

If you search the App Store and find nothing like your idea, your first thought should not be “I found a gap in the market.” Sometimes the gap is there because people already tried it, couldn’t get anyone to care, and moved on.

You are not always early. A lot of the time, you are just staring at something that does not sell.

I learned this the hard way across six apps. The original ones flopped. The boring, crowded, proven ones are the ones still making me money.

Original ideas are unproven ideas

The flops were the apps I thought were clever. They had no real competitors, which I took as a sign of opportunity. In reality, it meant there was no proven demand, no audience to learn from, and no playbook to follow. I was spending time and money answering a question nobody had answered yet: does anyone actually want this?

The apps that made money were the complete opposite. They entered markets where plenty of other apps were already succeeding. Those markets looked crowded from the outside, but that was exactly the point. Demand was already there, users already understood the product, and the path to monetization had already been proven.

A proven market is a cheat code

When other apps are already profitable in your niche, they've done the expensive part for you:

They proved people will pay, so you are not guessing whether demand exists.

They've burned thousands in ad spend finding what converts. You can just go look at it.

They have years of reviews telling you exactly what users hate. That's your roadmap, for free.

You don't need a new idea. You need a proven one with better execution and an angle they're missing.

How to legally rip off your competitors

This is the part I wish someone told me on day one. In a proven market, you don't invent your marketing. You copy the proof.

1. Steal their ads. Meta Ad Library and TikTok Creative Center show you every ad your competitors are running right now, for free. The ones they've kept running the longest are the ones that work. Make your own version of those.

2. Steal their content. Find which of their TikToks and Reels blew up. The hook, the format, the pain point, recreate it with your app. The algorithm already told you what works.

3. Steal their complaints. Read their 1 and 2 star reviews. Every complaint is a feature you can build and a line you can put on your screenshots: "finally, an app that actually does the thing they all get wrong."

4. Steal their keywords. See what they rank for in the App Store and target the same terms. They already did the keyword research. Use it.

You're not copying the app. You're copying the proof.

The mindset shift

Originality feels good because it makes the idea feel more valuable than it is. You get to tell yourself nobody has done it before, when the more useful question is why nobody has made it work yet.

In apps, original usually just means unproven. The market may not have rejected the idea yet, but that does not mean demand is waiting for you. It means you are the one paying to find out.

Stop trying to be first. Be the best version of something that already works.

I'm done chasing clever. Now I only build where the money already is.

Follow along while I build to $10k MRR.

Proven markets, stolen playbooks, and everything I learn building indie apps.