i've shipped 5+ ios apps. here's everything i learned about actually making money from them: 1. distribution beats product. every time. a mediocre app with a distribution channel beats a great app nobody finds. your best feature is worthless if nobody installs it. 2. the app store doesn't pay you. downloads are free attention. the paywall is where the business is. most devs obsess over the icon and the onboarding. the paywall converts or it doesn't. that's the whole game. 3. sell the outcome, not the features. nobody cares that your app has ai tracking, smart reminders and cloud sync. they care what changes in their life. i stopped listing features on my paywalls and started selling the result. conversion went up immediately. 4. on tiktok, format beats followers. a fresh account with the right format gets pushed. a big account with the wrong format dies. the algorithm tests the content, not your follower count. that's why 0-follower accounts print views. 5. research the format before you build. before i write one line of code, i look at what's already winning in the niche. which formats get millions of views, which hooks repeat, which apps show up again and again. building blind is gambling. 6. one post a day beats ten posts once. consistency compounds. warmed-up accounts, one solid post daily, and the niche learns you. most people quit in week two, right before it starts working. 7. kill fast. if the format doesn't move after honest testing, the idea is dead. sunk cost is what actually kills indie devs, not bad ideas. distribution is a learnable skill. product taste is a learnable skill. most devs only train one of them.