How did an independent developer's iOS widget, with only a few thousand visits to the official website per month, earn $270,000 in a year?
Headline cites the Historical Research Snapshot. KPI strip is the Latest Revenue Snapshot.
Product at a glance
- what is it
- an iOS App: speak a segment of speech or type a sentence of ideas, to generate social media posts, Reels scripts and carousel charts with templates, and also learn your writing style, translate into other languages.
- who is it for
- Frequent creators and individual operators who need to post social media content.
- how does it charge
- Through Apple in-app purchases by month or by year, subscription allows for unlimited generation; yearly payment comes with a 7-day free trial, allowing for 10 generations. Without a subscription, only browsing is possible. The official website does not publicly disclose the amount.
- business model
- Consumer-level subscriptions on the App Store: download for free, charge for generation.
- Revenue over the past 12 months
- $282K
- MRR
- $20.3K
- Active Subscriptions
- 1,597
- August revenue
- $34.6K
In the past 30 days $21.2K, -23.3%
Open evidenceFact · as of 2026-11-03
Evidence type: Fact
Source: Latest Revenue Snapshot · provider payment sync
as of: 2026-11-03
Provider-verified revenue signal ≠ audited company financials.
30 days 0.0%
Open evidenceFact · as of 2026-11-03
Evidence type: Fact
Source: Latest Revenue Snapshot · provider payment sync
as of: 2026-11-03
Provider-verified revenue signal ≠ audited company financials.
Average about $12.9/month
Open evidenceFact · as of 2026-11-03
Evidence type: Fact
Source: Latest Revenue Snapshot · provider payment sync
as of: 2026-11-03
Provider-verified revenue signal ≠ audited company financials.
June low point was only $14.2K
Open evidenceFact · as of 2026-11-03
Evidence type: Fact
Source: Latest Revenue Snapshot · provider payment sync
as of: 2026-11-03
Provider-verified revenue signal ≠ audited company financials.
MRR = current monthly recurring run rate · 30-Day revenue = what the provider recorded in the trailing 30 days. Timing, not extra revenue, is why a ratio can exceed 100%.
Summary
What kind of business is this
Visit site getdraft.ioPeople who have many ideas but are too lazy to write posts one by one can use Draft AI to say a sentence and get posts and carousels that can be posted directly. Users mainly come from App Store search and creators' Reels, and influencer cooperation, and need to subscribe after downloading to generate, paying monthly or yearly within the app.
- form
- iOS App
- customers
- Creators, individual operators
- charging
- In-app subscription
- team
- Independent developer Valery Alexeev
Core growth findings
Findings may cite earlier snapshots; header KPIs carry Fact and a revenue as-of date. Revenue as of 2026-11-03.
- 01
The real storefront is the App Store, not the official website
The official website has about 6,900 visits per month, yet it supports $21,000 of MRR; the founder said that after changing the App title to "Draft AI" at the beginning, downloads and subscriptions increased.
- 02
Short videos are written in the tone of 'I did it myself'
official Reels are all first-person creator stories, ending with the sentence "link in bio"; a post from July in collaboration with an influencer got about 136,000 plays, and in August, income rebounded to $34,650.
- 03
Revenue fluctuates greatly with pricing experiments
In March the founder tested "completely no free trial", saying income increased by nearly 7 times; in April monthly income was 41% less than in March. Not trying out cannot generate, is a very hard paywall.
- Number tags
- FactStraight from the source
- DerivedCalculated from facts
- ClaimedSelf-reported, unverified
- EstimateOur reading
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- ?How did an indie developer’s iOS app earn $272k in a year with only a few thousand website visits a month?
- ?With so little website traffic, where do users come from?
- ?What exactly did it do?
- 01The business
- 02Where customers come from
- 03Growth plays
- 04Social & community
- 05Timeline
- 06What to copy
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