A 30 App Portfolio Built With Flutter Making $22K per Month in Under a Year
After five years stuck on one app with zero traction, a shift to rapid portfolio building produced 30 mobile apps generating $22K monthly revenue in under 12 months.
The Strategy
Most indie developers spend years perfecting a single app, convinced that quality alone will drive downloads. The reality is that app stores are keyword driven marketplaces where discoverability matters more than polish. Five years spent building one calorie tracking app with zero traction is a painful lesson in this disconnect, but it also sets up one of the more dramatic pivots in recent indie hacker history. The turnaround started in February 2025 when Max Artemov shifted from single product perfectionism to a rapid portfolio strategy. Using ASO (App Store Optimization) tools like Astro and FoxData, the approach became systematic: find keywords with popularity scores above 20 and competition difficulty below 60, then build the simplest possible app around that validated keyword. The execution speed is the differentiator. Each app ships with a single core feature, bug free but deliberately unpolished. Post launch monitoring runs for one to two weeks, and only apps showing sustained organic traction get additional investment. The rest are left as low maintenance revenue generators or abandoned. This treat products as business bets philosophy produced 30 apps in under 12 months. The portfolio now generates $22,000 per month, averaging roughly $730 per app. Growth comes from a combination of organic ASO and paid acquisition through TikTok and Instagram ads. Firebase handles the backend infrastructure across the entire portfolio, keeping operational complexity manageable for a solo developer with eight years of engineering experience.
How It Works
Use ASO tools like Astro and FoxData to research app store keywords, filtering for terms with popularity scores above 20 and competition difficulty below
Validate the keyword opportunity by checking existing apps in the space, looking for gaps where current solutions are outdated, poorly rated, or missing obvious features.
Build a minimal viable app in Flutter targeting that specific keyword. Ship with one core feature only, ensuring it works without bugs but not over engineering the design or UX.
Set up Firebase backend for authentication, hosting, and Cloud Functions to keep infrastructure consistent across the portfolio.
Launch the app and monitor organic performance for one to two weeks. Track downloads, retention, and keyword ranking movement.
For apps showing sustained traction, invest in paid acquisition through TikTok and Instagram ads alongside continued ASO optimization.
For apps with flat performance, either leave them as passive revenue generators or deprioritize entirely. Do not sink additional time into apps the market has not validated.
Monetize through ad mediation networks, optimizing ad placement and frequency based on each app's usage patterns and user demographics.
Repeat the cycle continuously, treating each new app as an independent business bet rather than a feature of an existing product.
Results
Built a portfolio of 30 mobile apps generating $22,000 per month in under one year. Average revenue per app is approximately $730 monthly. This followed five years of zero traction on a single calorie tracking app. The portfolio approach started in February 2025 using Flutter for cross platform development and Firebase for backend infrastructure.
Our Take
We think the keyword first development methodology is the most transferable insight here. Most developers build what they find interesting and then try to find users. Inverting that process by validating demand through ASO data before writing a single line of code eliminates the biggest risk in app development. The $730 average per app looks modest individually, but the portfolio math is compelling: 30 small bets producing $22K beats one big bet producing nothing. We appreciate the honesty about the five year failure that preceded this success. The limitation is that this approach requires comfort with Flutter, ASO tooling, and the discipline to ship minimal products without over engineering. It also depends on continued ad revenue, which can be volatile. Best suited for developers who can ship quickly and want to diversify risk across multiple products.
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