DEV Community: John

I built Claude Code for marketing apps to get customers on autopilot

John — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:31:24 +0000

For years I shipped apps nobody ever saw. I always picked building one more feature over creating and posting one more post, because building is comfortable and marketing isn't. Then I learned the hard way that in the early days: distribution beats product.

The problem is creating and posting content consistently is brutal. Write, shoot, edit, caption, repeat for the next account. I'd go hard for ten days, burn out, go quiet and lose everything I'd built up.

So I built the thing I needed. One command writes, produces, captions and schedules a month of content across 10+ TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube accounts. Runs on your machine, your keys, one-time payment.

90% off ($250 → $25) for the first 10 people. Link will be shared below in the comment section.

I Lost All My Google Traffic. ChatGPT Doesn’t Seem to Care

John — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 07:02:21 +0000

I did an SEO experiment in a very competitive niche.

Programmatic SEO. A few hundred pages, one template, shipped in a weekend.

For 5 months it worked. ~50 impressions a day and climbing 📈

Then two Google updates caught it.

The May 2026 core update started the slide. The June 2026 spam update finished the job.

Look at the right side of this chart 👇

Peak → single digits → 0. In three weeks. And it's stayed at 0 ever since.

Now trying to fix it to see if I can revive the site.

Interestingly, most of this site's traffic comes from ChatGPT.

I built an app for practicing optimism and it reached 732 downloads in 5 days 🎉

John — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:25:37 +0000

It's a simple app that blocks apps until you reframe a negative thought into something positive.

I've been struggling with negative thinking lately so I built the app to train my mind to be more optimistic and thought it might also be useful for others so I published it on the App Store but I didn't expect that it will get this much traction.

Built solo in a day, with zero funding and continuously improved it based on feedback. It now has a mood tracker and guided meditation feature too, expanding as a mental health app to also help manage stress and anxiety.

Tools I used to build it: Expo, Eas EAS, Apple Screen Time API.

App Store Link:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/optimistpal/id6770231815

I Built an App to Train Optimism. I Didn’t Expect Anyone Else to Want It

John — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 03:59:35 +0000

Like many side projects, this one started with a problem I was trying to solve for myself.

I noticed how easy it was to fall into negative thinking. A small setback could ruin my mood for hours, and simply telling myself to “think positive” never worked.

So I asked myself a different question:

What if optimism was something you could practice, just like any other habit?

That idea turned into an iOS app.

Before opening selected apps, it asks you to reframe one negative thought into something more balanced or constructive. The goal isn’t forced positivity. It’s creating a small pause that helps break automatic negative thinking.

I built it expecting to use it myself.

I almost didn’t publish it because I assumed it was too niche.

Five days after launching on the App Store, it had reached 732 downloads.

That was a good reminder of something I keep forgetting as an indie developer:

The problems that feel “too personal” are often shared by more people than you think.

As developers, we sometimes spend weeks searching for the next big idea, when the best products are hiding in our own daily frustrations.

This project reinforced a simple lesson for me:

Build something you’d genuinely use. Then let the market decide whether other people need it too.

If you’re curious, you can check out OptimistPal here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/optimistpal/id6770231815

I’d also love to hear from other indie developers. Have your most successful projects started as tools you built for yourself?

SEO Isn’t Dead. Neither Is LLM SEO.

John — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:01:29 +0000

Despite all the talk about SEO becoming obsolete, my experience has been the opposite.

Over the last three months, SEO and LLM SEO brought my iOS app:

303 organic downloads
$647 in sales

The numbers aren’t huge, but they’re enough to show that investing in organic search can pay off. As more people discover apps through both search engines and AI assistants, I think this opportunity will only continue to grow.

I’m doubling down on the strategy and applying the same playbook to my other apps.

If you found this useful, follow me for more experiments on SEO, LLM SEO, ASO, and growing indie apps.