In 2025, I made $500,000 with Claude Code.

You might assume I made it through hard work over many years to build one killer app. But that’s not the case. The app was actually the easy part.

Claude Code ships a working V1 in minutes now. Anyone can do it. So the app can't be your edge.

And it was actually never where the money lived.

So where did the $500k actually come from?

Mostly from Creator Buddy, a SaaS I built with Claude Code that does over $300,000 in ARR. But the other ~$100,000 came from my content on X. And my newsletter and YouTube brought in the rest.

Which points to something most people are unaware of.

The money-maker is not just the app, but the flywheel around the app.

And no, you don't need an audience or a finished product to start.

When I started, I had under 1,000 subscribers and a 9-to-5. I just tweeted and built for 10 minutes a day.

So let me show you the whole flywheel, one turn at a time.

1. Solve your own problem first

Stop hunting for a "business idea."

You already have plenty of them, just haven't written them down.

So for one day, brain-dump every challenge you hit into a notebook.

It’s how I built Creator Buddy. I used to waste hours analyzing my own tweets, so I ended up creating a tool that helped me do that.

And it turned out thousands of people had the exact same problem.

Which is why it’s made me over $300,000.

But even if your app never blows up like that, you still win. Worst case, you make your own life easier. Best case, you build a business.

2. Let Claude Code ship the V1 today

Now take that list of challenges, open Claude Code in plan mode, and paste it.

Then pick the one you want to solve, and let it build.

You'll have a usable app in minutes. Not a mockup. A real, working V1.

That’s how easy it is to build an app these days, which is exactly why it’s not the thing making the money.

So let's get to the part that actually pays.

3. Create content about the problem, before the app is even done

This is your distribution. And it's free.

Pick one channel and go for it. X is the lowest lift. It takes just a few minutes a day. YouTube is harder but bigger. A newsletter sits in between, and it puts you straight in the inbox instead of fighting an algorithm.

Whichever you pick, the rule is the same.

Post real value about the problem you're solving, so you're building an audience of buyers before you ever pitch them anything.

4. Get PAID to market, don't pay to market

This is the part almost nobody gets.

Most founders spend money on ads to launch. But when you run a content flywheel, every post does two jobs at once:

It drives customers to your app AND pays you directly.

My content alone turned into about $100,000. Roughly $50k in ad revenue, and roughly $50k in subscriptions.

And that was before the newsletter and YouTube even entered the picture.

All from just talking about what I was building.

You're not paying to advertise. You're getting paid when you advertise.

5. Listen for feedback, then paste it straight back into Claude

Your customers write your roadmap for you.

When someone DMs or replies asking for a feature, don't guess. Copy the message, paste it into Claude Code, and ask it what to do. Let it ask you questions and build the fix.

Even one piece of feedback counts when you're small. Take the feedback, hand it to Claude, ship the feature.

6. Spin the flywheel again

Then you go back to the top and do it all over.

Build, create, earn, listen, build. Every turn compounds. More content, more customers, more feedback, a better app.

That's the whole machine.

So stop waiting on the perfect app. Start building your flywheel instead.

I teach this whole system, step by step, the exact way I built it, inside the Vibe Coding Academy, where 1,000+ builders are shipping their own apps and meeting with me on live calls every week. Come start yours with us.

​Join the Vibe Coding Academy here.​

Keep shipping,

Alex