7 Unknown Apps Making at Least $40,000/month (Copy Them)

In this video, I'm going to show you very simple apps that are making at least $40,000 a month. So, you can see what's actually working out there. Cuz you'll be surprised that the apps that are making money today are not the most complex or elaborate, but they're insanely simple. So, today I'm going to be showing you seven apps. I'm going to break down what these apps are, reverse engineer how they make money, and how you can take these ideas and apply it to other niches. Now, I believe that 2026 is the greatest time to be building apps. It's a lot easier to build these apps with the AI tools that we have today. And people are making tons of money doing it. So, I'm going to get you inspired with these ideas. So, by the end of the video, you know what to look for so you can build one for yourself and start making money. All right. So, the first app we have on the list is called Dialogue. So, this is a language translation app and they are generating $50,000 a month. And by the way, I'm getting these revenue numbers from Sensor Tower. But what is this app all about? So, it's basically like a Google Translate app. It helps you translate from one language to another. But now you're probably thinking, why would anyone pay for this, right? You can you can use Google Translate for free. Well, if you use free apps before, it's not always the best, even if it's built by huge companies like Google. For example, I saw the other day that people are complaining about how the UI design is bad and this translation doesn't always work and a lot of times it's not accurate, right? So, these guys noticed that and made a much better version of it, right? So, they fixed the translation issue and they also added an AI functionality that cleans up the grammar and they also added an integration to Apple Watch, which I think is really smart cuz you can imagine how convenient that would be, right? When you traveling, you don't have to pull up your phone and you can do everything on your watch. Now, if you're thinking, I don't know how to build apps like this. I'm not technical. Well, today you can build a lot of these apps with Claude or ChatGPT Codex without writing a single line of code. In fact, I've been doing a series of tutorial videos on how to build these apps from scratch and these videos are not for developers, but it's for people who are non-coders that want to build apps. So, whatever mobile app idea that comes up today from this video, you can you can immediately can it by just talking to the AI in plain English. Now, going back to this app, a couple of takeaways that we can learn from this app, right? So, most people when they see apps that are free like Google Translate, these are built by Google, a huge company. They're probably not going to compete with that, right? Cuz it almost feels stupid to make a paid version of something that's already free. But again, you see how not every free app is the best one, right? There'll be many things that you can improve on, and Google may not be spending tons of money and time to improve that particular app. Cuz they might be focusing on other things. So, that is the opportunity for smaller players to take a chunk of the market. Or number two, you can build it for one country or language and own that market. Which simply means that you build the app to target a specific country, and you can design the app, including the wording of the screenshots here, to speak to that local audience, right? And yes, you'll be niching down and narrowing down the market, but I think that could be a good thing cuz a lot of the customers here will be able to relate to your app a lot quicker. And I'm going to run through a few examples of why this works later in the video. And number three, see if you can add additional features that original free app does not have. For example, what they did with the Apple Watch integration, which I think is really smart. Or what if you can make it connect to WhatsApp or Telegram, so you can auto translate messages. So, I think that would be really cool. And a lot of these features that I'm talking about today can be vibe coded as well with cloud code. So, you can actually talk to the AI and ask it how to make this function work, and then just use plain English to build out the features. Now, I want to touch a little bit on how they marketed their app as well. Like a lot of these apps, especially consumer apps, they're usually marketed using TikTok or Instagram through short-form videos like this, right? So, if you go to TikTok, you can search for the name of the app, so Dialogue Translate app, and you'll see a bunch of videos that are created by UGC creators, and these are basically organic content that are driving traffic to the app. And the overall strategy is going to be to take those videos that are getting views and scale it even more with Facebook ads. All right, so the next app is called PrayLock. So, this is a Christian screen time blocker. It basically helps you manage your time in social media. So, if I go to the website here, you can see that before you can open things like Instagram or Tik Tok or play games, you have to do a certain task, right? And in this case, you got to say a prayer because obviously this is targeted for the Christian faith. And this app is making $40,000 a month and doing that, which is crazy for just a very simple feature. There's not a lot of other features in the app. It will just lock your social media app until you perform certain task. And what makes this work is that it's not just blocking apps, but it's promoting a habit, right? Although it feels like punishment, but it's actually promoting something healthy. And because it's positioned as a Christian app, it speaks directly to that community. And for Christians especially, you know, praying and reading the Bible, these are habits that they're already striving to build. So, this app just makes sense to help people do that. Now, how do we apply this idea and apply it to other niches? So, obviously we can copy this idea for other things and religions like the Muslim faith, and Jewish, Hindu. Because the app will function the same way, but it's just wrapped around different religions, right? And I don't think it needs to be only for prayers. It could be, you know, reading scriptures, meditations, and things like this, right? And you can even get out of the religion category altogether. You can think about fitness, right? What if you want to get more fit and you want to do 10 push-ups before opening Instagram or maybe drink more water. Or maybe you want to promote to people who like to journal. Maybe you can, you know, write one thing that you're grateful for before you open up Instagram or Tik Tok. And I think this works because millions of people they want to build better habits, right? And you're creating this app just for that. Or you can go the parenting route, right? For parents who have kids. So, maybe the kids they have to uh answer a few homework questions, they have to finish an assignment, or they have to do a quick quiz before they can watch YouTube or play games. I think parents would pay for that and schools would recommend something like this, right? And I think a huge takeaway from this app is this, right? You want to find a habit that people actually want to build. Could be praying, it could be exercising, reading, and then you want to tie that habit to an unlock condition. And then you want to wrap the whole thing and brand it for one specific group of people, right? That's your idea. Cuz I think when you brand it for a specific audience, the marketing also gets easier, right? Cuz when you post content about it, people in that community will share it easily with each other cuz it feels like it's something made for them, not just another random productivity app that they found cuz it speaks their language and it fits their values. Quick break from our sponsor Build Your Store AI. So, if you have a product idea, something that you want to sell, this AI tool basically builds your website from scratch in just minutes. So, if you ever want to launch a product or you want to test an idea really quickly, this removes all the friction. The website is powered by Shopify, basically the best platform for selling products online. So, let me quickly show you how this works. So, if you click on the link I've got below, you land on this page. 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I can just click on import and it will automatically appear on your Shopify store. And if you just check your website, it automatically pulls all the images, the product name, and also the description. Now, they've also got a sourcing request feature where the Auto DS team will work with you to source products from the best factories with the best pricing and the fastest shipping times. So, if you guys want to give it a try, build your store today with AI using my link below. Thanks Build Your Store for sponsoring this video. Now, back to the ideas. All right, so the third app here is called Pixel Painters. Now, this is not a mobile app. It is a web application and they're making $61,000 a month. So, if I go to Trust MRR here, you can see that their revenue has been growing really, really fast and they're making 38,000, 48,000 and they actually peaked at $82,000 in the month of February. So, the trend here is still very, very healthy. And if I go to the website here, so the basically this is a design service as a subscription, but they're focusing on churches, right? And even though it's a smaller market, you can see how narrowing down can still make you a lot of money. Now, one of the reasons why this works is that churches, they have a lot of events, they have Sunday service, they've got midweek service, they've got announcement that they need to put up on the screen, they've got email newsletters, they've got brochures, flyers. So, there's a lot of content that needs to be made. And because they only focus on this group, they can make the branding really specific for churches. So, you can see here, unlimited graphics for your church created by Christian designers. And this will make the target audience feel like, "Oh, this is the service that's made for me, right?" And that adds a lot of trust for that specific group of people, right? Now, the big reason why this works is that churches, they have a recurring design need. So, like I mentioned before, they have uh brochures, flyers, newsletters, things to put up on screen during the sermon. So, a lot of this things can be templateized and you can adjust it and make minor customizations for every church. But, the major template is the same. And also, a service like this is very sticky, right? Once a church likes your work, they stay subscribed for years. And if you go to the pricing page, you can see that this is actually a subscription and it may look a bit pricey at first, but you're actually hiring real human designers and because of that, this is actually not bad, right? So, instead of hiring somebody in-house for like 3,000, 5,000 dollars a month, you can just offload that service to this company which specializes in service for churches for just a fraction of the price. So, yes, as a business it's not totally hands-off, right? They have designers to manage, but I just want to add this to the list because I want to show you how you can still win by niching down for a specific group of people rather than trying to reach everybody. Now, a couple of takeaways that we can learn from this app. You can pick any service, like maybe design work or video copywriting, and make it only for one specific type of customer. For example, you can target people like real estate agents. These people have recurring design needs as well. They have new listings on a daily basis, so they do need new graphics, things updated on their website, or you can target schools as well. Same idea. They have weekly or even daily events, which means that they need design work on a recurring basis. But again, you want to be specific with your targeting. You don't want to just be a general design service for everyone cuz then you get cuz then you'll be competing with everybody. But when you're specific, it's going to be a lot easier to brand it and market it, as you can see from this example here. So, the next idea here is called Easy Expense. So, this is basically a mobile app that allows you to take a photo of the receipt, and the app will automatically categorize and save the receipt, and makes it easier for bookkeeping. Now, you can already see how valuable and useful an app like this is for small businesses, especially if you're dealing with a lot of paper receipts. So, the moment that you get a receipt, you just take a photo of it, and it connects automatically to your accounting software, and it automatically inputs all the numbers here, all the items, and upload that data to the accounting software. So, very simple feature. This can be easily implemented with an AI tool that can read the items on the receipt here. I've actually made a video on how to do this with Cloud Code, if you want to check it out on my channel. And the one thing that's impressive about this app is that there's already tons of competitors actually on this space, but it's still able to make $40,000 a month. Now, I think a couple of takeaways that we can learn from this app is that the demand is obviously huge for this. Why not do it for a specific type of small business? Cuz you've seen how narrowing down and focusing on one specific niche can be really powerful. Cuz I think for every industry, there are a lot of different requirements for handling receipts. For example, someone in construction versus someone who is a freelancer might have totally different workflows, right? So, you want to optimize your app for that specific group of people, right? Cuz when you do that, you can maybe name your app receipt scanner for freelancers or something like this, right? That's going to be easier to identify with for someone who is a freelancer. And maybe if you're not in the US, right? If you're overseas, you can also target that specific demographic and make your app compliant with the local laws, right? Cuz there's different tax reporting requirements in every country. So, huge market for that. Now, the next idea here is called vid.ai and it's making $92,000 a month. So, a lot of these video generation tools are making tons of money right now, and this is a great example of that. And by the way, this is not a mobile app, but it's actually a web application. So, if you go to the website here, it's basically an app that uses many different tools like Seedance or Eleven Labs and helps to create long-form videos that is complete with a script, a voice-over, and the video footage for channels like this. So, these are faceless videos that are also getting tons of views. But one downside that I always think about is that a lot of these tools, they don't target a specific demographic. So, they just create videos that are generalized for everybody and all niches. Like this one's in philosophy, and then you got health, travel. So, they're targeting everybody, which means that the quality might not be the best because every niche has different requirements, and you can't apply one formula for every niche. So, for me, if I were to create an app like this, I would probably target a specific type of video. Maybe I just focus on documentary style videos and be really good at that. Or focus on unboxing videos and become really, really good at those type of videos. Or if you want to specialize on philosophy videos like this, be really, really good at that. Cuz the output quality is going to be so much better if you specialize on one thing, and it's going to be a lot easier to sell, and it's going to be easy to differentiate yourself from existing apps like this. Now, a tool like this is actually very easy to create as well. So, the technology behind these tools are usually AI models like C Dance 2.0 or Nato Banana to create images or 11 Labs for voice overs. So, how these tools work in the background is that they're probably using the huge AI models like Nato Banana or C Dance 2.0 to generate videos, 11 Labs for voice overs, and they're buying all these tokens in bulk at a discount, and they have a special prompt that they put in to train the AI to produce these type of videos, and that markups becomes the monthly price that you pay to use these tools. For example, this one, the plus plan here charges you $67 a month, and you're basically capped at 500 credits per month, right? So, basically they're taking a margin out of this $67 per month, and that allows the customer to produce 100 short videos per month. So, again, if I were to create something like this, I would definitely target a specific demographic, be really, really good in that specific niche, maybe focus on creating the best scripts or the best hooks for YouTube for long-form videos, because, you know, hooks for long-form are totally different from how it works with short-form. But, if you want to focus on short-form, be really good at that as well, right? And I think the point here is that you don't want to be just another generic AI tool that competes with everybody, but you want to be really good at one thing. All right. So, the next idea here is called Upward. So, this is a dating app basically for Christians. And when I discovered this app, I thought this was really, really smart idea, cuz I think, you know, dating apps in general, they have a lot of demand, obviously. But, they added another layer to this, which is just focusing on this specific group of people, which is Christians, right? And I think a lot of people who are religious, they do want to marry within their faith, mostly, which is why this app makes a lot of sense, right? It clicks right away, and you don't have to sell the idea too much. So, for this app here, it's not about the tech or the features, but it's about how the app is positioned. So, obviously, you can apply this idea to other niches. So, maybe you target just Catholics, only Muslims, Jewish, Hindu, or I think if you want to go even further, you can do it only for uh specific nationalities, like dating for Japanese people or for Spanish speakers only. And I think making the app exclusive to a certain demographic or certain location is actually a good idea because I think most people, when they're dating, they want to be with somebody who lives maybe in the same area, right? So, I think that could be an idea, but I think the lesson here is you want to take an idea that is already working, which is online dating, and again, you want to brand it for a specific community. And I think this is a great way to position the app. All right, last but not least, this next app is called Teacher Z. So, this is actually a course creation platform for online coaches, and they're making $68,000 a month. And this is a web application, by the way. So, some of you are probably familiar with course platforms like Kajabi or Teachable. These are very popular for people who sell courses. So, think of this like uh QuickBooks for accounting, right? They're huge. But, these guys have built a version of that, but only made it for the French market. They proved that even when you go narrow, you can still make $68,000 a month. Now, the big reason why this works is that a lot of the big platforms like Kajabi, they don't follow the local laws of the country cuz it would be insane to try to be compliant to every country. And these guys saw that opportunity and built a version of that that complies with French laws. So, if I go to the website here, obviously, this is in French cuz they want to localize everything, right? If I translate this to English, you'll see that they really brand the app to make it local and not just a general app. And if I scroll down here, you'll see that they're trying to push out the idea that they're hosted in France and they're complying with the GDPR, which is something that probably the big players are not going to bother doing, right? So, a couple takeaways here, copy any popular software product and you want to rebuild it for one specific country, one specific language, and make sure you're compliant with the local laws. Or maybe you can take it even further, like maybe you just narrow down on who you're targeting. Maybe you just create a course platform for fitness coaches. Maybe you just target musicians. Cuz like I said, a lot of the big guys, they ignore smaller markets. They usually want to capture the entire market. But, as you've seen from a lot of the apps that we've discussed in the video, narrowing down could be really, really powerful. Now, I think there are three takeaways that we can learn from the apps that we discussed in this video. Number one, a saturated market is an opportunity in disguise. If you see something that is competitive, it doesn't mean that there's no opportunity, cuz everyone says that dating apps are too crowded, but we saw that Upward took that idea and just built it and branded for Christians, and they're making $400,000 a month. And also, Pixel Painters did it with Design for Churches, and Teachable did it for online courses specifically for the French market. So, you want to pick one specific group of people, you want to build for them, so you're not competing with everybody. Number two, you want to fix one small painful problem really well. So, we can see this from the Easy Expense app, the receipt scanner. So, they didn't build out a full-blown accounting app, right? But, they took one painful problem in that category, and they made an easy integration with all the big accounting software, like QuickBooks or Xero. So, you're not asking people to move away from the apps that they already use, like QuickBooks, but you're kind of like adding a feature that QuickBooks might be missing really, really well. So, if you look at the accounting or bookkeeping industry, you want to find what people are complaining about in their daily workflow and try to solve that one problem really, really well. And number three, you want to find a tool that people already use, but secretly hate, right? So, think about the apps that you pay for right now, but you hate using. Right, maybe it's slow, maybe it's has ugly UI design, maybe it's confusing. So, the idea with a translate app, how it is slow, inaccurate, and has bad design. And this app dialogue made a better version of it and charged a monthly subscription. Right, $50,000 a month for one simple app. So, think about the apps that you already pay on a monthly basis, but you hate using it cuz it's just bad. So, that is the opportunity here. All right, so if you like these ideas, I'd appreciate it if you hit subscribe and share this video with a friend who wants to build apps. And if you want more ideas, I actually have 20 more ideas like this, very simple apps that are making a lot of money. And I have this list that breaks down what the apps are, how much they're making, and why they're so successful. So, you can get inspired and see what is actually working today, so you can build one for your own. So, if you want to grab this list, I'm going to put the link in the description below. It is free to download. Now, if you have an idea and you're ready to start building an app, I recently made a video on how I built this mobile app from scratch using Cloud Code, and I did this without writing a single line of code. So, if you want to watch that video, you want to click here, and I'll see you guys there.