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I launched the beta of my app in mid-November, although I must admit I did start mid-October so I'm hoping I still qualify!

I decided to build a revenue generating URL shortener. This was one of the first full projects where I basically did everything myself - research, design, development etc, which was a bit frustrating a times. It's ridiculous how unproductive my design days were compared to my development days, but I guess I'm just going against the grain there (I'd be interested to know how many people have 'mastered' both design & development.) That said, I learned quite a lot about the whole process, so definitely a good result.

I decided to launch before a lot of the esential functionality was complete (conversions, payments etc) just to get a feel for what people wanted, and most importantly if it was worth persuing the idea further. I'd probably do the same again next time, although I must admit I felt a bit helpless in the first week of launch when bugs were being uncovered/features were being requested and I was still working on the core.

I'm now onto marketing my app with my business partner. The market we're trying to is obviously insanely saturated, so it's a little frustrating at times, but I'm super motivated to get this out so lets hope we get some traction sometime soon :)

The URL of the app is http://shrtn.co



It looks like users can make money by having their affiliate codes embedded in (qualified) links they submit. But, how are you making money?


We have the relationships with the merchants, the users don't. We take a small cut of each sale.




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