She Built a $10K App Just to Learn How APIs Work

u/lmtDigital writes on Reddit…

I decided to play with the OpenAI API for the first time. No big plan. No market research. I just wanted to understand how it worked.

She built ArtScan, an iOS app that lets you scan a painting with your phone camera and get info about it.

It’s basically an AI wrapper. Nothing fancy. No original model. Just camera → API → response 🤖

At the time, I honestly thought: Ok, this will be a fun weekend project, I’ll learn something, and that’s it.

🤑 Fast forward…

• ~20K downloads
• 30–50 downloads/day, still coming in organically
• ~$10K total revenue
• 7% App Store conversion rate
• $0 marketing spend

I’m not running ads anymore. I’m not actively promoting it. And App Store analytics shows installs coming from keywords I don’t even target.

She has a full-time job and didn’t even know how to use the OpenAI API when she started.

If you’re sitting on a “this is probably useless but I’m curious” idea… maybe build it anyway.

The formula is simple: point a phone camera at something + AI = info. Could be…

• plants
• bugs
• architecture
• dog breeds
• antiques
• wine labels

Pick a niche, wrap an AI API around a camera, and put it on the App Store 🎯

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