This Free App Earns Him $4675/Month

Paperback is an ad-free book/comic reading app for iOS, developed by Faizan Durrani 🇵🇰

From Faizan’s LinkedIn…

Self-taught; 22 year old; Programmer from Karachi, Pakistan.

Looks like he’s been working on Paperback since 2020.

As of this writing the app earns $4,675/month via Patreon 🤑

Judging by his LinkedIn, Faizan seems to have a full-time remote job and probably works on Paperback in his free time.

Someone commented on one of his Patreon posts back in 2021…

After the news that Manga Storm will no longer be supported. This is like an oasis in the desert.

Manga Storm was another app for reading comics and I’m guessing that’s what prompted Faizan to build his app 💡

Unclear how he got traction, but I’d guess it was mostly social traffic from places like YouTube, Reddit and probably online comic communities.

The Paperback Discord community has 50,000+ members, so less than 10% of them pay to support the app via Patreon, and it sounds like most of the supporters are only paying the minimum $1/month.

So what we’ve got here is a niche comic reading app for iOS by a kid in Pakistan. About as niche as it gets.

And by the way, the median salary in Pakistan is apparently less than $300/month, so Faizan is likely living large in Karachi 😎

A prompt for you: do you know of any popular products or services that are being discontinued or no longer being supported?

If so, there might be an opportunity there to build a nice little niche business 😍

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