Topic
Living on other companies' land: app stores, marketplaces, processors, and managing the dependency.
Frank published his 2022 template revenue line by line. The funnel was not his 2.9 million subscriber channel: it was 15 videos on a small tutorial channel and a free 42,000-word guide.
Better Sheets started as eight screen recordings made in a day, four of them free. The marketplace deal that took it from a dozen customers to more than a thousand is also its biggest risk.
Emmanuel Crouvisier added a Pro tier to his credit card app at the last minute. Within a year it was earning more than his day job, on costs he puts in the hundreds per month.
SB 2420 became enforceable on 4 June 2026 and both stores now hand developers an age category. The statute puts the duty on the developer: assign ratings, read the signal, and decide what counts as a significant change.
The CMA's steering consultations for Apple and Google closed on 28 July 2026, with a decision due later this year. Google has already repriced UK Play fees, and the external web link rate is published.
Three users sued Apple on 27 July over a counterfeit Sparrow Wallet that took $1.8 million. For anyone with a named product, the useful question is which form actually removes a clone, and what it demands before you file.
A federal judge dismissed both of Google's DMCA claims against SerpApi on 20 July 2026. The reason was not that scraping is legal: it was a clause in section 1201 that almost no site owner has read.
The browser-signal provision came out of the Council's text on 18 June 2026 and the Parliament has not decided. The route to a banner-free site never ran through Brussels: it runs through your tag list, and CNIL wrote down the test.
The 16 July clarification splits inauthentic content into generic templates, manufactured distress, and synthetic experts on money and health. What triggers each, the version that passes, and what a YPP suspension costs in re-earned watch hours.
One switch became three, free on every plan, with new-domain defaults changing on 15 September. The Googlebot trade-off that makes one of the three expensive, a setting matrix by site type, and the exact dashboard path.
The Commission did not object to Google charging a steering fee. It objected to the level and the length, both of which are published on Google's own help pages. The three routes out of Play billing, priced, with the enrolment steps.
Three former Morning Brew employees launched beehiiv in October 2021. By April 2024 the platform was sending a billion emails a month, and its customers were earning about $1.2 million monthly through it.
In August 2022, David Holz said Midjourney had about ten people, no investors, and was already profitable. Its product had no website to speak of. Users typed prompts into a public Discord channel.
John O'Nolan funded Ghost with a 2013 Kickstarter for software that barely existed, then structured it as a non-profit so it could never be sold. The public dashboard now shows eight figures of recurring revenue.
Sahil Lavingia built Gumroad over a weekend in 2011 and 52,000 people used it on day one. The launch was the easy part. What he published about the eight years that followed is the more useful story.
From September 30, apps must be registered by a verified developer to install in four countries, with global rollout in 2027. The dates, the $25 versus free account decision, and what verification leaves alone.
Shopify gave vape merchants 14 days to delist worldwide, legal markets included. Category bans are a different risk class from account bans: you can be fully compliant and still lose the channel. The three layers, an exposure test, and this week's moves.
A rejection is not a verdict, it is the start of a documented process most developers never read. Fix and resubmit, reply, appeal, expedite: what each lever is for, the exact screens, and the timeline math for your launch.
Meta shipped a dedicated app for Facebook Marketplace sellers: AI-drafted listings, a buyer-only inbox, bulk inventory tools and performance data. What's in it, and a day-one plan.
Patreon cut 93 jobs while taking 10% of creator income. A fee comparison across Patreon, Substack and Ghost, and the question that matters more: who owns your subscriber billing?
Apple and Google both halve their commission for developers under $1M - but neither discount is automatic. The programs, the cliff-versus-marginal difference between them, and the enrollment checklists.
Payment processors, marketplaces, search, email - the published policies all reserve the same power: unilateral review, pause, or termination. A worksheet to score your exposure and a mitigation ladder to buy it down.