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Comment by trungdq88 | Hacker News Reader

I built a screenshot app for macOS and made ~$3k/mo from it :) https://xnapper.com

People like the app for its ability to turn a normal boring screenshot into a beautiful one that they can share on social media instantly.

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What is the tech stack for this? I really want to build small apps like this and have a diversified portfolio but don't know where to start. Are you still earning 3K/month from this and what kind of on-going marketing are you doing?

This is an excellent landing page. They rarely explain what a product does this well and this fast.

How to you keep those mini videos up to date?

Thank you!

It's a pain in the ass, I have to re-record the videos every time. But I think it's worth it.

Usually I only update the videos if the app UI get too much different than the current version, which happens once every few months.

Someone made something precisely for that and posted it here last week. I forgot the name unfortunately, but I share the pain.

Plus. Self updating screenshots:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34416386

You might want to play around with the encoding on your videos. On a Windows machine with a i7-8770k (and dedicated GPU) with Firefox latest, the page was spiking up to 100% GPU usage, causing the browsing experience to slow to a crawl. It may be related due to me having a Twitch stream up on a second display.

Probably a Firefox bug, but it's preventing me from looking at this landing page that every one else seems to like :P

Wow this is interesting, you write "read like snapper" on the homepage. I made a screenshot tool for iOS which is actually called Snapper. I have been working on/maintaining it since 2014!

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/01/22/snapper-2-screensho... - video

Interesting! I guess "snap" is quite a desirable verb for a screenshot tool name, haha.

I couldn't get snapper.com, so I replace "s" with "x" instead.

One thing I didn't know is that people tend to read it like "ex-snapper" or "znapper", which is unexpected to me (English is not my first language)

Yes definitely, over the years I've seen a few names with 'snap' as a base. It makes sense. I also tried to get snapper.com some times (although in my niche audience a website is not required at all). For the name, I think read it as ex-napper.

I really like the design of your website. If you don't mind me asking, any tips on how did you create it?

I mostly use the premade components from Tailwind UI.

It's so good!

How did you market this app? How did you get the traction?

I really like your pricing model (i.e. use forever + 1 year of support).

I love this app and use it daily. (I think I got it through setapp). Awesome work.

I'm happy to hear that! Thank you!

what a beautiful landing page. From where do you get most of your users?

Mostly from my Twitter. I grew my account to ~70K followers by building this app and other products in public over the last 2 years.

GP has ten of thousand of followers on Twitter.

wow, that is really nice.

How long did it take you to develop the app to where it is today?

I've been working on it on and off since July 2022.

Brilliant

thanks!

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