Half a Year, 872 Users, and $10 in Revenue: One Developer's Honest Post-Mortem of a WeChat Mini-Program
1. Development Journey
Time flies. It's been half a year since the Fuzhu Bookkeeping mini-program went live, evolving from version 1.0.0 to version 1.6.1. Today I sorted through the development logs, and I can hardly believe I managed to build it and launch it in my spare time.
[Image: Development log screenshots showing version history]
2. User Acquisition
As of January 10, 2026, we've accumulated 872 users. Thank you for your use and support!
[Image: User count screenshot]
[Image: Daily active users chart]
After launch, I didn't do much promotion—just one WeChat public account article that got about 1,200 views, and then it was all organic traffic. Although the user growth numbers look decent, retention is not optimistic. DAU dropped from around 70 people to a stable 10-something. This makes me wonder if my product isn't good enough or isn't helping users. To avoid building in a vacuum, I actively listen to feedback from friends and users, making adjustments and optimizations to make it better and better.
No matter what the future holds, I will keep updating and iterating this project to serve more users. It's my first complete work and also my first step into independent development. I will take it seriously.
3. Revenue
Currently, the only revenue channel is ad monetization (流量主); all features are free. To avoid affecting user experience, after enabling ad monetization, I only introduced a splash screen ad. Ad monetization has been active for 3 months, with a total income of 69.32 yuan. That's about 0.4 yuan per day—basically no revenue, haha. A software without revenue is like water without a source, a tree without roots—it won't last long, and it also makes users worry that I might disappear at any time. My plan is to launch VIP features once I've made Fuzhu Bookkeeping more complete and polished.
[Image: Revenue screenshot showing 69.32 yuan total]
4. Reflections
Developing Fuzhu Bookkeeping is my first step into independent development, and it made me realize that building a demo and building a product are as different as clouds and mud. Going from a demo that looks okay to something usable, and then from usable to something delightful, requires brains and hard work. You need to consider many things: UI design, user experience, user onboarding, feature testing, etc. Being ambitious but not down-to-earth is a mistake I often make, and it's a flaw I need to overcome quickly. Avoid perfectionism—perfection requires completion first.
For independent development, you need to shrink the programmer mindset and bring in product thinking and operations thinking. When you work at a company, you only need to focus on your own little patch—once the feature works, you can grab a coffee and slack off. But independent development is different: you have to be both father and mother. Don't obsess over whether the code is elegant or robust, and don't jump in with this framework, that technology, design patterns, algorithms, and go wild. In the early stages, you must avoid this, or your energy will be drained quickly. You need to think about what can get your features implemented and launched fast! It doesn't matter if it's a white cat or a black cat—as long as it catches mice, it's a good cat.
AI has truly changed our development model. It saved me a huge amount of development time. We should actively embrace this change. I dare say that without AI's help, this project would have taken at least twice as long, or maybe even been impossible to complete! But it's not as crazy as some say online—that AI can make you an app with just one sentence. That's not realistic. Even if it produces something, there would be many problems requiring a lot of time to adjust and fix. Through this period of collaborating with AI, I've found that the ceiling of AI's ability is actually the ceiling of your own ability. If you are strong, AI is strong. You are like a commander, and AI does the work. But if your ability is lacking and your professional knowledge is insufficient, and you give bad commands, AI becomes dumb too—it can't create something that doesn't exist in your mind! In this era of rapid AI development, I should focus on cultivating my thinking abilities: code thinking and product thinking. I remember a saying: code is formed in your mind; as long as the logic is correct, writing code is just a process of stacking. Now that AI helps me with the coding step, we should learn how to clearly articulate the thoughts in our minds so that AI can understand and follow our logic.
The most important thing is always saved for last: product positioning and operational promotion. No matter how good your product is, it's useless if no one knows about it. Product positioning is crucial. If you choose a red ocean field like bookkeeping, a quick search will yield no fewer than 10 or 20 apps. Grabbing traffic from the top apps is extremely difficult. But let's think about one more question: why, with so many bookkeeping apps already, do one or two new ones still occasionally appear? My answer is: no single app can satisfy all users' needs! For example, I am one of those users. I believe there must be others like me. So I need to achieve differentiation. Simply copying someone else's product won't work. Differentiation can be in features, UI, or interaction. Avoid being big and comprehensive; focus on being small and beautiful. Concentrating on a specific type of user need is the way to break through. As for promotion, if you don't have money to invest in ads, you have to rely on yourself. Besides posting articles on various platforms, there's no other way. This kind of cold start is a helpless move, and it further highlights the importance of building a personal brand.
Independent development is a dark road—no goals, no endpoints, everything is unknown. But I like unknowns. It means my life has infinite possibilities!
[Image: Inspirational closing image]
[Image: QR code for the mini-program]