The story, in seven steps
- Age 19
My first extension paid a year's salary
I left home at 16 to study programming. At 19 I sold my first product — a Chrome extension — for about what an average Ukrainian earned in a year.
≈ a year of salary
- The pattern
I didn't invent it. I built it better.
A client paid me to build an extension that controls the volume of one tab. I noticed people were searching for exactly that, and nobody was building it well. So I built my own.
30,000 weekly users → sold
- Again
Then I rebuilt it from scratch
Same idea, better execution — and this time I knew something about getting found in the store.
100,000 users → sold again
- 3 days
A "stupid" Color Picker
Three days of work. Then a year of waiting while the store kept sending people to it.
100,000 weekly users → sold for $20,000
- The miss
The one I shut down myself
An extension that automated Instagram peaked at $800 a month. Then Instagram started blocking my clients' accounts, so I killed it. Since then I only build with a platform's rules, never against them.
$800 a month → $0, by choice
- Side project
All of it on evenings and weekends
None of this was my main job. I freelanced, worked for companies and built fitness apps — one reached half a million downloads. I sold that whole portfolio this year.
8 extensions sold · $100,000+ · $0 on ads
- Now
4 hours with AI. First sale on day five.
Mobile got crowded: the supply grew, the audience didn't. The Chrome Web Store still works the way mobile did five years ago. So I tested it — I built an extension with AI in four hours. Five days later, someone I'd never met bought it.
4 hours of work → first sale on day 5