This is the story of Timur, a developer and a very simple mobile product that happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Sometimes you don’t need complex technology, a big team, or investments. Sometimes it’s enough to spot a trend early, test a hypothesis quickly, and avoid overcomplicating things.
Timur built a very simple app – an interval timer for Japanese walking.
No magic at all: a timer, intervals, minimal functionality.
He noticed the trend very early on TikTok. The method was gaining traction, videos and recommendations were spreading fast, but there were almost no apps yet. Timur launched one of the first apps and quickly captured search visibility.
The app was:
- extremely simple
- even a bit boring
- with no “wow” features
But at the same time, it had:
- a clean, friendly onboarding
- a paywall right after onboarding
- proper monetization basics
Riding the social media hype, the app unexpectedly started generating solid revenue.
The Idea: Japanese Walking + a Timer
Around the same time, Timur saw posts from Viktor about buying domains and building simple websites with Type.link, with the hypothesis that this setup could bring additional traffic.
Instead of overthinking, he decided to test it:
- bought a domain related to Japanese walking
- built a simple site on Typelink
- added just 5 articles
- and mostly stopped working on it after that
No SEO magic. No content strategy. No scaling.
The result: about 20% of the app’s traffic came from the web.
Web Experiment: Domain + Typelink
Why This Matters
20% doesn’t sound huge at first. But there’s an important nuance. Timur believes that external web traffic was one of the reasons why the app:
- stayed in the top rankings for a long time
- didn’t drop from leading positions
- ranked consistently for 5 core keywords
- ran incentive traffic
- manipulated reviews
- showed sharp, unnatural rating spikes for brand-new apps
Selling the App
Eventually, the app was sold together with the domain.
To this day, it’s unclear:
- what was more valuable to the buyer
- the app itself
- or the domain with its history and traffic
Altogether, the project brought several tens of thousands of dollars, including both revenue and the sale.
Important Note: Don’t Repeat This Today
To save other developers time, Timur is upfront:
👉 Building a similar app today is no longer a great idea.
Why:
- competition has grown
- traffic is diluted
- profitability has dropped
- at first there were 1–2 apps
- now there are dozens
- conversion decreases with every new competitor
This is a classic example of how early entry changes everything.