I Gave Up Trying to Make Money From My Budget App. Here's What Happened Next.

Three weeks ago I launched Monee -- a budget tracker with no accounts, no server, no subscription, and no business model. That last one is the weird part. The pitch I couldn't make Every indie hacker's story eventually gets to the monetization slide. Freemium, then $9/mo for the good stuff. Ads, once you have traffic. Enterprise tier, once you have credibility. I couldn't do it. The whole point of Monee is that it's free because it's free -- not because you're in a trial. localStorage doesn't cost me money to host your data. Zero users or a million users, my bill is the same: $0. So I made it free. Permanently. No plan to change that. What actually happened Traffic didn't explode. (I expected that.) But here's what surprised me: the engagement pattern looked completely different from every app I've launched before. Most apps: 80% of users bounce on day 1. The 20% who stick around eventually churn when they find something better. Monee: people open it on their phones in moments of impul