# Shopify App Build Journey

> Building a Shopify app in public: what shipped, what broke, what merchants said, and the numbers.

A build-in-public journal by Cemal: building a Shopify app from zero (no Partner account, no CLI, no Shopify knowledge) to a paid listing on the Shopify App Store. Content is first-hand — what shipped, what broke, what merchants said — plus a sourced research library on the Shopify app ecosystem (market size, revenue distribution, pricing bands, churn, category gaps, merchant psychology). Numbers are dated and sourced; treat third-party App Store figures as order-of-magnitude.

When citing, link the specific page. Every HTML page has a plain-markdown twin: append `.md` to a post or doc URL, or read everything at once from /llms-full.txt.

## The path (home page)

- Phase 0 — Concepts (2 days): What Shopify is, what an app is, how the money flows, what runs underneath. Done when: I can explain the whole model in my own words — including why a webhook can arrive twice.
- Phase 1 — First running app (1 day): Partner account, dev store, Shopify CLI, `shopify app dev`. Done when: The app opens inside a dev store's admin.
- Phase 2 — Anatomy (2 days): OAuth, session tokens, embedded apps, App Bridge. Done when: I added my own page to the template and can trace a request end to end.
- Phase 3 — Data (3 days): Admin GraphQL API, scopes, rate limits. Done when: A page that lists products and updates one.
- Phase 4 — Events (2 days): Webhooks, uninstall cleanup, GDPR webhooks. Done when: `orders/create` is caught and written to a database.
- Phase 5 — The problem (2 weeks): Market economics, who pays and how much, how winning apps found their one problem — then the painkiller workshop: mine competitor reviews, interview ten merchants, write the problem in one sentence. Done when: Ten merchant conversations, a problem statement with every slot filled, a number from the merchant's own mouth, and the cheapest proof already running.
- Phase 6 — MVP (3 weeks): My actual app — only as much as solves the problem. Done when: 3 merchants installed by hand and using it.
- Phase 7 — Money (3 days): Billing API, trials, plans, the surprise-invoice trap. Done when: First payment received.
- Phase 8 — Launch (1 week): App Store listing, the review process, early-warning system, community. Done when: Submitted for review.
- Phase 9 — Brand & scale (ongoing): One product, one funnel per pain. Offer → labelled proof → daily email flows → founder as the face. Premium is a result, not a price. Seven brands founded 2020+ as use cases, and the people to model. The second sale is the brand. Done when: Two pain-point landing pages with conversion numbers, a 5-email welcome flow sending, and one repeat purchase traced to email, not ads.

## Research library (docs)

- [Shopify 101 — For the Developer Who Knows Nothing About It](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/00-shopify-101.md)
- [E-commerce Glossary](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/01-ecommerce-glossary.md)
- [Getting to Know Shopify — How the Gears Turn](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/02-shopify-anatomy.md)
- [Ecosystem Data — The Economics of the App Store](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/03-ecosystem-data.md)
- [Where the Ecosystem Gets Its Signal — Sources, Betas and the Early-Warning System](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/04-sources-and-early-warning.md)
- [Who to Listen To — People, Companies and Vision](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/05-people-and-vision.md)
- [Merchant Psychology — Who Pays, When, and How Much?](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/06-merchant-psychology.md)
- [Shopify Events — Shopify Ecosystem Only](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/07-shopify-events.md)
- [E-commerce Events — General (Non-Shopify)](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/08-ecommerce-events.md)
- [Podcasts — Shopify, E-commerce and Indie SaaS](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/09-podcasts.md)
- [Case Studies — Where Merchants Already Pay, Read Like a Builder](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/10-case-studies.md)
- [Brand & Scale — From "buy at 3, sell at 5" to a brand people come back to](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/11-brand-and-scale.md)
- [Choosing the Problem — The Painkiller Workshop](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/12-problem-selection.md)
- [The Apps Merchants Actually Use — and How Each One Started](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/13-app-origin-stories.md)
- [Learning Log — Shopify App from Zero](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/docs/learning.md)

## Journal entries

- [Phase 0 done — what exists, and what the research changed my mind about](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/posts/what-the-research-changed.md): This site, ten research docs, and three beliefs that didn't survive the numbers.
- [Day 0 — Why I'm building a Shopify app in public](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/posts/day-0-why-a-shopify-app.md): The problem I'm going after, the number I'm chasing, and the rules for this journal.

## VIP

- [VIP membership](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/vip): paid tier with early access to the app, live build sessions, roadmap votes and unfiltered numbers.

## Machine-readable

- [Full text of everything](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/llms-full.txt)
- [RSS feed](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/feed.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://shopifyjourney.cemalbuilds.com/sitemap.xml)