Last Shipaton, I Couldn’t Ship a Paywall. This Year, Six People Paid Me $13

By September 22, the numbers showed just six subscribers and $13 in revenue. This wasn't much success, but compared to the preceding year, when no in-app purchases were ever achieved, it marked improvement. In August 2025, the app's in-app purchases proved to be a challenging hurdle. The creator struggled for four hours before returning to where they started, expressing a desire for guidance on using RevenueCat purchases.

The app's appearance made it into the App Store in the later half of Shipaton, but without the purchase functionality, there was no entry in the App Store. The creator had never written StoreKit code, instead relying on RevenueCat. However, the purchase process proved to be a complex concept to grasp, with difficulty distinguishing between products, offerings, and entitlements, as well as knowing which of these to create in App Store Connect and RevenueCat.

Despite these challenges, on June 18, the creator's products finally appeared in App Store Connect, albeit stuck on a "Missing Metadata" issue due to a localization problem. RevenueCat had released AI tools in September 2025 and May 2026 that could create products, entitlements, and offerings in a RevenueCat project. However, these tools did not create products in App Store Connect, which remained a manual task.

The creator turned the practice app into Japatan, a Japanese-learning app for English speakers, and integrated the purchase code. The purchase system now checks whether a user has an active entitlement and unlocks various features accordingly. Despite the purchase working, the creator faced challenges in reaching a US audience and adjusting the pricing structure.