I Cloned A $4M App… And Its Making Me Money!

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There are a lot of videos online telling you to “clone an app with AI” and get rich overnight. The real opportunity is not copying somebody else’s software, recreating their code, or competing head-to-head with a giant company. It is finding a proven product category, understanding what customers already pay for, and then adapting the workflow for a smaller market that the original product does not serve well.

That distinction matters. I have used live chat software for years. It has made me money, and I have also spent plenty of money on it. The problem was not that live chat was useless. The problem was that most live chat products were designed around customer support when I wanted a system built around sales.

That is the idea behind Seller Pole: a sales-first live chat system that helps a website owner see active visitors, recognize buying intent, start conversations, qualify opportunities, and create the next sales step before the visitor leaves. The goal is not to build a generic chat widget. The goal is to build a sales workflow that happens to use chat.

Important disclaimer: “Cloning” in this post means studying publicly observable product categories and independently building a new solution. It does not mean copying source code, trademarks, copyrighted copy, confidential information, proprietary data, or patented features. The original video includes personal performance and timing claims. Those claims are not independently verified here, are not typical, and are not a promise of results. Building and selling software involves legal, technical, financial, and market risk.

Everybody Talks About Copying an App. Almost Nobody Talks About Adaptation.

The standard playbook is familiar. Find an app that works. Copy the app. Make a better mousetrap. Make it faster. Make it cheaper. Sometimes a cheaper or simpler alternative can work. But this approach usually puts a small operator directly in competition with a larger company that already has the brand, customers, integrations, support team, and marketing budget.

Adaptation asks a different question:

What if the product is already good, but it is pointed at the wrong job, buyer, moment, or market segment?

Instead of competing feature-for-feature, adapt the core workflow for a buyer with a more specific problem. You may not need to build the entire category. You may only need to solve one profitable part of it better for one type of customer.

• A generic live chat product becomes a sales-chat system for websites that need more qualified leads.
• A generic CRM becomes a workflow designed around personal trainers, dentists, property managers, or another defined market.
• A general email platform becomes a newsletter workflow for one creator category or one audience.
• A link-in-bio tool becomes a conversion page built around a specific influencer category, such as beauty creators.
• A generic scheduling tool becomes an appointment-booking system designed around a particular service business.

The goal is not to make the software better for everyone. It is to make it obviously better for the people you intend to serve.

Why Adaptation Can Create Very Large Businesses

The underlying pattern is common: take an established category, change the positioning or workflow for a more focused buyer, and make that focus commercially meaningful. The following examples are not direct comparisons to a live chat business. They simply demonstrate that adaptation and focused positioning can scale.

Tesla: Reframing the Electric Car

Tesla did not invent electric vehicles. Its annual report describes its products as high-performance fully electric vehicles and emphasizes performance, attractive styling, and safety. The lesson is not that every app should try to become Tesla. The lesson is that an existing category can take on new value when it is built around a stronger buyer desire.

Tesla reported $94.827 billion in total FY2025 revenue and $3.794 billion in GAAP net income.

Veeva: Building Generic Software Around One Industry

Veeva built cloud software, data, and consulting around the functions of the global life-sciences industry. This is a useful software example because it demonstrates the power of specialization. Instead of asking one generic system to work for every industry, Veeva focuses on the workflows, data, terminology, and constraints that matter to one vertical.

Veeva reported $3.195 billion in FY2026 revenue and $908.9 million in GAAP net income.

Celsius: Reframing an Established Consumption Occasion

Celsius did not invent energy drinks. The company describes itself as a functional beverage business that was born in fitness and is positioned in the better-for-you functional beverage category. The important point is the positioning: an established product type can feel newly relevant when it is presented for a more defined identity and use case.

Celsius reported $2.515 billion in FY2025 revenue and $108.0 million in GAAP net income.

Read these examples correctly: Company-wide revenue and profit do not prove that one positioning decision caused the result. These examples are not forecasts or promises. They show that focused reinterpretations of established categories can support substantial businesses.

Start With Proof of Demand, Not a Blank Screen

The fastest way to waste time is to build an app first and hope somebody wants it later. A better approach is to prove that customers already spend money in the category, then find the segment that dislikes the default solution.

1. Map Existing Demand

Start with software categories that already have buyers. Use Ahrefs, Google search, app directories, review sites, marketplace listings, competitor comparison pages, Reddit, and customer reviews. Look for products with active search demand, competitors that already charge money, and buyers who are visibly trying to compare options.

One simple search pattern is “[competitor] alternatives.” In the video, “Linktree alternatives” is used as an example. People searching that phrase have already identified the category and are actively looking for another option. The point is not to copy Linktree. The point is to ask what its structure does, which buyers dislike the generic version, and how the same job could be made more useful for one narrow audience.

2. Collect the Language of Frustration

Search reviews, Reddit posts, comparison pages, and social comments for repeated complaints. Repeated complaints are often product requirements in plain English.

• “It is too generic.”
• “It has too many features I do not use.”
• “It is too expensive for the one thing I need.”
• “It takes too long to set up.”
• “It was built for support, but I need sales.”
• “It does not connect to the tools my business already uses.”
• “It does not help me act at the exact moment I need it.”

For example, a large all-in-one system may perform dozens of functions while a buyer only needs one function well. That creates an opening to build a smaller product around the specific outcome that buyer values.

3. Pick One Buyer and One Expensive Moment

A good adaptation is not “a better app.” It is a specific outcome for a specific person at a specific moment. The buyer should be easy to name. The expensive moment should be easy to recognize.

• A website owner wants to talk to a pricing-page visitor before that visitor leaves.
• A dental office wants to turn live chat into booked appointments.
• A digital-product business wants to identify active buyers and follow up at the right time.
• A service business wants alerts when a qualified lead lands on a high-intent page.
• A creator wants a link-in-bio page that is built for a defined audience and conversion goal.

The more specific the buyer and the moment, the easier it becomes to create a clear unique selling proposition.

4. Build a Minimum Viable Product and Put It in Front of Buyers

AI can make it faster to move from observation to a working prototype. In the video, the product was first put together through a combination of market research, Claude-based development, and programming support for the heavier technical work. The key is not the exact tool. The key is to know what you are building, why you are building it, and which small set of functions must work before taking it to market.

Do not wait to build a giant platform. Build the smallest useful version, get it into real use, collect feedback, and add capabilities after the core workflow proves itself. The product can evolve through ongoing prompts, files, edits, and implementation work, but the first version must solve a real problem now.

How the Seller Pole Example Was Adapted

The video’s example is Seller Pole, a web-based sales-first live chat tool. The original direction came from years of using live chat software and seeing the same friction over and over again: the tools could handle customer support, but they did not make it easy to see every active visitor and work them like a sales opportunity.

According to the video, the first sellable version went from concept to prototype in under 48 hours. The creator used market research and Claude to assemble most of the initial application, then brought in a programmer to complete heavier technical work. The product has continued to evolve through follow-up prompts, files, updates, and code changes. The video also states that the tool was first built as a web application, with a desktop version considered as a later step.

The video describes several features that make the adaptation sales-first rather than support-first:

• A live view of people currently on the website.
• The ability to start a conversation with active visitors instead of waiting for an inbound support request.
• Multi-visitor outreach for a website owner who wants to contact active traffic, subject to applicable consent, privacy, anti-spam, and platform rules.
• A built-in pipeline for remembering who has been contacted, what they want, and when to follow up.
• Prompts, routing, alerts, and automations adapted for the buyer’s specific sales process.
• Potential connections to tools such as calendars, video meetings, autoresponders, CRMs, and other systems the business already uses.

The transcript mentions early testing, continued development, and approximately 50,000 visitors run through the tool. Those are video-narrator statements and should be treated as contextual claims rather than independently verified performance data.

The Live Chat Adaptation: Support First vs. Sales First

Most live chat products are designed around customer support. They prioritize tickets, queues, response time, help-center content, agent coverage, and resolving a customer’s problem. Those are legitimate and valuable jobs.

But a sales team has a different job. It needs to know who is on the site, what page they are viewing, which visitors are showing buying intent, what context the rep needs before starting a conversation, and how to move the conversation to a sale, an appointment, or a follow-up.

The Default Support-First Workflow

• Respond to incoming support questions.
• Organize conversations around tickets and customer cases.
• Measure response time, issue resolution, and customer satisfaction.
• Use help-center content and automation to reduce support volume.
• Focus on closing the customer-service loop.

The Adapted Sales-First Workflow

• See active visitors on the site and identify high-intent activity.
• Initiate relevant conversations instead of waiting only for incoming support requests.
• Surface the visitor’s page activity, source, fit signals, and conversation context.
• Use sales prompts, qualification questions, and routing rules that match the business.
• Maintain a sales pipeline so a conversation can become a follow-up, meeting, or opportunity.
• Measure qualified leads, appointments, opportunities, and revenue influence.

That is the adaptation. The system is not necessarily better for every business. It is better for the business that wants its live chat to function as a sales engine.

What a Sales-First Live Chat System Can Include

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The product should be modular. That means the same core engine can be adapted without rebuilding the entire application from scratch for every customer. One customer may need sales prompts for digital products. Another may need appointment prompts for dentists. Another may need lead-routing logic for a service business.

• Live visitor list and current-page activity.
• One-to-one visitor outreach and conversation initiation.
• Broadcast or multi-visitor messaging when appropriate and compliant with applicable laws and platform rules.
• Sales pipeline stages and next-action reminders.
• Custom qualification prompts and conversation playbooks.
• Rules that route chats to the right salesperson or team.
• Alerts for pricing pages, demo pages, comparison pages, or other high-intent events.
• CRM, calendar, autoresponder, Zoom, or other workflow integrations where appropriate.
• Optional AI qualification and suggested responses, with human review and responsible data handling.

This is why the product story matters more than the app itself. A prospect does not buy “a chat widget.” They buy the chance to get more value from the visitors already coming to their website.

Proving That Live Chat Is Already a Real Software Market

The market does not need to be invented from scratch. Live chat, digital conversations, contact centers, and customer-service software are established categories. Text Group, which owns LiveChat, is the closest direct public comparable in the research used for these notes. Freshworks, Five9, Sprinklr, and LivePerson are broader companies that include chat or digital-engagement functions as part of larger service and contact-center platforms.

• Text Group disclosed $89.52 million in annual recurring revenue for Q1 FY2026/27.
• Freshworks reported $237.377 million in Q2 2026 revenue and $3.239 million in reported net income.
• Five9 reported $312.444 million in Q2 2026 revenue and $3.367 million in reported net income.
• Sprinklr reported $219.479 million in Q1 FY2027 revenue and $4.181 million in reported net income.
• LivePerson reported $52.496 million in Q2 2026 revenue and a reported net loss of $72.557 million. Its operating loss included a disclosed $51.826 million goodwill impairment.

These companies are not directly comparable, their reporting periods differ, and their revenue is not pure live-chat revenue. The useful conclusion is only that buyers already spend serious money in the broader category. The opportunity is to bring a sharper sales-native proposition to a clearly defined slice of that market.

How to Package and Sell the Product

The product can begin with a simple, productized offer and then expand into a higher-value custom implementation. This lets a buyer start with a clear entry point while creating a natural upgrade for businesses that need their own prompts, logic, integrations, training, and reporting.

Option 1: Sales Chat Starter

Suggested starting range: $250 to $500.

• Sales-oriented live chat setup.
• Basic routing and qualification prompts.
• Simple brand configuration.
• Launch checklist and defined implementation scope.
• Optional monthly software or support fee stated separately.

Option 2: Custom Sales Chat System and Training

Suggested starting range: $2,000 and up, plus a monthly maintenance fee if applicable.

• Custom visitor signals, qualification logic, and sales routing.
• CRM, calendar, autoresponder, or workflow integration scope as agreed.
• Custom conversation playbooks and reporting definitions.
• Specialized configuration for a niche, such as dentists, digital-product sellers, service businesses, or another defined buyer.
• Live chat sales training for the people who will use the system.
• Training on openers, discovery, qualification, handoff, follow-up, and next-step conversion.

The sales argument is not “look at this cool tool.” The sales argument is economic. If a customer sells a $1,000 product and one additional sale covers the cost of the implementation, the conversation is no longer about saving a few dollars on chat software. It is about whether the system can help the buyer capture more of the demand they already have.

Top App Directory Sites for Finding Existing Software

Use these sites to research categories, compare existing products, read reviews, find alternative products, and discover where buyers already look. The URLs are shown as plain text for easy copy and paste.

https://www.producthunt.com
https://www.g2.com
https://www.capterra.com
https://www.getapp.com
https://www.softwareadvice.com
https://www.trustradius.com
https://www.alternativeto.net
https://www.saashub.com
https://sourceforge.net
https://www.saasworthy.com
https://crozdesk.com
https://www.f6s.com
https://www.betalist.com
https://www.uneed.best
https://www.indiehackers.com
https://www.stackshare.io
https://www.appsumo.com
https://theresanaiforthat.com
https://www.futurepedia.io
https://www.toolify.ai

Top Keywords for Finding Simple Apps to Adapt

Replace the words in brackets with an app category, competitor, market, workflow, or buyer type. Start broad, then narrow the search as you see where buyers complain, compare, and spend money.

[competitor] alternatives
[competitor] alternative
[competitor] reviews
[competitor] pricing
[competitor] complaints
[competitor] missing features
tools like [competitor]
best [app category]
simple [app category]
easy [app category]
affordable [app category]
cheap [app category]
[app category] for [niche]
[app category] for small business
[app category] for agencies
[app category] for creators
[app category] for [job title]
[workflow] software
[workflow] tool
[workflow] app
[workflow] automation
[workflow] template
[buyer type] CRM
[buyer type] lead follow-up
[buyer type] appointment booking
[buyer type] customer management
[buyer type] dashboard
[buyer type] calculator
[buyer type] scheduling software
[buyer type] live chat
[buyer type] sales software
site:reddit.com [competitor] problems
site:reddit.com [app category] alternatives
site:reddit.com [app category] frustration
intitle:alternatives [app category]
intitle:review [competitor]
[app category] comparison
[competitor] vs

Simple App Angles to Explore

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• Generic link-in-bio tool adapted for beauty influencers, fitness coaches, real-estate agents, or another defined creator category.
• Generic email software adapted for a niche newsletter publisher with prebuilt templates, content ideas, and audience-specific automations.
• Generic live chat adapted for dental offices that need appointment bookings, insurance questions, and lead routing.
• Generic CRM adapted for personal trainers, local service businesses, tutors, photographers, or consultants.
• Generic scheduling software adapted for a business with an expensive missed appointment or slow response problem.
• Generic website pop-up or autoresponder adapted around one high-intent page and one sales action.
• Generic spreadsheet process adapted into a simple dashboard for one recurring business decision.

Do not start with a giant market and an enormous feature list. Start with one buyer, one pain point, one specific outcome, and one simple product that is easy to explain.

URLs Mentioned in the Video

These are shown as plain URLs, with no linked anchor text, for easy copy and paste.

https://sellerpole.com
https://www.downloadmynotes.com
https://aiprofitscoop.com

Research Source URLs for the Reported Financial Figures

These URLs support the reported financial figures mentioned in this article. They are plain text URLs for easy copy and paste.

https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000162828026003952/tsla-20251231-gen.pdf
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1393052/000139305226000014/veev-20260131.htm
https://ir.celsiusholdingsinc.com/news/news-details/2026/Celsius-Holdings-Reports-Full-Year-2025-and-Fourth-Quarter-Financial-Results/default.aspx
https://investor.text.com/uploads/202608q1pressen.pdf
https://investors.five9.com/news-releases/news-release-details/five9-announces-second-quarter-2026-financial-results
https://ir.freshworks.com/news/news-details/2026/Freshworks-Reports-Record-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx
https://investors.sprinklr.com/news/press-releases/detail/256/sprinklr-announces-first-quarter-fiscal-2027-results
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102993/000110299326000084/lpsn-20260630.htm

The Bottom Line

The winning idea is not to sell a clone chat app. It is to sell the sales workflow the old app never gave the buyer. AI can speed up prototyping and iteration, but AI does not replace market research, positioning, product judgment, implementation, customer acquisition, or customer support.

Copying gets attention. Adaptation creates the reason to buy.

If you are building in public, start by showing the category, the complaint, the adapted workflow, the early version, and the buyer outcome. The more specific the problem you solve, the easier it is for the right customer to understand why your product exists.

Want to follow the build? Use the resources listed above, watch for future updates, and focus on one small market, one important problem, and one simple solution that is ready to sell.

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