The AI ​​language learning app: $9K/month over 16 months

• Posted on April 5, 2024 by Fardeen Khan
• Reviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Fabien Snauwaert is the founder of Gliglish, which he describes as…

a new way to learn languages ​​by talking to AI.

Just speak into your microphone and enjoy a conversation with a language teacher. Or you can role-play a real-life situation, such as buying a croissant at the bakery.

📝 In a recent interview, Fabien revealed…

Exactly 16 months have passed and the revenue is now at €8,000 [almost $9K per month].

But this isn’t his first rodeo…

I dropped out of college to play video games. Then I took a low-paying IT job and started working on an ebook on the side. The income was then between 30 and 500 dollars per month, for about 5 years.

(I assume this is this ebook, found via.)

After this…

I created a few books and courses and was able to go full time. But things got really interesting when I created a web app for people to learn English. He earned over €560,000 in total revenue… but that’s over the course of 9 years.

€560,000 for 9 years = €62,000 / €68,000 per year 💰

This is the app: Click and talk

Fabien’s description (source)…

Learn the top 5,000 words in American English, with correct pronunciation and grammar, in sentences you’ll remember with meaning.

(I wonder if you could make the same app but for another language? 🤔)

Fabien taught himself to code along the way…

I was making HTML pages when I was 16, with some vanilla JavaScript. And then I learned everything on the fly. Do you have a question? Google it. Or now ChatGPT/Cursor.

How Gliglish built…

It took me two days to get a basic prototype. It didn’t really work, but it was enough to know that it could. Then it took me 37 days to get it working…

I started like an idiot 2 days before Christmas because I was broke.

I have a newsletter for French people learning English. I always use it to launch products. It’s my financial safety net.

This seems to be his newsletter, with 49k subscribers.

Fabien has obviously been building this audience for years and it’s like a secret weapon for him now when he launches a new product 💪

However, when Gliglish was released…

People were excited about it, but the product didn’t work that well yet. I was clear that I was still working on it. It only made €615 in the first 30 days, so not exactly a homerun.

Keep trying…

I got zero discounts when I launched on Product Hunt. I was anxious about the launch, and all that effort and worry was for nothing.

We’ve featured many stories in this newsletter where Product Hunt went down a treat. Which goes to show you never know what’s going to work. You have to keep trying different things until something hits 🎯

And that’s what Fabien did…

People started talking about Gliglish as soon as I posted on HackerNews. I was #2 on the site for a split second.

Then I started getting traffic from AI directories and AI people on TikTok & Instagram and that’s when things started going viral.

This brought him to a monthly income of $9,000, with plenty of room for growth 📈

Fabien’s advice for others…

Iterate more… It took me 17 years to ship 9 products, it’s wrong. If I’d iterated faster (instead of dragging too much on/between projects) I would have gotten to the nice results faster.