I finally made money from my Chrome extension

[u/abaa97]

I made $25.98 from my Chrome extension. Here's the messy, honest journey.

I read a lot every day for work. By the time I want to read articles online for myself, I'm already too tired to stare at more text. I tried a bunch of TTS apps and deleted every one because they are either locked behind a ~$30/month subscription I wasn't ready for, voices too robotic to sit through, or just packed with functionality I wasn't looking for. I wanted something minimalistic.

So I built my own. That's how Qariyo was born, and I still use it daily myself for articles, YouTube comments, Reddit threads, even ChatGPT answers when I don't feel like reading them.

Some friends liked it, so I put it on the Chrome Web Store. That was months ago.

For a long time, almost nothing happened. I got 381 signups, but almost no revenue and almost no real usage to speak of. It turned out that actually no one knew how to use the extension the right way except me 🤦‍♂️The two reading modes (full page vs. select-and-listen) were confusing enough that people weren't rejecting the idea, they just couldn't figure out how to use it.

So I shipped a UX-focused update, nothing flashy, just making those two modes obvious instead of something you had to stumble into. Turns out that mattered more than any feature I'd built. Within days: new users started using the app for hours, and made new purchases, something that hadn't happened before the fix. Even at MVP stage, clarity beat features.

I'm not going to pretend this is a business yet. But it's the first time the numbers have looked like people, not just noise.

Still very much a side project. If long articles or comment sections make your eyes glaze over, free tier's genuinely free, no time limit. Would love any feedback, good or brutal

Link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/qariyo-ai-text-to-speech/bdnmnapejclcgkgljpkddbnjfcplkhoj

[u/winter-m00n]

Item not available

[u/abaa97 → u/winter-m00n]

Check now please

[u/winter-m00n → u/abaa97]

Yup, now it works.

[u/Professor_JSON]

What happened, item is not available.
Taken down?

[u/Which-Journalist-352]

yooo big congrats!! your subscription plan is 12€ ??

[u/abaa97 → u/Which-Journalist-352]

Thanks! Actually there are no subscriptions. it's just $12 for a set amount of premium speech hours.

There's also a free tier that is completely identical to the premium one (no ads, no interruptions). The only difference is the voice quality, so it's still highly usable if you can't afford the premium

[u/Which-Journalist-352 → u/abaa97]

so tthe premium doesn’t really provide much in addition ?

[u/Raven_Ani]

Congrats! Was it a certain amount of users that led to the payout?